On December 6, remembrance is not enough

Working for change is even more important than mourning the victims.

by Jody Dallaire

Many of us will pause to reflect on December 6, or attend commemorations for the 14 women women killed in the 1989 Montreal Massacre.  And we’ll observe  the National Day of Action Against Violence Against Women by remembering the women’s  names and perhaps the list of the dozens and dozens of New Brunswick women killed by a partner since that date.  I count 10 femicides in New Brunswick since 2010, almost a record for this province.

That’s why I am not sure these commemorative events, or the actions we take on the issue throughout the year, are effective at creating real change. When we bow our heads in remembrance, we might do better reflecting on the following list of wasted opportunities.

In 2007, Moncton became the site for a three-year pilot project testing a “specialized domestic violence court”, after which, if successful, it would be expanded to other sites.  The specialized court has staff, including a judge, who were specially trained in the dynamics of domestic violence. It was an attempt to improve the justice system’s response to these crimes, to better protecting victim safety and making offenders accountable.  

Four years later, the results were in and the pilot project was pronounced a success. It more properly identified cases of domestic violence which allowed tracking, and it dealt with them better and more swiftly than what goes on in other criminal courts around the province.  The government deciding to make the the Moncton court permanent  — but not to extend it to other regions. Great for Moncton, but…

Canada had a gun registry and other measures to curb gun violence which had taken decades and millions of dollars to build.  It worked. Canadian victims and families of victims had lobbied for it. Police credited it with saving lives, including police officers’ lives.  But that was too much to ask of gun owners, to register their guns, like they register their cars and their dogs. So, acting from ideology and disregarding the evidence about the role guns play in family violence, the federal government abolished it and in an act of mean public vandalism, even destroyed the records.

The New Brunswick government never said a peep. Nor the dozens of homicide victims in the province. What a waste.

About a decade ago, when the provincial government adopted a plan to address violence against women, it said it would conduct a public awareness campaign on “problem” attitudes among New Brunswickers which contribute to the problem. It would conduct a survey of New Brunswickers’ attitudes, do the campaign, then repeat that survey after the awareness campaign, to measure its impact. 

Conducted in 2002, the survey showed — among other horrific attitudes  — that 31 percent of men and 20 percent of women said they agreed with the statement that violence against women often happens because the woman is provoking it by criticizing her partner.  Also 59 percent said it is not a crime to slap your wife after an argument, and 35 percent said it is not a crime to rape your wife. I guess that “explains” our violence statistics.  Worse, after the survey, there was no campaign to challenge such attitudes.

Yet the government did run another survey in 2009   — to do what?  measure whether doing nothing was the answer? In fact, the 2009 survey showed that some attitudes had worsened: now, 34 percent of men and 23 percent of women agreed that the female victim provokes the violence. Some odious attitudes did decrease on the topics of a man slapping or raping  his wife. Is anyone else outraged that we did not react when it was shown that more and more New Brunswickers blame battered women for provoking the crime?
 
When the New Brunswick government finally appointed a domestic violence death review committee in 2009, many were relieved that we would finally see something done to prevent some deaths in the future. Three years after its creation, a “first step” report was released recently which concludes that information is not systematically gathered on cases – so now we know squat – which everyone knew already.

The only thing that has changed since the creation of committee is the number of dead. Since 2009, there are now about a dozen more victims, 19 if you count those killers who also killed themselves after killing their partner.  The report even spoke of domestic violence “victims” and “perpetrators” as if this was not an issue where sex and gender was important.

In reality, the incredible number of assaulted and murdered women in the last few years in the province has  not provoked outrage — sometimes not even among those delivering victim services. Often when media ask someone who works with victims of violence to react to statistics or to yet another case of violence, they say something like, “It’s because we do such a good job convincing victims to come forward”.

There’s no evidence that higher reporting rates explain the higher assault rates.  The rates were high before we established what few after-the-fact services there are. To see these interveners say they “prefer to think” that the rates are good news, wasting an opportunity to raise the alarm, is bewildering.
 

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