Hastings County council is supporting an effort to have municipal governments and the province declare intimate partner violence an epidemic.
Thursday Leah Morgan, Executive Director of Victim Services Hastings, Prince Edward, and Lennox and Addington and representing the Quinte Coordinating Committee Against Violence, told county council that all of the region’s police services are reporting increasing numbers of assaults against women and intimate partner violence.
“Rates of domestic violence per 100,000 population in Belleville and Quinte West is 52 per cent higher than in Kingston and almost 47 per cent higher than the province.”
Morgan told council that Victim Services had helped 638 victims of intimate partner violence in the three counties in the past year.
In the same time period, Three Oaks Foundation provided shelter and counselling to 92 women and 39 children. It’s important to note that the shelters were operating at half capacity due to pandemic restrictions being in effect.
Since January of this year in Ontario there have already been 46 confirmed femicides as reported by the Ontario Association of Interval & Transition Houses.
The Coordinating Committee Against Violence is planning a local conference on March 28 to try to arrive at a community action plan based on 85 recommendations contained in an inquest report after the violent 2015 deaths of three women in Renfrew at the hands of a former intimate partner.
December 6 is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.
