‘Like an iceberg’
Impacts of abuse can’t always be seen
Family violence, intimate partner violence, dating violence, domestic abuse, spousal abuse, child abuse, elder abuse — it goes by many names, and has a deep and lasting impact on many in our region.
“Domestic violence happens within a home or with partners that are in a family type relationship,” said Danya O’Malley, executive director of P.E.I. Family Violence Prevention Services in Charlottetown. “It’s any act that harms, or is meant to intimidate or coerce someone in some way.”
It can include verbal, physical, emotional, or financial abuse. It can look like one romantic partner abusing the other; a parent or adult abusing a child; an adult abusing an elder family member. Domestic violence also includes dating violence and violence in a roommate situation.
“People often think, ‘Well, physical abuse — that’s the worst of the worst'. But when you talk to victims that have a number of different types of violence, they often cite the emotional abuse as the worst. It leaves very deep scars. They say things like, ‘That is the voice I hear in my head’,” said O’Malley.
Statistics show women, female-identifying and gender-diverse individuals are at increased risk of physical violence such as assault, assault with a weapon, or homicide.
Men also suffer in abusive relationships, but the violence they face tends to be emotional or verbal. Many men don’t report it, perhaps because they feel what they’re experiencing is not really abuse, said O’Malley.
“The barriers to men speaking out are so varied and tightly bound that we really have no idea how many male victims of violence there are,” said O’Malley.
LOCKED DOWN
Violence prevention organizations around Atlantic Canada have noticed a shift during the COVID-19 pandemic as public health measures keep everyone close to home.
“It has impacted on people’s emotional and mental health in feeling isolated,” said Sandra McKellar, executive director of the Newfoundland and Labrador Sexual Assault Crisis and Prevention Centre in St. John’s.
Healthy activities, like joining a friend for a cup of tea, have become more difficult.
“If you don’t have those supports, those ways of coping, it becomes much more difficult,” said McKellar.
She’s seen an increase in both new and repeat callers to crisis and information lines and reminds everyone that — even during a global pandemic — “you can get support, you can be validated, you can be believed.”
The early months of the pandemic were particularly difficult.
“It was very hard — very, very hard — for people to be able to reach out during that really critical period in March to July,” she said. “Clients just didn’t have the time to talk to (outreach workers). They might need to, but not be able to, because of lack of
privacy, and sometimes quite a dangerous lack of privacy if they’re still living with their abuser . ... It’s really scary and upsetting to think about — and we’ve gotten off pretty lightly here, pandemic-wise, we haven’t had widespread lockdowns at all really since the summer.”
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE
O’Malley said abuse builds over time.
“That’s why people often get in very deep into relationships that are abusive — because early on, the red flags are so tiny and so easy to rationalize, justify and minimize in light of this also really awesome, happy new relationship. You then get into a lot of intimacy and emotional closeness and attachment and things begin to escalate and get worse over time,“she said.
“I imagine the pandemic sort of moved along some unhealthy relationships into some pretty scary situations.”
McKellar said it’s important to remember that most abuse happens behind closed doors.
“It’s not that someone who is an abuser looks like it. That’s a myth that we have. They can look like everybody else,” said McKellar.
GETTING UNSTUCK
For friends or family, an abusive relationship might mean changes to someone’s confidence, or freedom to make plans, said McKellar.
Victims will work hard to conceal an abusive situation, but sometimes clues will leak out, said O’Malley.
“Oftentimes the little bit of dysfunction that we see is like an iceberg. People often experience so much shame about the relationship and the way that the relationship is unhealthy,” said O’Malley.
“Often, the little bit that you get to see is often only the very tip of the problem and what happens behind closed doors can sometimes be just mind-blowing, because on the surface everything seems fine.”
From the sidelines, leaving an abusive relationship may seem like the logical solution, but it’s not a simple matter of packing a bag and heading out the door.
Many victims are dependent on the abuser financially or for a place to live.
Women can be underemployed or have long gaps in their resumé due to having children, which can make it difficult to re-enter the workforce.
Victims can fear the partner having unsupervised access to their children, and believe that if they stay, they’ll be able to act as a buffer.
Shiva Nourpanah, provincial co-ordinator for Transition House Association of Nova Scotia in Bedford, said many victims stay because the fear of the unknown is worse than the fear of the known.
“They feel they can handle an abusive partner, but they can’t handle the system, they don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s very complex, there’s multiple systems that become engaged once a woman makes that decision to leave, and that in itself can be quite daunting,” said Nourpanah.
Police and courts may become involved if there are criminal charges; social services may be activated if there are children; the victim may need to apply for income supports or other programs, arrange school or childcare or find transportation – all of which can become obstacles for people looking to leave an abusive situation.
Adding to an already intense transition, the majority of domestic homicides happen after separation, said O’Malley.
“Just recently separated from a relationship is the most dangerous time for a woman in an abusive relationship. Things can spiral and become deadly,” she said.
BUT WHY?
What causes a person to choose violence?
There’s an expression, said O’Malley: “hurt people hurt people.”
“We know that a lot of abusers have trauma history as well,” she said, adding not everyone who has a trauma history goes on to be abusive.
Structural issues like poverty, precarious housing, and unemployment can put pressure on a household, Nourpanah said, but at the end of the day, violence is an individual choice.
“There’s a delicate interplay of individual and structural factors that both need addressing,” said Nourpanah.
The issues are complex. On P.E.I., O’Malley and her team use the term family violence to emphasize the lasting impact on children.
“Violence is a learned behaviour, and that behaviour was generally learned in childhood,” said O’Malley.
“They’ve learned that violent behaviour, they’ve learned to control another individual and to impose their will on another person and to use feelings to manipulate that other person and so they are not able to be any other way, in spite of the fact that they may be very much don’t want to be this way.
“When you start to scratch the surface of people who abuse, you often find an absolute well of pain and shame and self-loathing. … When you start unlocking that, you start undoing abuse.”
“Violence is a learned behaviour, and that behaviour was generally learned in childhood.” Dayna O’Malley
GETTING HELP
Organizations in P.E.I., Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador each have a 24-7 phone line staffed by people with trauma training. New Brunswick has several services that can be reached individually or by calling 211 for help.
The phone numbers are for anyone looking for help in their own situation or for advice on how to help a friend.
“People often think a lot of things about what might rule them out of our services,” said O’Malley, adding she’s heard people say things like, ‘I don’t know if I can stay there, though, he never hits me,’ or ‘What if I’m taking up something that could go to somebody else’?”
Each province has said there are enough services to help those who call.