Barbara Kay: Male victims need help too (Canada)
Particularly negligent, in the light of the dire need for services for boys and men suffering sexual or partner abuse, was the media’s omission of this important nudge: “Men need integrated and coherent plans for services and a way of tracking and measuring implementation and effectiveness of services. Right now there is no integrated plan.”
For Ontario women in distress there are 39 permanently funded shelters and numerous other programs. For Ontario’s male victims of intimate partner violence — straight or gay — there is no dedicated shelter at all, only the precariously funded The Men’s Project in Ottawa offering healing and support programs (there was a Cornwall branch, apparently for show, since the government closed it down as soon as the inquiry finished).
And there is exactly one full-service centre in Canada (meagrely and provisionally, not permanently funded) — the Nanaimo Men’s Resource Centre in B.C. — where a man seeking protection for himself and his children from their abusive mother can find assured refuge.
