Reports of violent and emotional abuse among Canadian teen dating partners have risen over the past eight years although such instances remain underreported, according to new data from Statistics Canada.
“Teen dating violence is a pressing problem in Canada but national data on its scope and associated characteristics are scarce. It is commonly defined as physical, sexual or psychological violence, including stalking, experienced in dating or sexual relationships during adolescent periods,” the report states while asserting "dating violence often goes unreported to police."
Police-reported data show that from 2009 to 2022, there were 239 victims of criminal dating violence per 100,000 people aged 15 to 17; and while those rates declined by 22 per cent between 2009 and 2014, they rose 33 per cent from 2015 to 2022.
In total, between 2009 and 2022, there were 41,057 persons aged 15 to 17 years who were a victim of police-reported teen dating violence in Canada.
And, “as is the case more generally with all forms of sexual violence,” it is girls bearing the brunt of the violence, with 500 victims per 100,000 girls, as compared to 57 boys per 100,000, the report noted. The total average nationwide is 279 per 100,000.
Violence was twice as high in rural communities and Saskatchewan (627), Manitoba (574) and New Brunswick (424) were the leading provinces.
British Columbia’s reported incident rate was 271. The rate in Vancouver was 192 but in Victoria it reached 259.
And since 2018, the proportion of police-reported teen dating violence that occurred online, such as non-consensual distribution of intimate images, increased by 11 per cent, from 5.6 per cent in 2018 to 6.2 per cent in 2022.
But in 2022, just over six in 10 teen victims of dating violence had physical force used against them and about one in 10 were involved in incidents where a weapon was present, the report added.
Seven in 10 incidents occurred on private property whereas one in 10 occurred at school.
