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Family Violence Initiative

About Family Violence in Canada

"Family violence" includes many different forms of abuse that adults or children may experience in their intimate, kinship or dependent relationships. Family violence also includes being mistreated or being neglected by these members.

As we gain more understanding about the kinds and amount of violence in close relationships and in dealings with other family members, the definition of family violence will continue to change.

Some common types of family violence are:

physical abuse
sexual abuse and exploitation (being used for a sexual purpose)
neglect
psychological and mental abuse
financial abuse

Family violence can have serious—and sometimes fatal—consequences for victims and for those that see or hear the violence.

Although the Criminal Code does not refer to specific "family violence offences," many Criminal Code offences could be used to charge someone with acts of family violence. These offences could be assault, sexual assault, criminal harassment (often called "stalking"), making threats against someone and murder. The Criminal Code also provides measures to prevent family violence, such as protection orders and certain procedures for protecting victims of family violence. For more information on the law that could be applied, please see Laws.

How Widespread is Family Violence in Canada?

We do not yet know just how much family violence there is in Canada. This is because if the victim does not report it to anyone, it stays hidden. The Government of Canada is working to increase our knowledge about family violence by doing research, studies and surveys. Some good national information has come from these sources, including:

the 1999 and 2004 General Social Surveys 1
the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect - 2003 (CIS - 2003)
police-reported data (such as the Incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR2) Survey and the Homicide Survey)
recent Juristat (published by the Centre for Justice Statistics) articles on spousal and family violence show that family violence is a common and widespread problem in Canada

Some Family Violence Statistics in Canada

The above sources give us some idea about the extent of family violence in Canada :

About 653,000 women and 546,000 men suffer from family violence: Based on responses from around 24,000 people, about 7 percent of adults in Canada (that is, about equal to 653,000 women and 546,000 men) experienced some form of violence in their marriage or common-law relationship in the five years prior to the 2004 General Social Survey (GSS). The overall violence rates for spouses have remained about the same since the 1999 GSS.
Children are often the unintended victims: Family violence harms others besides the primary victim. Children living in close to half a million households in Canada saw or heard one parent being assaulted by the other in the five-year period covered by the 1999 General Social Survey.2
Almost half of child maltreatment investigations were found to be valid: About 235,315 investigations for child maltreatment were done in Canada in 2003. This adds up to a rate of almost 38 investigations per 1000 children between the ages of 0 and 15. Almost half (49 percent) of the investigations were found to be valid. Six percent of these investigations involved alleged sexual abuse. Of these, 24 percent were found to be valid (Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect - 2003)
Over 60% of all sexual assault victims are children and youth: Police-reported data for 2003 show that 61% of all sexual assault victims are children and youth under the age of 18. This fact is startling, because this group makes up only 21 percent of the population. Family members committed nearly one third (32 percent) of sexual assaults against children and youth. (Incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting Survey)
Seniors are at risk, too: One percent of seniors were physically assaulted by a spouse, adult child or caregiver. Another 7 percent experienced some form of emotional or financial abuse. Most of these abuses were done by a spouse.3
Many murders are family related: There were 4,490 murders that were solved between 1994 and 2003. Of these, 1,695 (38 percent) were family-related. Almost one half (47 percent) were murders by a spouse. One quarter (25 percent) were murders of children and youth under 18 years of age.

Many experts suggest that the amount of family violence may be much higher than these figures show. This is because surveys, studies and police reports do not capture all cases of violence and abuse. For example, research has shown that many abuse victims do not - or cannot - report their abuse to the police. (For information on getting help, see For Victims of Family Violence) Most victims who do report spousal violence to the police had suffered more than one violent incident before reporting the latest abuse.

For more detailed statistics, see Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile 2005 (and previous years).

For more information on family violence, please see Justice Canada's Fact Sheets:

1 The spousal violence questions in the 1999 and the 2004 General Social Survey built on the earlier work of the groundbreaking 1993 Violence Against Women Survey (VAWS) conducted by Statistics Canada.

2 In the five years covered by the 1999 GSS. Data from the 1999 General Social Survey, as reported in: Mia Dauvergne and Holly Johnson, "Children Witnessing Family Violence," Juristat, 21, 6 ( Ottawa : Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada, Cat. No. 85-002-XPE, 2001).

3 In the five years prior to the 1999 GSS.


		Last Updated: 2006-07-06		Important Notices