Glen Korstrom
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jun 15/98) - Though NWT police respond to more than two violent spousal assaults every day, the frequency is on the decline.

In 1997, 687 men and 73 women were charged with sexual assault. And though 760 total assaults may sound high, it is the lowest number in recent history.

In 1994 there were 907 total reported assaults, with the number falling each year since then -- to 813 in 1995 and 796 in 1996.

Despite fewer assaults than previous years, domestic violence still scars too many Northerners, breaking up families and causing an inability to trust others.

For example, Trish Hughes-Wieczorek knows from personal experience what domestic abuse can do.

She is now the executive director of the Baffin Region Aqvvik Society, which runs the Qimaavik women's shelter in Iqaluit.

Hughes-Wieczorek says the desire for control and power forms the root of dysfunctional, or unhealthy relationships.

"Sometimes extremely violent abusers, usually men, will also threaten the children as a way to get at the mother," she says to explain the complex dynamic of physical and emotional abuse.

"Threats can take all sorts of forms, whether it's murder or to take children away from her, proving that she is an unfit mother because she drinks too much, or something like that."

Abusers today are often themselves the product of abusive childhoods, made to feel powerless, spurring a pathological desire to never feel powerless again.

Much as the way people who come from poor beginnings strive for money, and those who never travelled as a child aim to see the world, those who felt the depths of powerlessness can be subtly bred to crave power.

"Sometimes when you come from a battered situation it's not always possible to think things out clearly," Hughes-Wieczorek says. "Some of these issues go way, way back."

At the other end of the territories, Darlene Gruben co-ordinates the Tuktoyaktuk Crisis Centre, a place where workers offer a first step for local women to get out of abusive situations.

When victims are admitted at the centre, Gruben asks them if they want to leave the community or if they are determined to be out of the destructive relationship.

Gruben then contacts the NWT Department of Social Services to find room at a transition house in Inuvik.

"There's usually a two- to three-day waiting period for that," she says. "There are just a few who leave the community and they usually do come back."

When the victims return to their community, the change of environment of a stint in a transition house is enough to help them understand how destructive the abusive relationship was, Gruben says.

In the Keewatin region there is one women's shelter, the Kataujaq Society safe shelter in Rankin Inlet.

Executive director Evelyn Thordarson says women often do not know it exists because they it is not out there with proverbial neon lights.

"It's not just for when have a black eye," Thordarson says. "It's also for women who are in situations where they could be abused."