Dalhousie researcher looks at how intimate partner violence affects older women

With an aging population across Canada, and especially in Nova Scotia, a professor in the school of nursing at Dalhousie University is focusing on older women who experience intimate partner violence.

Lori Weeks says abuse doesn't end at any particular age and it may be even more difficult for older women to leave violent partners, compared to younger women, if they want to stay in their community or don't have enough money to start over. 

Weeks is involved in a project that will study ways of intervening with older women across the Maritimes.

She spoke with Mainstreet Nova Scotia guest host Preston Mulligan on Tuesday about the study. Their conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity and length. 

Does anyone know how common intimate partner violence is among older people compared to younger people? Or is it so underreported that no one could ever know?

The statistics are very difficult. When we talk about any issues of abuse, a lot of times people don't report abuse that's occurring … and even sometimes people don't always report accurately. 

However, we don't really have any evidence to show that abuse is more common among younger people.

[If] it does happen among women in mid-life and older … it's really important to make sure that there are appropriate supports to meet their needs.

You mentioned a moment ago that it's misreported or not fully reported, or not reported at all. Why is that?

I think when we talk specifically about a population in mid-life and older, for a lot of older people, they grew up in a different time. There weren't as many supports available. There might have been more stigma for them to report things to authorities, for example, or to seek help and support. 

So it might even be more hidden for women in mid-life and older because of those kinds of historical and cohort effects that they're dealing with.

How might the needs of older women, victims of violence or victims of abuse, be different if they were in that situation?

Some women who are older, they've lived in their homes and their communities for a long period of time and have a lot of attachment to the place, to the land and to their social support network around them. Often a response when someone experiences abuse and wants help, is to remove them from their home and to move them into a safe environment.

So some older women told us, 'I just want the abuse to stop. I don't want to leave. I don't want to leave my home that I've lived in for a long time. I don't want to leave my animals. I don't want to leave my community.'

So, that could be quite a different situation for older people versus younger people who don't necessarily have that long history in a certain particular place. 

We do certainly have a wonderful system of support for women experiencing intimate partner violence in the form of counselling and support and shelters and we want to make sure that those are really geared to meeting the needs of women in mid-life and older.

We want to make sure that those places are accessible to meet the physical needs that older women might have that could potentially be different from younger people. So we want to think about the design and the layout and accessibility of the spaces.

Older women sometimes say they could be very loud, and noisy, with too many lights, and things like that 

We talked on our program not too long ago about recommendations for a national strategy on intimate partner violence, and one of the ideas that came up is making it possible to remove the abuser. Is it so difficult based on legal issues that it's hard to do? Does it mean that the victim is necessarily safer if you take the abuser out of the house?

The safety component is absolutely key. In a relationship where there are abuse dynamics happening … the violence can escalate over time. 

So taking the abuser out and having the person experiencing abuse staying, the problematic piece is that the abuser will still know where the person is.

In a lot of cases, people want to leave to go to a safe place where the abuser doesn't know where they are.

There have been some stories in the media lately about monitoring, which is using technology to monitor people who are abusers so that a person who's experiencing abuse would be notified if that person came close to them. I think that's a really compelling idea.

That's something that could possibly support what you're saying where the abuser user leaves, but the person who's being abused stays, that there's a way to keep that person safe, and those kinds of technologies could be useful for that.

Some of your work involves trying out virtual intervention, and you would think that perpetrators of violence would be subject to some kind of intervention, that it ought to be required. What's a useful intervention for a person who is being abused or at risk of being abused?

One of the key components of this research that we've received funding for is that we will be providing the interventions virtually. I think some of this thinking has evolved since COVID began and finding ways that we can deliver interventions that are safe and effective and useful but don't necessarily require people to leave and go to a separate location to be able to do it from a place where they're comfortable and safe and at a time that's convenient for them.

It's entirely delivered either by phone or video call, whichever is more convenient for the person experiencing abuse and whatever time is helpful for them. So those things can really help with some safety components as well.

What got you into this field and helped you realize that this kind of research was needed?

Initially, it was from working with older women in a long-term care setting where they would tell stories. At that point they were widowed, but [told] stories of abuse that they experience like in their entire married life.

I just found it extremely compelling and heartbreaking to hear these stories of one woman in particular who might not have even identified it as an abusive relationship, but just the way she was talking about it. I realized this woman lived in an abusive relationship for decades ... and it only ended when she became widowed. 

 When I first started teaching at university …  I taught quite a bit of content on family violence. And it became clear to me that we're not looking at the needs of older people here, it seemed to be really focused on the needs of younger women.

So I started digging into the literature and there was a very small number of research studies at that time that really looked at the needs of women in mid-life and older. There was not a lot of evidence at all but certainly enough to show that this still continues all throughout life, but it seems like we're primarily focused on the needs of younger women.

Some of the research online on this topic talks about an intersection of sexism and ageism, and I suppose also economic vulnerability because women tend to make less money than men, so they may not be as well set up in retirement.

That's a really good point, all of those factors merge and intersect and create a situation where a woman who is older might be vulnerable. We really hypothesized that there are even more barriers for older women leaving an abusive partner than a younger woman and some of those could be around finances and, certainly in situations of abused women of all ages, might not have access to family resources. But for older women … because of their age and their physical or cognitive health, they might not be able to participate in the workforce and earn income at that point. So there could be even more barriers [to] ending an abusive relationship.