Ottawa to give $1.6M to help N.B. crime victims
The federal government is providing $1.6 million in funding to help victims of crime in New Brunswick.
The funding, announced Friday, will help develop programs that help under-served victims of crime in the province.
New Brunswick's Justice Minister and Attorney General said the federal funding will allow the province to set up programs that help those most affected by crime.
Marie-Claude Blais said that means getting to the heart of the problem.
"We don't talk a lot about the fact that a lot of people that are in front of the courts have been victims themselves, so to help them, to help parents whose children have been victims, [it's] to help adults that are in prison right now who themselves have been victimized," Blais said.
The federal funding will be used to set up a program for aboriginal victims, develop support groups for adult male survivors of childhood sexual abuse and establish support groups for parents of sexually abused children.
Some of those services will include:
Establishing culturally-appropriate services for Aboriginal victims in four different regions.
Developing English and French support groups for adult male survivors of childhood sexual abuse who have come to the attention of the criminal justice system as adults.
Establishing support groups for non-offending parents of children who have been sexually abused, to help parents cope and help their children heal.
It's part of the on-going commitment we've had to integrate victims of crime, give them a voice in society, it's not only about the accused obviously they're the people who bear the life sentence for what's been done to them," said Robert Goguen, MP for Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe.
Some of the funding will be used to upgrade technology and improve public information for victims of crime.
The money will be paid out over the next four years.
