Trends in family violence in Canada disturbing

The Chief Public Health Officer’s most recent report on the state of Canada’s health focused on family and domestic violence this year, and the results are disturbing.

Some statistics from the report: • An average of 172 homicides are

committed every year by a family member. • For approximately 85,000 victims

of violent crimes, the person responsible for the crime was a family member. • Nearly nine million Canadians

said they had experienced abuse before the age of 15. • Nearly 760,000 Canadians said

they had experienced unhealthy spousal conflict, abuse or violence in the previous five years. • More than 766,000 older

Canadians said they had experienced abuse or neglect in the previous year.

Why is domestic violence a public health issue? The reasons boil down to two. First, domestic violence has an impact on other forms of health. It is correlated with increased heart disease and cancer. Second, domestic violence in any group is an indicator of that group’s total health.

Violence does not happen in a vacuum. Although there is no one cause of domestic violence (and therefore no one solution), there are certain vectors that make it more likely: Prior abuse; systemic poverty or financial insecurity; pregnancy and others. The one thing most victims of abuse have in common is their presence at the margins of society. They are more likely to be women or minorities, or to live in poverty, or to identify on the LGBTQ spectrum.

In short, the people most likely to experience abuse are the ones with the fewest resources to escape it. Like all predators, abusers find easy prey — the ones whom society has not woven more fully into its fabric.

The report covers multiple types of abuse and violence, including sexual assault, financial abuse, and neglect. And in this context, “family” does not necessarily mean a cluster of adults and children; it can also include intimate partners without any children. As such, the report confirms what advocates and activists working to end domestic violence have known for years: The people most likely to hurt you are the people closest to you.

Rapists and murderers rarely emerge from alleys or bushes; they are statistically more likely to share our beds or our households.

This is just one reason why reporting domestic violence and other forms of abuse is so difficult – for many of the people experiencing it, it means a destruction of the family unit. Telling someone about domestic abuse is an acknowledgement of not just one’s experiences of abuse, but also the death of the dream of a loving family, in all its permutations, and the dream of being loved.

Reporting one’s abuser can have serious consequences, and those consequences are not limited to the framework of criminal justice. People experiencing abuse who choose to come forward may face disbelief or ostracization from other family members who didn’t witness the abuse. They may also experience stalking or harassment, including online harassment, from either their abuser or their abuser’s enablers.

Reporting can also simply mean more abuse, including the abuse of family pets. This is why the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies has made sheltering human and animal survivors of abuse one of the planks of its platform.

This is why, when examining these staggering and disheartening numbers, it’s important to understand the actual numbers are likely larger. If these numbers are an indicator of Canadian public health, and the health and well-being of Canadian society, then the conclusion is obvious. We need to heal. Madeline Ashby is a strategic foresight consultant and novelist living in Toronto. madelineashby.com