Homeless women are afraid to go to mixed shelters for fear of experiencing sexual violence there. As the phenomenon is poorly documented, it is difficult to know whether such events occur on a regular basis or whether they are isolated events. But for many women, the fear is real. And this regularly comes to the ears of those responsible for shelters in Quebec reserved for women.
“I’m afraid now when I go to mixed accommodation,” says Mona, who prefers to keep her true identity secret to avoid reprisals from her assailant. The 57-year-old woman has been on the street several times for thirty years. She carries what she calls “a big past”, which prevents her from working. “It’s the mind,” she explains. Flashes of my life. I’m broken, as they say,” she says, bursting into tears.
Over the years, Mona has visited many homeless shelters. She has long found a certain comfort in this community. But in recent years, she has experienced events there that have greatly shaken her.
About two years ago, in a large mixed shelter in Montreal, a man allegedly entered her cubicle while she was sleeping. “He was sitting, leaning over my bed, and he was trying to grope me,” she said in an interview with Duty.
Security quickly intervened: the man was reportedly kicked out of the shelter, and a staff member escorted Mona to a women’s shelter, where she felt safer.
A few months earlier, in another mixed shelter in the region, a very intoxicated and visibly lost man showed up in his room completely naked. “I let out quite a scream,” she confides. The counselor came to tell him to get dressed and asked him to go back to his room. »
Joanna, for her part, relates with exasperation how a man allegedly entered the shower locker room during the period reserved for women. “We experienced this not long ago,” she explains on the way to the mixed shelter in Montreal where she is staying with a friend while waiting to find accommodation. I finished my shower before her and I saw a boy “spotting” the shower. I said [à mon amie] : “Don’t go out, there’s a guy who’s spotting.” I asked the guy, “What are you doing?” He replied that he hadn’t seen anything and asked me not to tell the speakers. »
The duty was unable to precisely corroborate these events. But these are the kinds of stories that circulate in the community and which are regularly relayed to workers in women’s shelters, they confirm.
Regular echoes
“Women talk to us about it regularly,” says Suzanne Bourret, clinical director at La rue des femmes, in Montreal. There is physical violence against them, sexual violence. They tell us, for example, that they are sleeping and that a man is trying to get into their bed. Or they might go out to smoke a cigarette, and the guy physically abuses them outside, where there is less security. We also heard that they were taking a shower and a man entered the shower. So, women no longer want to go there. »
We have heard stories of women who take turns sleeping and caring to avoid being attacked.
Same story at the Center for Women of Conviction in Montreal. “These are very recurring things that we hear about from residents. They say they don’t feel safe [dans les refuges mixtes] », explains the co-founder of the organization, Molière Thémistocle. Some have to deal with unwanted solicitation or will be “undressed” by men “who have misplaced ideas”, which makes them “really uncomfortable”, he specifies.
At Maison Rivage de la Baie, which welcomes women in Saguenay, the director, Carole Tremblay, was struck by the strategies implemented by women when they have no other options than to go to the mixed shelters. “We have heard stories of women who take turns with hours of sleep and hours of care to avoid being attacked. »
Women who find themselves homeless generally have a heavy past, with countless forms of violence experienced in different areas of their lives since childhood. The mere presence of men can rekindle heavy trauma and defense mechanisms, such as hypervigilance.
Some will therefore develop the reflex of avoiding resources where they are forced to be around men. They also fear, sometimes, of running into a man who has attacked them in the street.
Mélanie Walsh, general manager of Auberge Madeleine, illustrates the situation well. During renovation work a few years ago, the Montreal organization developed a partnership with a mixed resource in the neighborhood to allow women to have lunch there. But quickly, she noticed that women did not go there, because “they did not feel safe” due to the physical presence of men. “And we’re just talking about a meal,” says Mme Walsh.
Survival
The phenomenon is difficult to document: women do not always verbalize these attacks and do not generally file complaints, because they fear being stigmatized or victims of reprisals.
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But there is something else: when you are concerned about your survival, the idea of reporting an attack is generally not on the list of priorities, explain several speakers met by The duty. “Being homeless is a full-time job,” summarizes Stéphanie Lampron, general director of the YWCA of Quebec. They spend their day wondering: “Where am I going to sleep? Will I be able to eat? Will I ever get my children back?” There are so many cases that take up all the space that after that, they don’t have the energy to follow up on an attack. All they’ll do is avoid those places. »
Others, for whom homelessness has become a long-term way of life, will develop such an insensitivity that they will come to think that it is normal. “It’s not something that women verbalize regularly, but it’s not that it doesn’t exist, it’s more that they won’t necessarily talk to us about it right away […] It’s more through certain conversations that we’re going to hear it, or by exploring their recent experiences a little with them that it’s going to come out,” explains Elyzabeth Garant, clinical coordinator at the Patricia Mackenzie Pavilion at the Old Brewery Mission, in Montreal. .
It was thus, “through the gang”, that Olivier Martin discovered that an incident had occurred in the La Cheminée nuit heat stop in Quebec. One woman, who went to bed heavily intoxicated, said she woke up the next morning with her pants down. “She couldn’t say what had happened, but clearly, she didn’t feel like she had lowered her pants,” summarizes the director of family and community support programs at YMCA Saint-Roch.
“My team was surprised to learn that, because we are super on the lookout,” he explains. But when you have 50 or 60 people lying next to each other, it’s not always easy to be on the lookout for behavior that is not always blatant. A hand under a cover is not easy to see when it is dark, there are a lot of people and there is movement. »
Olivier Martin’s team encouraged the woman to file a complaint, and the police opened an investigation, he said. The heat stop, which was intended to be an emergency measure for the winter, closed its doors in the spring.