Thank you very much.
Good morning, everyone.
Violence is multidimensional and affects all aspects of the lives of women and children who are victims, whether physically, psychologically or emotionally. Living in constant fear and insecurity will have greater long-term repercussions than physical injury.
Recently in Quebec, there have been many expert reports highlighting the absolute necessity to better understand the issues surrounding domestic violence. At present, acting to better support victims and better supervise aggressors is therefore a government priority.
This is why we believe it is essential to bring coercive control to the forefront of public debate and to see it as a criminal act in its own right, and not merely as a context within which wrongdoing would be committed in the eyes of the law. This would allow women and children living in such a context to be recognized by the justice system as victims with rights under the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights.
When women arrive at the shelter, they are often disoriented by the violence, terrified about fleeing with a few belongings for themselves and their children, panicked about being found by their abuser, and often in shock. As a result, they have often not reported the abuse to the police. Fear of reprisals, lack of knowledge of the system, and fear of not being believed are some of the reasons cited by women.
A report by our sisters in the Fédération des maisons d'hébergement pour femmes indicated that only 19% of the approximately 3,000 women housed in 2018-19 had filed a complaint with the police. Yet all of these women have in common that they have lived under the yoke of an abuser, some for a few months and others for decades.
Realizing that you are experiencing domestic violence can take time. We aren't talking about an episode of violence at the beginning of the relationship, but about an insidious dynamic that can take time to establish. In some situations, the violence will never be physical. It can be a variety of acts of control and manipulation, which will gradually isolate women and children, imprison them psychologically and feed their fear of retaliation if the submission is not total.
Many women are ashamed to speak up, to reveal their experiences, because, in their eyes, what they are experiencing is close to madness. Often, when women tell their stories for the first time, they're afraid that they won't be believed. As a result, the context surrounding these first revelations is crucial. Unfortunately, although we insist on ongoing training throughout the justice system, it's still too often the case that the women we work with encounter a lack of understanding of their experience as a whole, since the preferred approach is one based on offences recognized in the Canadian Criminal Code. Not recognizing coercive control as a criminal act in itself is to minimize the violence of control they have experienced and to erase their suffering as well as that of their children.
Our context of intervention in second-stage housing allows us to see how the aggressor's control techniques diversify in order to maintain a hold despite physical distance. If this control is only partially recognized by the authorities, then our actions to support these women will only be partial.
Working with women and children who have experienced violence is not a trivial task. We do it with the will and purpose to help improve the lives of vulnerable people. We advocate feminist intervention, based on the potential of each woman to regain power over her life.
While we want violence to be recognized, without an integration of coercive control in the Canadian Criminal Code, once again, this recognition will only be partial.
Freedom from violence is no easy task. It's all the more difficult when, in fact, the ex-spouse is only partially guilty of the violence he's caused, or even if he's in no way guilty, and has full freedom to be and to act.
As long as coercive control isn't recognized as an offence, we will certainly talk about a context, but not about actual assaults. The recognition of the aggressor will not be based on the victim's experience or on the multiple traumas resulting from these aggressions and the devastating effects on her life.
It is unacceptable that in Canada, in 2021, a woman fleeing her partner's violence can be told by the authorities that her experiences or history are not sufficient elements to file a complaint, when all the elements of control and domination are present.
As Carmen Gill noted in her research report to the Office of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime, we are well aware that this is a change—