Thank you, Madam Chair, for asking us to appear today. Welcome to Thunder Bay and welcome to all of you. Thank you.
My name is Carol Cline, and I'm the program manager with the Catholic Family Development Centre. This is Robert Barrett, the executive director, and Ron Bourret, the chair of our board of directors.
We are here today to speak about the counselling and education work we do through our centre with aboriginal women who are struggling to heal from the effects of violence. Aboriginal women who present themselves at agencies like ours are victims of violence, as well as perpetrators of violence. They present as women struggling to become better moms, and they present as women struggling to become better partners. Some present as quite quiet and withdrawn, others present as angry and aggressive, and some present as confident and assertive.
We welcome approximately 200 aboriginal women annually through our small agency. Most of these women are mandated to participate in a partner abuse program, or they're mandated to participate in a psycho-educational group while they're incarcerated in a jail. We also see aboriginal women voluntarily through our agency, through the first nations and Inuit health benefit funding. The aboriginal women we see through these various programs are all victims. They've suffered horrendous violence perpetrated overwhelmingly by men in positions of power and authority and/or intimacy. Men who these women thought would love, respect, and protect them instead betrayed them.
From the residential school abuses, to the intimate partner terrorism, to being beaten or raped, or any other manner of horror that these women had to go through, they have been left to make a life without the resources and support required to move beyond poverty, addictions, and violence.