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Radio station asks if sex assault victims should share blame, audience gives definitive answer

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The tweet has been deleted, but the backlash continues.

On Thursday morning, Edmonton radio station 630 CHED posted the following question on Twitter:

"Poll: It's very controversial but do you think victims of sexual assaults share any blame for what happens?"

Um, the answer is no.

Everyone on the social networking site knows that — and let 630 CHED know it.

The YWCA promptly pulled its ads from the station. Labour Minister Thomas Lukaszuk even threatened to pull government ads from the station.

[ Related: CHED sexual assault poll prompts YWCA to pull ads ]

"These are taxpayer's dollars and that's the only lever we really have," he said.

"To in any way ... insinuate that any victim of the heinous crime of rape somehow brought it on herself and somehow welcomed it and was somehow complicit in all that is just grotesque, and it strikes at all of our values," Lukaszuk told reporters outside the Alberta Legislature.

"This is something that simply cannot be tolerated."

Justice Minister Jonathan Denis demanded the station apologize to sexual assault victims.

The station pulled the tweet three and a half hours later, claimed it "lacked context," and explained that the question was part of a larger discussion about exploitation and victimization.

"I am sorry ... What we did and the tweet that we sent out was wrong," CHED brand director Syd Smith said in an on-air apology.

"Given the same circumstances, if I just glanced down at my phone and saw a question like that in this day and age without any context, I would say why on earth would somebody ask that question," he added.

[ More Brew: CBC cuts could hasten public broadcaster's death ]

Smith admitted that the online question was "ham-handled" and that the station was wrong "in the way that we put it out there."

"The poll question was designed, it appears, to complement a discussion about rape culture and victim blaming – but it’s hard to imagine a more clumsy way of tackling a sensitive and important social question," wrote the Edmonton Journal's Paula Simons.

"So here’s the quick answer. No. No sexual assault victim – female or male – is ever to blame for what happened."

If you ask a horrible question about sexual assault on Twitter, don't expect people to join your discussion — expect them to end it.