Fewer Danish women seeking help at crisis shelters

They are less shy to talk about being abused, says an expert

Fewer Danish women are seeking help at crisis centres for battered women, says Merete Ipsen, the head of the Women’s Museum in Aarhus.

“It is not because the violence against women has stopped, but because it is no longer something women are shy talking about,” Ipsen told DR.

READ MORE: Danish women often the victims of violence

Help still needed
These days, most women who seek support at the crisis shelters are of a non-Danish ethnic background.

We see more and more women from other cultures, where a man would rather beat a woman to death and end up in jail than accept she has left him,” Ingrid Funch Jørgensen, the head of a crisis centre for women on Bornholm, told DR.

“Although we still see bruises and broken arms, violence against native Danish women has changed from physical to mental abuse.”

According to Jørgensen, men harass women by monitoring their phones via GPS and abusing and humiliating them on Facebook and other social media.