In my introduction, I forgot to mention a little bit of what my roles are at PACE. I'm a little nervous here, I have to admit.
For the last 10 years I have been a therapist. I worked with victims of sexual abuse, domestic violence, as well as working with sex offenders. Over the last more recent year here or so, I've been coordinating the Caribou Child and Youth Centre, which is a child and youth advocacy centre for children who have to testify and go through the judicial system. I work with the RCMP and child welfare with child witnesses.
What we are here to speak to is that in 2009, Heather King, who is the child prevention and family violence specialist in northern Alberta, and Jacquie Aitken-Kish, who is our executive director, did a research project that included 24 different women from the High Level area. They did a qualitative study over a seven-month period to find out what the climate was, what's happening in these rural remote communities, what suggestions the women who are actually living there and working there have for change, and what they would like to see as possible future outcomes.
Some of the things that were identified as the current crisis that they're experiencing were that victims are afraid to speak out, either from the ramifications coming back from their offender or other community members. There's the appearance of an inadequate sentencing that happens. There's a lack of transportation. I know that was mentioned by one of the other individuals. There's isolation, a shortage of resources and access to professionals and support, and there are high levels of poor health and dysfunction. This is across the board, not just for the individuals who may be victimized or the perpetrators. They're seeing this also in all the strata, including their council and band.
Some of the risk factors that were identified were the ongoing normalization of abuse, whether it be childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence, or just violence in general. This is just something that is commonplace. People grow up with this as being just a part of life, therefore it's easy to fall into the role of victim or perpetrator.
Other risk factors are addictions. We know that addictions are often a result of different types of abuse and trauma. It's a way that people cope. We see a lot of low income and poverty, high dropout rates, low education rates. There's a very transient population in northern Alberta, as well as extreme isolation. A lot of these communities are very difficult to get in and out of. Some of them are fly-in only. There's a lot of easy access to weapons, which also increases the risk when domestic violence is involved.