The global pandemic did not create gendered violence, but it can create increased risks for survivors including isolation, lack of communications, and difficulty reaching out to friends and supports.

If you or someone you know is at risk of violence, connect with DWS to get a free cell phone with service.

Who

Cell phones are available for women (both cis and transwomen) who are experiencing or at risk of violence, experiencing housing insecurity, or are unsafe because of other ways they may be marginalized.

Gendered violence is often misunderstood as just hitting and punching (physical abuse) but can include:

• Emotional abuse

  • put downs, name calling or insults

  • constantly yelling at someone

  • keeping someone from seeing friends or family

  • controlling what someone wears, where someone goes, who someone can see

  • preventing someone from going out, taking classes or working if the person wants to

  • threatening to have a person deported if the person doesn't behave in a certain way

  • making threats to harm another person

  • destroying a person's belongings, hurting a person's pets or threatening to do so,

  • intimidating or humiliating someone

  • Some forms of emotional abuse are crimes: stalking, threats to harm someone, harassing someone on the phone, intimidating someone on purpose or counselling (advising) someone to commit suicide. Many other forms of emotional abuse are not crimes, but they often have long-term negative effects and sometimes lead to criminal acts later on.

• Sexual abuse

  • All sexual contact with anyone without consent is a crime called sexual assault. Sexual assault includes sexual touching or forcing sexual activity. It can include:

• sexual touching or sexual activity without consent

• continued sexual contact when asked to stop, or

• forcing someone to commit unsafe or humiliating sexual acts.

• Criminal harassment, also known as stalking, is a crime. It involves repeated conduct that makes someone fear for their safety or the safety of someone they care about. It can include:

  • watching or following someone

  • making threats that cause someone to fear for their safety

  • making threats to someone's children, family, pets or friends that cause fear, or

  • repeatedly contacting someone or sending gifts after being asked to stop.

• Financial abuse happens when someone uses money or property to control or exploit another person. It can involve:

  • taking someone's money or property without permission

  • withholding someone's money so the person cannot pay for things

  • making someone sign documents to sell things that the person doesn't want to sell

  • forcing someone to change her/his will, or

  • not letting someone have access to family money to meet the person's or the person's children's basic needs.

  Most forms of financial abuse are crimes, including theft and fraud. Financial abuse can also include situations where one person intends to financially exploit another, as in cases of dowry fraud.

• Spiritual abuse

  • making fun of someone's faith or religion

  • not letting a person practice their faith or religion

  • distorting religious texts to control someone

• Technology-assisted violence against women and girls is violence that is committed, facilitated, and aggravated through the use of contemporary technologies. It includes, but is not limited to, harassment, cyberstalking, luring, trafficking, non-consensual distribution of intimate images, non-consensual pornography via software applications (i.e. using an AI enabled program to change the face of a person in a pornographic video recording), doxing (i.e. searching for and publishing private or identifying information about an individual on the internet with malicious intent), and mobbing (i.e. targeted campaign against an individual by a concerted group of perpetrators)

— From the Status of Women Canada website

What is Involved

Thanks to Yukon Status of Women Council in partnership with Northwestel and the Yukon Government, these cellphones are completely free and include a cell phone plan with unlimited calling and 3GB of data. The free plan lasts until July 31, but women are welcome to keep the phone and choose their own plan for August and onwards.

Women can call (867.993.5086) or email (shelterevents@northwestel.net) to get a cellphone.

May is Sexual Violence Prevention Month

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