Examining Intimate Partner Violence Survivor's Reporting Behaviour, Outcomes and Experiences.


Sidra Hashmi, Queen's University

This paper is part of my dissertation examining the prevalence of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and survivors reporting behaviour, outcomes and experiences. IPV includes experiencing or being threatened with physical, sexual, psychological and financial abuse perpetrated by a marital, dating and common-law partner (Cotter 2021). In the past 30 years, there have been significant shifts in societal awareness and the criminal justice systems response to IPV worldwide (Barrett, Peirone, and Cheung 2020; Peirone et al. 2021). There is a growing body of research on IPV, however, it often focuses on physical and sexual forms of abuse and primarily focuses on women. Further, individuals who are young, Indigenous, with low socio-economic status, identify as sexual minorities and have experienced childhood abuse are at an increased risk of experiencing IPV (Bailey 2021; Du Mont and Forte 2014; Tutty et al. 2021). This paper presents preliminary findings from the quantitative data analysis of the 2019 Canadian General Social Survey (GSS) (Cycle 34, Canadians Safety). This papers theoretical framework combines feminist theory, critical race theory and ecological models to test the effectiveness of laws on survivors access to justice, particularly those in interracial relationships. In studies using previous waves of the GSS, Brownridge et al. (2021) and Brownridge (2016) found that similar to the US, individuals in interracial couples in Canada are twice as likely to experience IPV. This paper contributes to Canadian literature on violence and society by using restricted data from the 2019 GSS to further investigate the elevated risk of IPV among interracial couples in Canada (Brownridge 2016, Brownridge et al. 2016). While this paper has similar findings as Brownridge 2016 and Brownridge et al. 2016), results from a direct logistic regression and sequential logistic regression show mixed findings as to whether the higher prevalence of IPV among interracial couples is related to the type of abuse (emotional/financial vs physical/sexual), survivors of IPV having experienced childhood abuse, being exposed to violence as a child, demographic data about the survivor and abuser, severity of violence the impact of IPV on children and level of social integration (Barrett, Peirone, and Cheung 2020; Peirone et al. 2021). This paper builds on past research testing additional intervening variables to better understand interracial couples and intersecting identity factors that may increase their risk of experiencing violence, as well as better understand what additional factors about the violence may vary based on the couples interracial status. Results from this paper can be used to inform policy on IPV by drawing on firsthand accounts of a large sample of survivors to address the elevated risk of IPV among interracial couples as a whole and in considering additional factors that may either increase the likelihood of experiencing violence and/or its severity

This paper will be presented at the following session: