SOAR is a support and advocacy service offered by NGO St. Jeanne Antide Foundation. Its user-led support group welcomes women who have survived violence in their intimate relationships. SOAR also works tirelessly to raise awareness on the experiences of survivors and the realities of dating and domestic violence, giving presentations in schools and various youth and adult groups. The group also endeavours to highlight policies, procedures and practices that are oppressive to victims, survivors and their children and survivors work together to recommend changes, or enhancements to these systems.

In view of the fact that domestic violence is a breach of fundamental human rights, we, as survivors of domestic violence, feel that not enough is being done by the state to ensure the safety of victims and their children. We know all too well how the system has failed to keep us safe, over and over again. Many of us who have survived it, have lost faith in the justice system after going through lengthy and costly processes which lead to nothing more than a slap on the wrist for the perpetrator. Our abusers continue to stalk us, threaten and assault us with impunity.  They have us looking over our shoulders all the time, seeking therapeutic psychological remedy, prisoners even in our sleep, of the terror our abusers are allowed to threaten us with, while they live freely and flout protection orders without immediate consequence. The inability of front-liners to properly assess the risk of the situations victims find themselves in, the inefficiency of the courts and the refusal to mete out jail-term sentences to prevent repeat offending, have a direct effect on the safety of a victim. We can no longer accept that victims are paying with their lives for this inefficiency and therefore we respectfully call on the government to implement the needed reforms in the Justice system, to implement policies and tools to provide for better risk assessment by front-liners like the police, efficient access to justice with consistent sentences that reflect the true gravity of the individual cases.