Exactly. The nature of this form of abuse is that it continues after separation. It doesn't rely on physical proximity. When they leave women in those abusive situations, perpetrators deliberately hold and control economic resources. Those economic resources could be credit, debt, assets or any kind of property under the spouse's name.
Unfortunately, there is a lack of systems that support survivors in between, so that traps them and then survivors start to struggle to rebuild their lives. As you know, even to simply get an apartment, every landlord wants to check your credit history. Most survivors are not eligible to get an apartment. If they want to access legal services, unfortunately some of them are not eligible because of the joint assets. Even to freeze their assets, they need to hire a lawyer. That's the system out there.
In order to go back to school, definitely you need to have a good credit history, including for OSAP. That's what we have seen. Unfortunately, survivors are not able to go back to school, so they are not able to access housing, the justice system and basic needs. You also can imagine the [Inaudible—Editor] how it's layered.
When you see the continuum, this kind of violence is faced by a woman for more than 25 years. That's the statistics and that's also the research we found.