At the height of New York’s coronavirus lockdown, domestic violence in the five boroughs skyrocketed, data show.
When the pandemic first laid siege, experts predicted that mandatory lockdowns and soaring unemployment would cause a rise in household abuse, and figures now bear them out — with domestic-violence reports at some agencies doubling and even tripling in the past few months.
“We’ve never been busier,” lamented Nechama Bakst, senior director of the Met Council’s family-violence program.
“We have seen people who never experienced violence starting to experience violence, and people who have experienced violence experience worse violence.”
Typically, the non-profit gets about 70 new cases a month — but in April, they juggled 135, another 145 in May and 146 more in June, the organization said.
“We see more choking, more sexual violence, kind of much more intense and serious acts of crime,” the director said.
At Sanctuary for Families, which also works with survivors, there was a similar increase in calls to its helpline. – READ MORE
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