Are you being abused?
Who We Serve l Safety Tips l Statistics l Contact Numbers l 7 Types of Abuse
Our services support women and their children and women without children who are being abused or have experienced abuse.
Abuse is when someone uses their power to control you and/or...
- Slaps, punches, pushes or kicks
- Threatens to hurt you
- Hides or keeps your identification such as your social insurance card
- Forces unwanted sex
- Controls the money
- Makes it difficult to see friends
- Uses hurtful name calling
- Is always right and cannot be contradicted
- Is frightening and unpredictable
- Is always jealous and suspicious
- Won't let you have your passport (or other papers)
Abuse is when someone uses their power to control the actions and beliefs of another person.
Abuse against women comes in many forms and can happen to any woman regardless of age, race, education, or socio-economic status. There are many forms of abuse including emotional/psychological, physical, sexual, financial and spiritual. Abusers often isolate women from their friends, family and community.
Emotional/Psychological abuse is when someone controls the other person through insults, humiliation, verbal threats, intimidation, name calling, harrassment and isolation. What starts as emotional abuse often leads to physical violence. It should never be taken lightly.
Financial abuse is when someone controls another person's financial resources. Often women who are abused have no access to the family income, have to ask for money for household purchases, are prevented from having a job or have to turn their paycheck over to their partner. Limiting financial resources is one way in which an abuser keeps a woman dependant on him. Financial abuse is one of the leading forms of abuse among older women and often occurs when a family member gets control of her financial resources against her will.
Spiritual abuse is when someone is not allowed to practice their religious beliefs or, on the contrary is forced to become a member of a religious group or cult.
Sexual abuse can include unwanted touching, harrassing sexually, explicit phone calls, forced sexual activities and rape. Contrary to myth, sexual abuse most often occurs between people who know each other and not a stranger.
Physical abuse, is the type of abuse that most people think about when they know someone is being abused. Physical abuse often, but not always, follows a history of other types of abuse (i.e. emotional, financial, sexual or spiritual). Physical abuse is when a partner uses physical force to control another person. Abuse includes any act of physical aggression including slapping, kicking, biting, punching, beating and can ultimately result in murder. The severity of physical violence often increases. Once physical violence has started, it rarely stops and often gets worse.
If you know a woman who is being abused:
- Listen to her
- Believe what she is saying
- Encourage her to seek help
- Give her names and numbers of local emergency shelter and crisis lines
