40 years of abuse.
It’s a case crisis worker Tracy James will always remember.
“I’ll never forget her…she had no one else to talk to, she had no one else to turn to,” she said. “She felt the only way she could leave that relationship was in a body bag.”
The woman was in her sixties and wanted out of her violent relationship, but didn’t know how.
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“She just felt lost. She didn’t feel like she could make it in the world by herself anymore,” added James, who works in Domestic Violence and Children Services for YWCA Lethbridge.
James says cases like this happen far too often. However, the Canadian Network of Women’s Shelters & Transition Houses want to change that.
They have launched a website, sheltersafe.ca, to help women and children in abusive situations to find shelters and transition homes in their area. It also provides information and resources for those who may not know what domestic violence really means.
In 2013, the Network reported that more than 97,000 women and children across Canada fled abusive relationships in just one year. And a 2015 report said that 231 shelters helped nearly 6300 women and children in domestic situations in just one day.
“It will give them the opportunity to find those resources and to build a new life away from violence,” explained James.
It’s the support the woman in her sixties finally got when she went to the YWCA. Changing her story from one of abuse, to one of hope.
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