Tame report domesticates male violence against women

NB special committee ponders, produces neutered text.

by Jody Dallaire

After three years of study, a multidisciplinary provincial committee struck to review policies on domestic violence deaths has released a “first step” report.  Having looked into the files of all “domestic homicides” between 1999 and 2008 — files from police, courts, coroners, social and health care workers — the committee came up with a rousing recommendation to standardize all information gathering from now on.  

About a third of New Brunswick homicides are related to male violence against their female partner, though not just women die. Their children and relatives are often also victims of this scourge, as have been police officers — not to mention that the perpetrator also often kills himself.

So the New Brunswick government struck a committee in 2009, looking for ways to prevent some deaths in the future. Such committees typically bring together police, social workers, coroners and others to examine recent deaths in order to possibly prevent future such deaths.

To their apparent surprise, the experts’ report concludes that it is not possible to have a broad view of domestic homicide in the province because the information on cases is not systematically gathered.  Some of us thought that was the very reason to have a committee.

The report suggests that the committee is at square one — after three years? The report also says that the committee is now in a “perfect position” to do its work. To start that work, the committee recommends that, in future deaths, a common coding form is used to gather information, to make possible the review of cases.

Seriously. That pretty much covers four of the report’s five recommendations.

The report’s other recommendation calls for better control of firearms in known domestic violence situations, noting that 38 percent of homicide victims died from being shot.  I can agree with that recommendation, as would most people.  New Brunswick police were quick to say, after the report’s release, that they currently can remove firearms if they judge it wise.

Not so clear, however, is how the report came to the recommendation, given the lack of adequate information in case files. No information is given about the number of cases, if any, where law enforcement had prior knowledge that there was both violence and firearms in the home.

Incredibly, the report does not give information according to sex.  If there is one topic where gender-based analysis is warranted, this is it.

For cases where information is available, the report gives various details, such as the age and employment status of “victim” and “perpetrator”, whether the victim had children and the method of killing – but the report gives neither the victims’ nor the perpetrators’ sex.  The report says only that the majority of victims of domestic homicides are females.  Why no actual data? I am sure the sex of the victim and the perpetrator was indicated in all case files. Why would we hide that?  

The great majority of these cases are male violence against women. The dynamics of male and female status and relationships are relevant.  If we can’t say that, if we are trying to gloss over that and call it “domestic homicides”, then are we really “studying the issue”, or “domesticating” it? Attempts to even out the real imbalance with neutral terms can be real impediments to finding solutions.

Another important but often overlooked factor is that in some the cases where the victims were males, they were the son, father or new boyfriend of a woman, the intended victim.  In New Brunswick, male police officers have been killed while responding to a case of “domestic violence”. These are all victims of male-on-female violence.
 
The New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women, before it was abolished last year, had championed the idea of a domestic violence death review committee, often speaking of benefits they quickly brought to provinces and states that created them.  The Advisory Council would not be impressed with what the New Brunswick version has done so far.

We don’t have the Advisory Council anymore to maintain that list and remind us of the urgency of action.  We do know from newspaper headlines that there has been an unusually high number of homicides of women and especially of “domestic” murder-suicides in the province since 2010.

NB’s  Council would regularly publish the list of the known victims of male violence against women. From its list for 1999 to 2008, which includes the perpetrators who later committed suicide, here are the names of the cases that the committee wants to codify.

In the names of John, Paula, Karen, Simonne, Andrée, Monique, Denise, Dale, Alice, Maria, Gail, Valerie, Shaila, Joséphine, Andrew, Lukas, Karen, Elery, Diane, Nicholas, Theresa, Catherine, Heather, Nicholas, Dale, Jimmy, Nicholas, Paul, Robert, Dany, Georges, Hubert, Robert —

In their names, I ask, so when will there be action?
 

© Copyright 2012 Jody Dallaire, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca