While statistics can?t do justice to the heartbreak of intimate partner violence (IPV)?whether it?s physical, sexual, emotional or financial?they do give us a sense of its alarming prevalence. Recent data from Statistics Canada show that 14 percent of respondents reported experiencing economic or emotional abuse from their spouses at some point in their lives and about four percent had experienced physical or sexual violence during the previous five years. Men are also victimized, of course, but women are twice as likely to be victims of domestic violence. Between 2007 and 2011, women were four times as likely to be murdered by a current or former partner.
A 2016 report by Canada?s Chief Public Health Officer details the alarming health risks associated with domestic abuse. Both women and children exposed to IPV are at a higher lifetime risk of developing chronic diseases, cancer and mental health problems, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, and IPV survivors have shorter life expectancies. While living with abuse has clear consequences for survivors, the path to freedom isn?t so obvious. According to the Ontario Ministry of the Status of Women, it takes an average of five attempts for a Canadian woman to finally break free of an abusive relationship, but even then a clean break is unlikely when children are involved. Pamela Cross, a lawyer who consults on violence against women in Kingston, Ont., notes that women often find themselves tethered to their abusers because...