Yes, absolutely.
In fact, we've developed two tools on our website that help victims identify various types of violence and recognize the power being exerted over them. That enables victims to more clearly articulate many of the types of violence they experience.
We hear a lot about post-separation violence and judicial violence. Just this morning, a woman testified that she was enrolled in a highly specialized academic program with her partner. She invested $100,000 in her education, but her partner arranged for her to be expelled from the program. That's a situation I'd never heard of before, but it's a type of economic violence.
Indeed, we hear a lot about this. I think there's still a lot of work to be done to help women recognize the types of violence they're experiencing. More than half of the requests we receive through chat and text messages come from people who generally aren't ready to call the helpline. Writing is easier. These are often people who wonder whether what they're experiencing is truly intimate partner violence, or whether it's truly coercive control. They often have a hard time putting their experiences into words, even though what they describe to us is sometimes very serious. It can go as far as choking.
So, we see that people are better able to recognize subtle forms of violence. At the same time, we also see many people who hesitate for a very long time to put their experiences into words for fear of making false accusations, accusing someone wrongly or exaggerating—because it's often said that women exaggerate or misinterpret things.
This means we need to continue doing a lot of work to help people recognize different types of violence. The two interactive tools on our website were used 400,000 times over the past five years, which demonstrates the significant demand for information on this topic. That extends beyond Quebec's borders, by the way.