‘We don’t want to know about abused men’: Inside the hidden world of male victims

Matt feared his wife was going to kill him. He had seen violent streaks before. Once, when he accused her of infidelities, Matt said she pulled a knife and “put it (at) my throat.”

Fleeing wasn’t an option because they had young children. He felt stuck without a safe refuge where he could take them. “As long as I had my kids, that’s all I cared about,” Matt said.

He expected the police wouldn’t take him seriously: a six-foot-tall Caribbean man scared of his wife. “If anything happens and she calls the cops, they’re going to come straight at me,” he told the National Post, requesting anonymity to protect his children.

A subsequent fight over cheating led to a similar violent encounter. Again, his partner allegedly threatened him with a knife and “said she’s gonna kill me,” according to Matt. Again, he refrained from calling the police, instead phoning a family member to tell them about the situation. The alarmed family member called the cops.

When the police arrived on the scene, Matt said he was asked to leave the premises. “The conversation went from ‘what happened?’ to ‘what did you do?’ really quick,” he said. It wasn’t until Matt, under police escort, went back into his house to get some belongings that the officers started to take his story seriously. His wife lost it, Matt said, verbally attacking him in their presence.

“I heard the police officer under his breath say, ‘Oh shit, that really happened,’” Matt said. A female police officer escorting Matt away from their house acknowledged his options were limited, but she had a suggestion for him of a safe haven in Toronto where he could stay temporarily with his kids.

“There isn’t a lot of help for men in situations like these but give this place a try. It might help you out,” he recalled her saying.

Down a stretch of York University’s student ghetto in the northern part of Toronto sits a non-descript, three-storey, red-brick townhouse that is a national treasure of sorts. It is one of the rare places in Canada where abused men and fathers with children can find emergency shelter.

“We’re the only game in town as far as family violence for fathers and children,” said Justin Trottier, who oversees the Family Shelter for Abused Men and Children. Opened during the height of the pandemic in March 2021, the shelter is an effort more than seven years in the making by Trottier and the Canadian Centre for Men and Families (CCMF).

The non-profit men’s centre has offered counselling and mental health services for male victims of abuse and violence —“filling critical gaps in men’s services” — since 2014. But the outpouring of demand for an emergency shelter pushed them to open an actual residence.

“We would get calls for years before we opened and that’s what lit the fire under us to open a shelter. The demand’s always been high,” Trottier said.

There are nearly 600 shelters across Canada for victims of domestic abuse and intimate partner violence (IPV), but only four per cent of them serve men. More than two-thirds of the shelters (68 per cent) are mandated to serve women and their children, while an additional 11 per cent serve women only. According to Statistics Canada, of the approximately 24 emergency abuse shelters in 2021-22 that opened their doors to men, virtually all of them also served women. More than 99 per cent of the 46,827 residents of domestic abuse shelters in 2021-22 were women and their children.

For male victims of domestic abuse, that leaves a smattering of dots on a vast map of Canada where they might find safety. Even rarer are places where abused fathers can bring their children.

Most people are aware of the tragic consequences for women of intimate partner violence. In June, Carly Stannard-Walsh and her two children, Madison and Hunter, were shot dead in a murder-suicide in Harrow, Ont. They were killed by Carly’s husband and the children’s father, Steven Walsh.

In the five years between 2014 to 2019, police-reported data showed 80 per cent of the 500 Canadian lives lost to domestic violence were women — 400 mothers, sisters, daughters and girlfriends killed by people in their lives. Overall, in 2019, women were the victims of 79 per cent of police-reported criminal incidents of intimate partner violence.

But what is less well-known is that men are also victims of domestic abuse and intimate partner violence, including physical abuse, sexual and psychological abuse. The numbers don’t show up in police reports because, like Matt, men are less likely to call police.

Matt was one of the dads who turned up at Trottier’s doorstep with nowhere else to go. He thought about going to a motel but couldn’t afford it long-term. He also considered returning to his family in New York, but that would be too difficult with his kids. One shelter offered him a bed, but said no to the children, which meant they would be left with their mother.

About 90 per cent of residents at the Toronto emergency shelter are “male survivors of family violence and their children,” Trottier told the Post. But they also open their doors to male refugees, those suffering mental health issues and boys alienated from their families. “There is no hard rule against men in other situations,” he said.

Residents are offered a range of support, what Trottier likes to call “wraparound services,” from providing clothing and food, to emergency trauma counselling, mental health therapy, peer support and mentoring, fathering classes and legal aid. Stays are capped at 90 days. Trottier said the waitlist frequently balloons between four weeks and two months.

The majority of CCMF’s operating funds come from private contributions and institutional donations. The federal government does not provide any money, nor do most provincial governments. Alberta is one of the rare exceptions; the province gave CCMF just over $9,000 last year to help create a domestic abuse program.

On a recent visit, the shelter is a hive of activity. There are intake workers and mental health counsellors mixed in among the residents. Trottier is there most days, too, as well as graduate students in social work from neighbouring York University.

Many residents have day jobs, so they are coming and going. An observer arriving at the shelter just before lunch on a weekday, finds no kids in sight. Trottier said that children accompanying their fathers usually stick to the routines they had prior to arriving — going to daycare, babysitters and school.

From the outside, the shelter looks like any other townhouse, aside from the abundance of security cameras and signs calling for doors to be locked at all times. A rooftop patio offers panoramic views of the sprawling suburbia. But the overall aesthetic at the shelter is reminiscent of college dorms or cheap first apartments — drab-coloured walls, donated second-hand furniture. A massive kitchen has floor-to-ceiling cupboards stocked with personally labelled food. Residents buy their own groceries and cook their own meals.

The shelter can host up to two dozen people or 10 families “depending on size,” Trottier said. With the help of bunk beds, some rooms on the second floor are big enough for a father and three children. There is a kid’s room full of toys, a library and meeting space that can be converted into a bedroom, laundry facilities, even a small backyard.

A small network across Quebec, Maison Oxygène — Oxygen House — fills a similar gap in providing emergency accommodation for fathers and their children but does not position itself as a domestic abuse shelter. The non-profit is funded exclusively by donations and has faced chronic financial pains.

Outside of these options for male victims of intimate partner violence and their children, there aren’t many others, Trottier said.

Intimate partner violence, also known as spousal abuse or domestic violence, has been identified by the World Health Organization as a major global public health concern, impacting millions of people of all genders, ages, socioeconomic, racial, religious and cultural backgrounds. It can range from emotional and financial abuse to physical and sexual assault. It can happen within a marriage or dating relationship, whether or not partners live together or are sexually intimate, and after the relationship has ended. It can occur in public and private spaces, as well as online.

And it can happen regardless of gender. Self-reported data through surveys, questionnaires and the like, show the less publicized, much broader picture of male victims of intimate partner violence.

In Canada in 2018, self-reported statistics on abuse from StatsCan showed that 23 per cent of women experienced some form of abuse compared to 17 per cent of men. Forty-four per cent of women reported sexual abuse compared to 36 per cent of men, with similar comparisons for psychological abuse.

And though women are seven times more likely than men to be killed by their partners, men are not absent from those harsh victim statistics. In 2021, men comprised nearly a quarter (24 per cent) of 90 intimate partner homicides. National media often overlook stories such as Blake Bibby, a 36-year-old Newmarket, Ont. man fatally stabbed by his ex-girlfriend in July.

“Spousal homicide is not a good measure of domestic abuse because it is so rare,” said Don Dutton, a University of British Columbia psychology professor who has been studying the domestic violence issue for decades and has authored several books on the subject, including Rethinking Domestic Violence.

Dutton spent part of his early career in the ‘70s as a court-mandated counsellor working with men accused of abusing their wives. Over the decades, he began to see domestic violence as more of a two-way street with female abusers often overlooked in academic and legal circles.

Dutton said there’s an obvious explanation for the chasm between official police data that shows females as the primary victims of domestic abuse, and the self-reported data that suggest the ratio of abuse between the sexes is closer than most think: Men are often too self-conscious to come forward to police.

He found that men report domestic abuse to police at a tenth of the rate as women and that their reports are not taken as seriously by law enforcement.

Erin Pizzey had a similar wake-up call during her work as a pioneering force behind the emergency shelter movement in the United Kingdom back in the ‘70s. Her work set off a chain reaction as she spearheaded the creation of spaces for women escaping abusive partners to get back on their feet.

Within four years of opening her first shelter in 1971, more than two dozen similar initiatives had sprung up across the U.K. with more in the pipeline. “She single-handedly did as much for the cause of women as any other woman alive,” one British journalist reflected in 1997.

However, Pizzey grew disillusioned with the movement and what she viewed as the mainstreaming of men-bashing among activists. Her work on the frontiers of domestic abuse changed her view of domestic violence: Men were not solely perpetrators of violence, but also victims of abuse. True equality meant helping both sexes in need.

“I was the one who was saying, ‘Hey, hang on, this is not a gender issue. Men are equally in need of refuge; men are equally in need of social services,’” Pizzey, now 85, told the National Post over Zoom from her home in London.

“Apart from those of us who work in the field of domestic violence and dysfunction, we have been brainwashed into believing that all men are potential abusers. So, no, I don’t believe that there is much understanding or interest in male suffering or abuse,” Pizzey said.

Other academics and professionals in the field of social services have arrived at similar conclusions.

Elizabeth Bates, a specialist in the topic at Cumbria University in the United Kingdom, said in an email to the National Post that the perception one draws about domestic abuse is heavily influenced by the dataset one picks. Whereas police reports show a “large majority of perpetrators being male and victims being female,” survey data from government officials in England and Wales show “that for every three victims of domestic abuse, one is male and two are female,” she said.

In the academic literature, which typically relies on “self-reported data,” Bates said the ratio of female to male victims is closer to a 50-50 split. “There are a number of reasons for this difference, but one of the main ones, I think, are around the barriers faced in reporting victimization,” Bates said.

“There are barriers for any victim” Bates continued. “But I think for men, the stigma and stereotypes are still very prominent, and it prevents men from being able to disclose and so be included within those statistics.”

Alexandra Lysova, a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University, told the National Post that Canada’s federally commissioned General Social Survey (GSS) victimization survey in 2019 also found “very, very close” ratios between female and male victims of intimate partner violence, both when it comes to psychological and physical abuse.

Such findings should encourage the public to move beyond stereotypes of domestic abuse that depict men exclusively as abusers, said Lysova, because a vast swath of society is being deprived of much-needed social services. “What we see is that the tip of this iceberg, and the whole large part of intimate partner violence is underwater, not known to the police,” Lysova said.

“I have this conversation so many times: ‘Oh, it’s happening more by men to women.’ But no, that’s not accurate. What is accurate is that more women are reporting than men, and more women are reporting when the perpetrator is a man compared to when the man is abused by a woman,” said Phil Mitchell, a British counsellor specializing in male abuse victims.

When asked about the differences between men and women when it comes to reported incidents of domestic violence, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police directed the National Post’s request for comment to the Toronto Police Service. While the RCMP “absolutely investigates cases of domestic violence,” an RCMP spokesperson explained to the National Post by email, the matter is mostly dealt with “at the divisional (provincial) level.”

“TPS can only speak on intimate partner violence occurrences that are reported to us, recognizing that not every incident of IPV is reported to police. Reported incidents are thoroughly investigated by officers with specialized training,” Stephanie Sayer, a TPS spokesperson wrote in an email to the National Post.

“While women account for the vast majority of people who experience IPV, this issue affects individuals of all genders, ages, races, socioeconomic statuses, ethnicities, religions, educational levels, and cultural backgrounds. We encourage anyone experiencing IPV to report it to the police, regardless of gender, and to seek help from available support services in Toronto,” Sayer continued.

The Toronto shelter serves a crucial role helping male victims of abuse, including fathers and their kids, caught in the social services gap.

Peter, who asked that his name be changed for privacy reasons, was in his thirties when the fallout from a bad marriage “caused me to lose my job, my house and pretty much extinguished my family.” He turned to his extended Jamaican family in Toronto, but the situation grew intolerable. He was living with an alcoholic uncle in an uninsulated garage.

“He wanted to, I guess, take his rage out on me,” Peter said, recalling the incident which finally brought him to the shelter. When he wasn’t paying attention, Peter’s uncle punched him in the mouth.

“I wasn’t gonna do that (anymore). It was a common occurrence,” Peter continued as he spoke outside his basement room at the shelter. “I’ve seen things happen. I’ve heard of people accidentally getting hit the wrong way. I don’t want to be one of those people.

“I was desperate, you know. I was kind of skeptical about even coming… I thought, a big warehouse, cots everywhere,” Peter said. “I called this place, and they told me it was nothing like that.”

His time at the shelter has given him breathing room to contemplate his next steps. “As much as I like the people here, I don’t want to be here with them. Sorry guys! I hope you guys don’t want me here,” he teased as another resident, Malik, stood nearby. “I’m just gonna rebuild my life.”

Malik arrived in Canada from Japan via Sri Lanka with two children and a rocky marriage in tow. Within two months of arriving, his wife left with the kids and falsely accused him of abuse, he claims. Forced to find a new place to live in the middle of the pandemic, Malik found a bedroom in a shared apartment.

Then the roommate began showing signs of “severe mental breakdown,” he said. The roommate tried to attack Malik last Christmas. “I got the hell out,” he said, as he sat on his bed in the shelter.

A friend picked him up and he got connected with a central intake system that directed him to the shelter. There was nearly a three-week waitlist. When he was finally able to check in, “it was a huge relief. Like, finally, I was breathing after two years,” he said, smiling.

Malik recalled the first thing he did when he got settled in the shelter: “I just slept for a couple of days. I was so tired of two years of nonstop stress.” He sees his kids on weekends, taking them to the shelter, a privilege he would not have in a typical homeless or temporary housing facility.

The Toronto shelter wasn’t the first to offer a safe haven for abused Canadian men. In the 1990s,

Earl Silverman trudged across Calgary fleeing a violent wife. He desperately searched for a place to get back on his feet, but whenever Silverman tried to check himself into a domestic abuse shelter, he was turned away and encouraged to seek counselling instead.

“When I went into the community looking for some support services, I couldn’t find any. There were a lot for women, and the only programs for men were for anger management. As a victim, I was re-victimized by having these services telling me I wasn’t a victim, but I was a perpetrator,” Silverman told the National Post in 2013.

He became an advocate for male victims of spousal abuse. Silverman created the Men’s Alternative Safe House, the first and only refuge in Canada at that time for male victims of domestic abuse. At its peak, the facility housed just over a dozen men and a handful of children, funded mostly through private donations but also from Silverman’s own pocket. He’d turned to the government for help but was turned away.

“Family violence has gone from a social issue to only a woman’s issue. So, any support for men is interpreted as being against women,” he told an Alberta media outlet at the time.

The battle for recognition and acceptance took its toll on Silverman. He’d fought his share of demons and trauma over the years, often falling into bouts of alcoholism. The project gave him new meaning and purpose — until the bills began piling up and he struggled to keep the door open. The finances eventually became unsustainable, and he was forced to sell his house.

Silverman was discovered soon after his 2013 National Post interview by the new owner touring the property, hanging in the garage. A four-page suicide note blamed the government for ignoring the plight of men.

Trottier seems on the surface an unlikely successor to pick up Silverman’s torch, a legacy he will make good on with the opening of a second men’s shelter in Calgary this month – more than a decade after Silverman’s closed.

At 41, his life is dotted with seemingly disconnected initiatives. Throughout his twenties and thirties, he founded a secular organization and argued before the Supreme Court against public prayers in Quebec government meetings. He commissioned atheist bus advertisements and ran as Green Party MPP in the Toronto Parkdale-High Park riding. He lost the race but was on the right side of the Supreme Court ruling.

“I tend to gravitate to those underexplored issues that have the combination of being really critically important and yet, mysteriously, nobody’s doing anything about it. If there’s any kind of common thread that ties together all the otherwise eclectic interests that I have, I think that’s it,” he said.

A decade ago, Trottier stumbled upon men’s issues. “It’s very obvious to me anyway that these are life and death issues. I mean suicide prevention, parental alienation, workplace fatalities, homelessness, drug addiction — these things that disproportionately affect boys and men. And nobody notices that. So that really intrigued me and also frustrated me.”

The media attention Trottier previously got evaporated when he began talking about struggling men. “Mostly the media doesn’t even think this is a legitimate thing. They’re just very used to covering gender issues in a certain way and they deem the conversation to be complete when you tackle it from one, I would say, ideological perspective. There’s not a lot of appetite for more well-rounded conversation, to see things from a more … comprehensive picture.”

Matt, Peter, Malik and others have also touched the lives of the student social workers-volunteers from York University who play a vital role keeping the shelter running on its meagre funding. “It provided me inside information on the gaps that are in the system for men who are experiencing abuse and the lack of services that are not being provided,” said Thelcia Williams, a grad student volunteer.

“It also highlighted the stigmas and the sexist and gender biases that are incorporated within the field as well, where, you know, a lot of people don’t believe that there should be a shelter for men who are experiencing abuse,” she continued.

“A lot of people don’t believe men experience abuse, right? They just believe it’s women and children but, in fact, there is a demographic of men who are experiencing abuse. That needs to be addressed.”

Justin Anger, another social work grad student from York, said he also “didn’t realize how big of an issue domestic violence for men was until I came here.” Working firsthand with male survivors has changed the way Anger now looks at his coursework. “Even in some courses I’ve taken, whenever we speak about domestic violence, it’s (about) women,” he said. “It definitely shifted my perspective.”

Men as victims is an uncomfortable reality to acknowledge, even for men themselves.

“We don’t want to know about abused men,” Janice Fiamengo, a professor at the University of Ottawa and an outspoken supporter of men’s issues, wrote in an email to the National Post. “We turn our eyes away. And we definitely do not want to know about abusive women.”

Worse still, such men are often politically and socially homeless, with few advocates willing to take on their cause. “Male victims of abuse are caught between the progressive left, which doesn’t believe men can be victims because they have power, and the chivalric right, which tells men to man up and protect women,” Fiamengo added.

Matt is painfully familiar with this tension. “When you’re strong, when you look strong, people don’t even stop to ask you if you’re OK.”