"Powerful new video reveals the hidden trauma of stalking victims"/ "Financial abuse is a form of domestic violence"

I'm posting this article in in honor of International Women's Day (Mar.8).  Men and women are victims of domestic violence, but women are more likely to experience it.

Dec. 19, 2017 "Powerful new video reveals the hidden trauma of stalking victims": Today I found this story by Zosia Bielski in the Globe and Mail:

A piece of paper was wedged behind the windshield wiper of Julie S. Lalonde's car. Penned by her ex-boyfriend, the note detailed where Lalonde had been that week, including the exact location of a payphone from which she'd called, begging him to calm down.

The unsettling vignette appears in a powerful new YouTube video on stalking, which is what Lalonde's ex did to her relentlessly for 11 years until his sudden death in a car crash in 2015.

Created by Lalonde, an Ottawa women's rights advocate and speaker, and animated using hundreds of pink-hued drawings by Montreal artist Ambivalently Yours, Outside of the Shadows is a testament to what stalking does to a human being. 

The five-minute short also gives valuable guidance to victims and bystanders staring down this kind of predator.

"We tell women to leave and to stay gone but we don't talk about what can happen next," Lalonde narrates as a fat, serpentine arm twists around an animated girl, intended to be Lalonde. Her ex-boyfriend appears as a series of dark, whirring coils – a black cloud that hangs around. After Lalonde broke up with the man, he harassed her family, friends,

roommates and co-workers. 

Lalonde moved multiple times to escape, only to have him find her. She developed post-traumatic stress disorder. Even so, some of the people in her life justified the ex's predation, writing it off as heartbreak and as a grand, romantic gesture.

It's anything but. "Stalking traumatizes people and it changes who you are," Lalonde said in an interview.

The legal term for stalking in Canada is criminal harassment. Some 416,100 women self-reported being victims of stalking in 2009, according to Statistics Canada. Women account for 76 per cent of victims and 58 per cent are stalked by a male intimate partner, according to 2011 data from the agency. 

Approximately 75 per cent of women who are stalked by an estranged spouse are physically or sexually assaulted by the same person.

In this #MeToo era, sexual harassment and sexual assault are getting all the airtime. Few are talking about stalking, even as these types of violence are frequently intertwined.

It's a type of predation often falsely portrayed in pop culture as romantic. A scene in the YouTube video references the film Say Anything, in which John Cusack's character tries to win back the ex who dumped him by intensely blasting a boombox outside her bedroom window. 

It's an iconic scene, but one that warrants a second look: Is it amorous, or pushy? Alternately, stalking is framed as a predominantly female behaviour, Exhibit A being frenzied Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.

Most significantly, we perceive stalking as a rare phenomenon because victims face very real retribution when they talk about it. The most dangerous time for victims comes after they leave an abusive partner. 

Note the horrifying one-day rampage carried out by Basil Borutski in September 2015, when the man killed Anastasia Kuzyk, Nathalie Warmerdam and Carol Culleton in Renfrew County, Ont.

"Stalking is such a huge part of what those women went through," Lalonde said. "Your chances of being killed spike dramatically [after you leave] but we end the conversation at, 'If someone's awful to you, you need to leave them.'"

Lalonde urges family and friends to avoid the temptation to blame the victim. Instead, listen to their experiences and check in often.

For victims, she offers concrete tools. If you fear violence during a breakup, do so via text or e-mail, or in a public place with a friend in tow. Have a safety plan in place. 

Document the abuse for police: Use screen grabs, keep paper notes and maintain a detailed log of phone calls.

Lock down social-media accounts, don't geotag your location and send snail mail to a P.O. box if you can afford to. 

Know the laws: Alberta and Ontario now allow victims of domestic violence to break their leases early if they are running away. 

Abusers seek to isolate victims, so a strong, consistent support network is crucial for victims.

"It's frustrating that people don't talk about it. What would help is more women coming forward, but no part of me wants to pressure them because it would literally put their lives at risk," Lalonde said. "Trust that we're out there. You're just not hearing from us."

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/powerful-new-video-reveals-the-hidden-trauma-of-stalking-victims/article37340675/

There are 11 comments:

Sotiriosc

4 days ago

I am a man, #Metoo, too bad the world only respects this phrase for women, its ridiculously ironic.

4 Reactions

214Montreal

4 days ago

I am gay and i had a psycho guy do many of the stalking things this writer mentions. But there was no help for me. I had to move and move on, despite him still harassing me and my family. She has an army of coddling social services at her disposal, but there is literally nothing for men.

5 Reactions

Victimitis

4 days ago

So? What are men doing to help other men? I guess it's a lot easier to just whiiiiiine on the internet.

2 Reactions

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214Montreal

4 days ago

Men get stalked by women too. Calls to police for nothing, threats from lawyers, false accusations of abuse, wrapping them up in legal quagmires and ruin them financially. But then she knows where he is and stays in touch.

3 Reactions

Globu

4 days ago

You may mean harassed "by women too". At that, women are fully capable of harassing a man to the point of causing him lasting trauma, a point barely surfacing during this era of Weinstein indictments.

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214Montreal

4 days ago

Try holding a group therapy session at Ryerson for men. You'll have to call out the army to keep the angry mob of aggrieved feminists from ripping the place apart.

2 Reactions

Victimitis

4 days ago

Cool story, bro.

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Pete Schweddy

4 days ago

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. A man must also be VERY careful about backing out of a relationship with a woman who has an intense personality... and an intense family. This is a human problem and not specific to gender or race.

2 Reactions

Victimitis

4 days ago

What has "woman scorned" have to do with women being stalked by men?!

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duali

3 days ago

In reply to:

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. A man must also be VERY careful about backing out of a relationship with a woman who has an intense personality... and an intense family. This is a human...

— Pete Schweddy

Statistics about stalking are unequivocal. Most people who are stalked and subjected to psychological and criminal harassment including various forms of violence are female. Over 80%.

Most women who stalk harass other women. Most men who stalk harass women.

You are off your rocker.

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Globu

4 days ago

A compelling and brave piece of self-disclosure by Ms. Lalonde and her supporters. It's also a touchy subject. While her particular case seems clear, there is a disturbing feel about the video in its lack of clarity. 

 Are we to believe there were over 400,000 similar stories in 2009? Did her victimizer simply "die" or did he suicide? Was he able to find help?

What exactly constitutes the notion of stalking? Where are the boundaries? Why is her portrayal of a male stalker merely an objectified "predator" and not e.g. a disturbed human being who may need a safe space and safe people to deal with their own "black clouds" without being criminalized?

As for black clouds, her message is inherently racist i.e. black means bad, white means good.

Who are the other 34% of victims? The scope of the video, while being a useful PSA for victims, has a dimension of being as narrow and opportunistic as the societal system within which "stalking" occurs.

Oct. 11, 2019 "Financial abuse is a form of domestic violence": Today I found this article by Laurie Campbell in the Edmonton Journal:

One of the more distressing social narratives today is gender-based violence. This is a topic, both in the media and our social dialogue, that shines a sometimes intrusive and unwanted light on emotional, physical and psychological abuse. 

However, there is another plot to this twisted story; one that is buried deep within the subterranean fissures of society, while at the same time right under our very noses — partner financial abuse.

A new report brings this topic to the forefront of our collective consciousness. Hidden in the Everyday was released by The Woman Abuse Council of Toronto (Womanact) as part of its Financial Abuse as a Form of Intimate Partner Violence Project funded by the City of Toronto.

The research, led by The Research Facility for Women’s Health and Wellbeing at the University of Guelph and Womanact, is merely the tip of the iceberg, and needs to be a focus not just in terms of social policy, gender and accessibility issues, but also in financial literacy.

The report outlines that like other forms of violence against women, financial abuse is used as a tactic for harm and control, making it increasingly difficult for women to leave abusive relationships. 

It can involve stealing money, restricting access to household income and benefits — even when it’s the victim’s own money — and demanding to know how money is spent. It can also encompass withholding financial information (the most common form of financial control) and building up debt in a partner’s name while not making any payments (also known as coerced debt), ruining the partner’s credit in the process.

What really hit home for me was that most survivors reported the financially controlling behaviours happened first and led to other forms of abuse. This strongly suggests we need to do a better job at identifying such abuse and its warning signs. 

But this can be difficult because traditionally, men handled all aspects of a household’s finances while women were shut out of the conversation entirely; this setup allows the offending tactics to be more easily concealed.

One major fallout of financial abuse is coerced debt and bad credit, which affects a victim’s ability to access safe housing and credit products that can help them move forward. Some of the women in the study had to turn to loans, credit cards or emergency funds. Other survivors resorted to bankruptcy. Through focus groups, a survey of service providers, as well as survivor interviews, the report uncovers many hidden levers of financial power.

Have we been viewing financial literacy through rose-tinted glasses? I regularly talk to media members and finance industry professionals about the importance of financial education. 

My conversations can run the gamut of teaching kids about money, guiding newcomers and their finances or supporting seniors with how to manage retirement.

While these topics are undoubtedly important, we can’t sidestep this ugly and uncomfortable part of money. The interaction of these two narratives — money and abuse — shouldn’t be suppressed or ignored.

I remember during my university studies hearing the quote, “the unspoken word never does harm” by Lajos Kossuth, a freedom fighter and Hungarian statesman. I remember it because I completely disagree.

This doesn’t mean we’re asking financial abuse survivors to shout their stories from the rooftops. Instead, it means increasing public awareness about what financial abuse is, how it can manifest and how people can get help.

Credit Canada’s upcoming Credit Education Week is an annual campaign aimed at helping Canadians reach their financial goals. In an effort to help support financial abuse survivors, Credit Canada has struck partnerships with women’s shelters and programs to provide free, confidential counselling sessions. 

These sessions allow victims to consult with professionals on how to best deal with coerced debt and regain financial control.

Womanact’s research is unprecedented but has only scratched the surface. Financial abuse as a form of intimate partner violence is real and it happens irrespective of a person’s income level. We need to continue the conversation.

https://www.pressreader.com/canada/edmonton-journal/20191011/281694026536816