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VICTORIA — In four decades of experience helping victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, Tracy Porteous has seen a familiar theme: Women so traumatized by their attacks that they suffer in silence at work until they lose their job.

And so Porteous had high praise for a B.C. government bill introduced Tuesday that would require employers to provide five paid days of leave from work for victims of violence.

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“I can’t tell you, in the years I’ve been doing this work, how many survivors I know of who didn’t want to report it to the police because of the chain reaction that would cause them needing to be off work, and then feeling they would lose their jobs, or some who have lost their jobs,” she said.



“I know a number of women who lost their jobs as a result of being victimized and not feeling like they could tell their employer because these things are deeply humiliating and traumatizing.”

Porteous, the executive director of the Ending Violence Association of B.C., said she’s tried to help one woman so traumatized by an assault she wasn’t able to explain to her boss why she was late for work three days in a row, or another woman who suffered nightly beatings and became a wreck at work because she wasn’t able to concentrate.