By Dimitrije Martinovic
Dimitrije is a staff journalist at FOCUS MEDIA ARTS CENTRE.

Intimate partner violence is an issue that affects all communities and neighbourhoods.  For women living in Regent Park needing to escaping domestic abuse by moving to a temporary shelter with their children, one place they could go to is Nellies, a women’s shelter located in the downtown east end of Toronto that also offers support and advocacy services. Another place close to the neighbourhood of Regent Park is the Adelaide Resource Centre for Women Services.

Unfortunately for women who don’t wish to uproot their children from their communities the choices are limited. Emergency women shelters in Toronto are few and far between. The failure to provide realistic choices for women escaping intimate violence often results in women not reporting issues of abuse and remaining in the situation they are in.

“One way to resolve this issue, is to advocate for more innovative and proactive approaches to dealing with intimate partner violence.” argues Marziya Yasmin, a women’s advocate and the lead researcher for a documentary on criminal harassment (referred commonly as stalking).

As part of the research for a documentary involving Yasmin, Regent Park TV visited the Peel Region Police to explore their innovative approach in addressing intimate partner violence.

According to Detective Sergeant Rebecca Miller Small of the Peel Region Police – Intimate Partner Violence Unit: “family and intimate partner violence is one of highest number of calls received by Peel Region Police. Peel Region Police responded to 10,495 reports of intimate partner violence in 2020, and the number of domestic related homicides doubled from 2018 to 2019 in the City of Brampton alone, with 30% of the total number of homicides were as a result of Femicide.”

Initiated in April 2020, the Intimate Partner Violence Unit consists of 50 specially trained officers, who work in a plain clothes capacity, enabling officers to relate better to survivors and to decrease any possible intimidation factors for individuals who have mistrust toward law enforcement. Another unique feature, is that the unit is not located in a police station. Instead, the unit operates out of a community services hub along with a number of social service agencies. This is because critical part of the innovative method utilized by Peel Region Police involves an enhanced trauma informed approach and extensive collaboration with partner organizations to provided consistent and seamless wrap-around service delivery to survivors of intimate partner violence and their families through services delivered at the Safe Centre of Peel.
 
Katherine Kulbak, a Detective Constable with Peel Region Police (herself a survivor of domestic violence), expanded on the importance of education and specialized training for service personal, as well as developing stronger partnerships with various community organizations and the public.

Considering that the great majority of victims of intimate partner violence are women, there are intervention programs designed to educate and rehabilitate men. In Peel Region for example, the Partner Assault Response Program, is a court initiative in which the offender is directed to attend a 12-week program where they are taught a range of non-abusive ways to deal with conflict, and where they are informed that their behaviour is socially unacceptable.

In her summary of what we can do to further help victims of intimate partner violence, Sergeant Rebecca Miller Small, said: “The thing that we can do better to ensure that victims are heard, is to listen to them. Let them tell their stories, sometimes that's all they need is someone there that will be willing to listen to what has happened to them and not judge. A lot of people believe that this is a private issue, but it truly isn't, this a community issue and we all need to work together to do better as a community to help the victims of intimate partner violence.”

Advocates, like Marziya Yasmin applaud the work of the Peel Region Intimate Violence Program and hope that more police services adopt their innovative approaches in dealing with intimate violence.