For Janet, it was like living with a landmine.
A survivor of years of domestic abuse and now a volunteer with Shelter Movers Ottawa, an organization that helps survivors and their children escape from a dangerous home, Janet says living with an abusive partner “feels like you’re in a prison and you’re trying to break free. You feel like a landmine is going to go off or a bomb. You learn to navigate that and you’re very protective of your children and it’s incredibly dangerous… You’re so overwhelmed you can’t think well.”
Shelter Movers didn’t exist in what she calls her “time of terror,” making her escape even more frightening and complicated. For Janet and others like her, it was, and is, a housing crisis unlike any other.
“The moving aspect of it nearly broke me because it was so hard. I was trying to get into a shelter with two kids. I lost my job because I was being harassed so much. I was asked if I wanted to be given a new identity with my children because the risk was very high.”
“You’ve got sexual abuse, financial abuse, verbal, emotional and, of course, physical abuse. I didn’t realize that was happening to me until I got out.”
What is Shelter Movers?
Janet has gone on to have a stable relationship with a good partner and is now a co-ordinator with Shelter Movers, a national charitable organization offering no-cost moving and storage services to people like her. Established in 2016, it is operated by more than 2,000 volunteers and has completed over 6,000 moves.
The Ottawa chapter, which launched in 2017, was the second to open and is currently doing 22 moves a month in the city and surrounding communities.
Shelter Movers collaborates with shelters, police, schools and other community services that have referred a survivor to the organization and arranges the safe move and storage of a survivor’s belongings.
In particularly fraught situations, Shelter Movers, accompanied by security, can undertake an urgent move getting the survivor, children, pets and belongings out of the home and into a shelter or other safe place in as little as 24 hours. Shelter Movers also escorts clients from a shelter to their new home and a better life.
A frightening risk of violence
According to 2018 data reported by the Government of Canada, 44 per cent of women who had ever been in an intimate partner relationship reported experiencing some kind of psychological, physical or sexual abuse in that relationship.
The same data found a woman in Canada is killed by her intimate partner every six days, and the Ottawa Police Service recently labelled a murder femicide, the first time it’s ever done so.
Ottawa City Council has taken the problem seriously enough that, on International Women’s Day 2023, it passed a motion declaring intimate partner violence an epidemic.
“We’ve seen a resurgence in misogyny,” says Ray Eskritt, chapter director of Shelter Movers Ottawa. “We’ve seen when the economy goes down, misogyny goes up. Personally, I’m afraid of some of the rhetoric I’ve seen online: the new masculinity with young men buying into this toxic mindset. We’ve got a culture that promotes it and don’t want to do anything about that.”
During the pandemic, when people were frequently locked down, abuse tripled, says Eskritt.
She also points to rural areas such as Eastern Ontario, where isolation, lack of resources, poverty, access to weapons and other problems make abuse and escape from it a special problem. According to Shelter Movers Ottawa, the rate of police-reported violence against women in the rural counties surrounding Ottawa, such as the corridor from Brockville to Smiths Falls, has risen to almost double the national average.
That increase has prompted Shelter Movers to expand its services into Lanark County, as well as Leeds and Grenville.
Rural survivors confront special barriers, but in other ways they are no different from other abused women, says Eskritt. “These people have done nothing wrong. They’ve lived their lives according to the rules and ended up homeless because of what someone else did.”
Be brave
“Every single move is different,” says Sky, another volunteer with Shelter Movers Ottawa and the daughter of a survivor. “The first one I attended, our client had a child with her. Just seeing the happiness that we were helping her achieve by moving to a safe place, that’s a feeling you can’t replicate.”
By assisting a family to take belongings with them — from crucial documents like birth certificates to photos, sports equipment and toys — Shelter Movers Ottawa helps make life seem more normal and controllable after a period of chaos and fear.
When helping with a move, “We do not offer advice, however, we are definitely a shoulder for someone to lean on and that compassion is extremely important,” says Sky. “We stay strong for our clients.”
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, contact an authority like the police, a social worker or a doctor or get in touch with a public agency like a shelter, a hospital or a sexual assault centre. You can also contact Shelter Movers directly, and they’ll help you find the resources you need.
“Be brave,” says Janet. “Don’t overthink it because then you won’t do it. Just believe you have the strength. You can do it.”
Shelter Movers can be reached here.
