Male Victims of Domestic Violence

I recall the immediate attraction I felt towards secular humanism. Here, as it was first explained to me, was the marriage of reason and compassion. These two principles, harnessed and brought together under a spirit of critical and open inquiry, had the power to improve the human condition. But we must have the courage to apply our reason and compassion even and especially to difficult questions, allowing for the possibility of re-evaluating our most closely held assumptions and beliefs. 

We’re going to explore the emotionally charged topic of domestic violence. Both reason and compassion will require that we take a good hard look at facts that may be difficult to hear or which run contrary to our ideological outlook. We do this not to be unkind but because lives are at stake.

We already know that domestic violence can be a life or death issue for women. But it can also be one for men and children. In the Greater Toronto Area, in a period of just one year, there were over a dozen tragedies in which a female murdered a male partner and/or her children, including:

• The November 20, 2024 murder of four month old baby boy Azuri Bacchas by his mother, Karessa Edwards. The child’s father had tried desperately to get help but police arrived too late to save the child.
• The October 25, 2024, murder of four month old baby girl Aurora Quita by her mother Kathrynn Quita Batugal, who had set her house on fire.
• The July 14, 2024 murder of Blake Bibby by his girlfriend McKenzie Gill.
• The January 23, 2024 brutal murder of Gerrard Martin by his fiancée Deanna Charrion.
• The January 4, 2024 murder of baby boy Benjamin Berelovich by his mother Zoya Berelovich.
• The December 14, 2023 murder of two boys, aged 4 and 5, by their mother Vanessa Collias.
• The December 3, 2023 murder of a 3 year old boy by Shardanae Cousins-Emily, after she had assaulted the child so badly his face was disfigured.

These shocking and violent facts are shared in the hope of jolting people with the urgency of moving to a gender inclusive and gender equal approach to domestic violence. We are witnessing tragedies that could have been prevented. In most communities in Canada, a father has few – oftentimes zero – places where he can escape with his children when they are at risk. This endangers both girls and boys. 

All of this is despite rigorous research over decades demonstrating the need for family violence services for fathers and children. According to Statistics Canada, the average rate of spousal violence between 1999 and 2019 was 5.92% for women and 5.12% for men.¹ Men suffer from various severe forms of Intimate Partner Violence at rates comparable to women. In 2019, male victims (31.5%) were more likely than female victims (10.3%) to report being kicked, bitten, or hit with something.² With respect to family-related homicides (murder by a spouse or another family member), the proportion is 42.8% male victims and 57.2% female victims.³ The emotional consequences on male victims are severe. Researchers Professors Denise Hines and Emily Douglas studied male victims who contacted victim support agencies. Within this sample, 58% had PTSD.⁴

These facts are rarely reported in the media and almost never included in government policy and funding decisions. In 2022-23, the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services spent $177 million to support 103 Violence Against Women shelters. In the same period, $0 was spent on Violence Against Men shelters. No Violence Against Men shelters have ever received funds from the Ontario government. The same is true of most provinces in Canada. It is impossible to justify this gender binary – 100% versus 0% – in funding allocation. 

The Ontario government does acknowledge men as victims of female perpetrated violence. The government funds the Partner Assault Response program for female perpetrators. Yet no funds are available for the male victims of those perpetrators.

At the federal level, most policy and funding comes through the Ministry for Women and Gender Equality (WAGE). In 2023, WAGE announced a $150 million Gender Based Violence Research Fund. The goal was to conduct research into innovative approaches with a focus on populations underserved by domestic violence programs. It is hard to imagine a better fit than men and boys. Here is half the Canadian population currently with no access to services. In spite of this, WAGE made all applications to study or support men and boys ineligible for consideration.

The government’s go-to reason not to fund services for men is the supposed lack of data into men as victims. Yet when research funding is announced it is determined at the start that precisely that line of research will be off limits for funding. There’s your catch-22. It leaves one wondering if the government is seeking to insulate itself from discoveries that may run counter to its preferred ideology. As humanists, we are committed to open inquiry that does not presuppose answers simply because they accord with our beliefs. 

The problem with studying only one half of a complex issue is not merely that the half you avoid is left unaddressed. It is much deeper than that. The problem is that you can never understand an issue at its core if you decide in advance to close off certain avenues of inquiry. That was the same mistake the Canadian government made with its Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. With three times as many missing and murdered Indigenous men and boys, the decision to intentionally exclude three quarters of the relevant data guaranteed the inquiry would be ideologically pure, but scientifically flawed. It is hard to understand how women any more than men benefitted from this missed opportunity to explore violence against Indigenous people in a full and comprehensive manner.

While governments continue to play politics with life and death issues, the private non-profit sector is stepping up. The Canadian Centre for Men and Families has opened two shelters for fathers and children in crisis, first-of-their-kind in Ontario and Alberta.

The Toronto Family Shelter for Fathers and Children opened in 2021 and has been home to over 300 families. In November 2024, the same charity opened an 11-unit building in Calgary for fathers and children. That facility has a capacity for up to 44 individuals. These fully inclusive spaces accept gay, bi and trans men, and children of all genders and ages. 

In Canada, two other non-profit agencies – one in Montreal and the other in Winnipeg – offer emergency housing for abused men. Meanwhile, three Alberta women’s shelters have started to admit fathers and children. 

There is one development remarkably to the credit of the federal government. An August 2020 landmark report, “Male Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in Canada,” prepared for the Government of Canada’s Office of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime (OFOVC), recommended the opening of new family shelters for fathers and children throughout Canada, to “ensure victims of IPV [Intimate Partner Violence] have access to life-saving shelter support regardless of gender.” The Report found that the Canadian Victim Bill of Rights requires that male victims of domestic abuse be housed in dedicated facilities that provide adequate and appropriate support and services.

Governments already fund homelessness services for fathers and children, but the way in which they do so is economically wasteful and morally unacceptable. In present cases where a father and child must exit a violent home, we unnecessarily separate a child from a loving parent. We send the father to a homeless shelter for single men. The child may be placed in a separate youth shelter or in foster care, both options being psychologically damaging and economically wasteful. Keeping a father and his children together in a common facility is the moral and economic solution.   An interim housing facility for fathers and children is also in the best interest of women and girls. At present, a father has no safe place where he can escape with his daughters when they are at risk. An abused father faces the impossible decision: leave his children behind with no protection or stay in an escalating abusive relationship. The status quo is keeping children unsafe.

As so much of domestic violence involves mutually violent couples, supporting a male victim actually helps prevent cases of violence against women. Meanwhile, the intergenerational effects of family violence often result in the victimization of both men and women within the same family over multiple generations. Intervention programs that support victims regardless of gender have the best chance of breaking the cycle of violence, both within a relationship and between the generations.

Although it is uncomfortable, we must accept the reality of female violence against men and children as part of a comprehensive strategy of addressing violence against women and girls. Mothers do commit abuse and tragically even murder their own children. Girls are endangered by our unwillingness to accept the possibility of abusive and violent mothers. Sons who are abused by a parent – whether a father or a mother – or who witness one parent abuse the other, are more likely to go on to abuse women as adults. Men who suffer abuse from a female partner are more likely to themselves commit abuse in the same or future relationships. We must approach domestic violence from a gender inclusive framework and understand that services for male victims are in fact an essential component of addressing violence against women and girls.

There is a larger point here. Approaching equality with an exclusivist mindset confined to the interests of a single group is not real equality, nor is it in anyone’s best interest. Canada rightly values its commitment to gender equality. One key form of gender equality is equal access to essential, life saving community services. On that measure, Canada is a profoundly unequal place. Domestic violence services are provided in a radically unequal manner, according to a binary in which services are available exclusively to one gender. The limiting of services and support is not equal, inclusive or progressive.  This “zero sum game” mentality is truly baffling. In no other area do we take this binary approach. Men account for 75% of suicides in Canada. Yet no one suggests all suicide prevention research and services should be limited to men, with women ineligible for support. Nor is it this way with homelessness (80% men), opioid deaths (74% men), ADHD (75% male) or workplace fatalities (90% men). We rarely even acknowledge the gendered aspect of these issues, let alone mandating that services be unavailable for women because they constitute a minority of those suffering. It is beyond dispute that domestic abuse is a serious issue for women. We absolutely need more intervention programs for women. At the same time, we need something more than zero for boys and men.

It is not that complicated. It is only our stereotypes about gender that prevent progress.  We all have a stake in shifting perspectives. Gender equality means moving beyond gender ideology to provide safety and support to all victims.