Rporting domestic violence at home as a racialized child is damn hard. Compounded by the stress of being an uprooted immigrant or refugee where the trust factor in society & authority is super low and working against you when you’re so far from relatives and community support.

The isolation factor is immense and sheds an absolute pitch black darkness on cognitive function and judgement when the racialized child is witnessing physical battery and mental abuse against one parent at the hands of another who they rely on for their daily survival.

This is gonna be a hard thread to complete and carry on with but I’m gonna try my best to add more thoughts as they appear in my mind throughout the day....

...gonna pause it here for now.

Here are factors which may impede an immigrant/refugee child to report domestic violence at home:

1) how will it affect the citizenship status of my family if I tell someone?
2) i am the 1st born child. The guilt weighs heavily on me way more than it does my siblings.

3) I have grown up fast. I am living as an adult eventhough I’m a young child. It is my duty to keep this family together as much as it is my parents.
4) What hurts my parents hurts me. This is how I can understand and judge what is right and wrong.

5) my self worth is directly tied to the self worth of my parents.
6) I feel pitty for my parents because they started from nothing and I am thankful for everything they provided.
7) The right thing to do is tied to making sure we don’t fall apart after coming this far.

8) my trust factor in white anglo authority figures is muddled with the emotional reaction of seeing my parents being treated like absolute garbage by their white anglo employers & living those emotional moments with them which is in lock step with my early childhood development.

9) when my abusive parent is at home I feel paralyzing hate, anger, fear which I internalize because I don’t trust anyone with my truths because I don’t want them to go to jail. When they leave home or go back to their home country I miss them and am happy when they come back.

10) when I go back to my home country I see how life could be different if my parents stayed and didn’t immigrate to Canada. We are doing well considering the contrast. This place is also a reference point for how far we have come as a family and how successful we have become.

11) Why is my concept of family stability different & always compared to the concept of stability of Canadian families?

How are these realities reconciled? What safeguard/lens is in place that would allow domestic violence reporting to be centred & rooted in cultural identity?

Adding another layer to this thread. Please dive into this article that masterfully details the trauma experiences of refugees who identify as 2SLGBTQ+ https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/coronavirus-exacerbates-lgbtqi-refugees-isolation-trauma-200421112957417.html