Calls to a Vancouver-based crisis phone line for women experiencing domestic violence have been way up during the COVID-19 crisis.
Vancouver’s Battered Women’s Support Services says their staff have seen a 300-per-cent increase in calls over the last three weeks.
The agency, which handles approximately 18,000 calls a year from women experiencing gender-based violence, says isolation because of COVID-19 is making it harder for women who are trying to leave unsafe situations.
Forty per cent of callers are reaching out for the first time, says Angela Marie MacDougall, the advocacy group’s executive director.