A day in the life of Canada's abuse shelters
Wednesday, June 15, 2005 Updated at 9:15 AM EDT
Globe and Mail Update
On a single day last spring, more than 6,000 women and children sought refuge in abuse shelters in Canada, Statistics Canada said Wednesday.
For about one-third of the women, it wasn't their first visit.
The government agency, as part of a broader report on shelters for abused women, took a snapshot who was seeking shelter and why on April 14, 2002.
That day there were 3,274 women and 2,835 children residing in shelters. About 82 per cent 5,000 women and children were there in an effort to escape abuse, Statscan said.
Roughly one-third of people in shelters on that date had also stayed there at some time in the past.
Of all the women who had previously stayed in shelters, 40 per cent had been there once in the previous year, and 38 per cent had sought temporary accommodation between two and four times.
One in 10 had been to the facility five times or more in the previous year.
Women between the ages of 25 and 34 made up the biggest proportion of those seeking refuge, accounting for slightly more than one-third of those in shelters.
On the snapshot day, about one-fifth of all shelters referred about 221 women and 112 children elsewhere. Two-thirds of those referrals were made because shelters were full.
Over a one-year period, 95,326 people made up of 58,486 women and 36,940 children were admitted to abuse shelters.
That figure was 7-per-cent lower than that seen in the previous survey, conducted two years earlier, and 11 per cent below the number reported in the survey conducted in 1997-1998.
The declines, Statscan said, were mostly because fewer children were admitted to shelters. Admissions for women were down 3 per cent in the most recent survey compared with the one conducted two years earlier. A similar decline was seen between that survey and the one prepared in 1997-1998.
Statscan said the vast majority of women staying in shelters on April 14, 2004, were there to escape psychological or emotional abuse. Seven in 10 also reported physical abuse and half were the targets of threats.
One in three abused women in shelters had reported the abuse to police. Of those leaving abuse shelters on the snapshot day, only one in 10 planned to return to their spouse or partner, Statscan said.
The study also found that, while the number of women seeking shelter for abuse was largely unchanged since 1998, the percentage of women looking for refuge for other reasons rose 11 per cent.
Housing problems, drug and alcohol abuse and mental-health issues were among the other reasons given for women looking for temporary accommodation in shelters.
Between April 1, 2003, and March 31, 2004, there were 543 known shelters in Canada providing residential services for women and children.
While transition homes still constituted the majority of shelters providing refuge to women fleeing domestic violence, emergency-type facilities formed a growing proportion of shelters serving abused women, Statscan said.
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COMMENT FROM THE OMC
Note: Stats show that for every assaulted woman there is an assaulted man, that fails to show the reality that more assaults are committed by women and even when rarely reported result in even rarer charges.
The reality is violence , is not the problem, it is abuse of power be it by men or women. Women however have the power of control over children's lives and know that if it ever goes to court that the hatred towards men literally oozes out of the courtroom walls.
There is NO funding for an shelter for abused men in Ontario.
Our Ontario government increasingly applies anti-male pressure upon the judiciary and introduces legislation that will cause Ontario to drift towards the American model of having millions of children alienated from their fathers because of negative false presumptions that cause the fathers to be indefinitely incarcerated.
We need to look at who make corrupt profits from this bias and discrimination.
You don't need to look to far, just look at the government funding for feminist causes all based on increasingly false statistics of "assaults" that do not reflect the corrupt bias and prejudice by those in power who form red neck opinions and conclusions while ignoring obvious facts.