Violence against marginalized women focus of Saint John town hall

Saint John is one of four cities being profiled as part of a national project about violence against marginalized women.

The focus is on three groups: indigenous women, migrant women, and women with intellectual and psychiatric disabilities.

A community town hall taking place in Saint JohnWednesday evening will feature four panelists who will speak about the disproportionate number of marginalized women facing violence.

Sue Davis,the local project lead, says Saint John was chosen to represent the east coast because "we have a pretty good representation of diverseexperiences," with its high rates of poverty and addiction issues.

"The Saint John Human Development Council has already identified a need to reach out to homeless women, and people with mental health or addictionproblems," Davis said in an interview Tuesday on Information Morning Saint John.

"And right now Saint John is attracting a lot of new immigrants. We're a smaller city that's going to have quite an increase in newcomers so they thought we would be a good representative for the region."

Information Morning - Saint John7:45Raising awareness on violence against women

Sue Davis is the lead on a project about violence against marginalized women and Ken Pike is the director of social policy with the NB Association for Community Living.

The event begins a multi-yearinitiative by the Institute for Research and Development on Inclusion and Society (IRIS).The other cities taking part in similar town halls are Vancouver, Toronto and Regina.

Over the next three years there will be public sessions, workshops and ongoing workinggroups with women to share information among groups that traditionally would not be in the same room together.

"A lot of these women, in a lot of cases aren't [dealing with] domestic violence," Davis said.

"So they experience violence in different ways. You need to change the lens on how you look at these groups of women."

Higher levels of dependence

Women with an intellectual or other type of disability are more likely to be victimized, said Ken Pike, director of social policy with the New Brunswick Association for Community Living.

"Women with a disability often have a higher level of dependence on others to have their basic and personal care needs met, so in many instances women may be dependent upon the person who is actually their abuser," Pike said.

"There's also issues around physical and social isolation women with disabilities face that might stem from them not having access to their community, maybe they're living in a segregated type of environment."

Pike says he's excited to raise awareness about these issues on a national level, and look at possible solutions.

It's important to startwith violence prevention, he said.

"How do they keep themselves safer, we need to start that when people are younger, school aged, in looking at what's involved with healthy relationships and what they can do to keep themselves safer," said Pike.

The community town hall is a free event. It will be held at the Delta Brunswick Hotel starting on Wednesday at 6 p.m.