All Too Familiar
The body of Liana White, the Edmonton woman who was four months pregnant when she disappeared, was found on Sunday. She went missing five days prior to the discovery. Her husband, Michael White, who had tearfully appeared on television to appeal for her return has now been charged with one count of second-degree murder and one count of committing an indignity to a dead body. Who knows what this human scum did to her to get that second charge, for now, police aren’t saying (forgive me for assuming his guilt throughout the rest of this piece, I know he is the “alleged” murderer and all, but I’m not going to be bound by journalistic convention for this one).
In an article entitled Dramatic story line all too familiar, the Globe and Mail decries the “modern story line that seems to play out again and again”:
A husband or wife turns to the media in an outpouring of anguish about a loved one who has disappeared — only to be accused later of killing that missing spouse.
It’s odd, but that’s not quite the story line I’m familiar with. The one I’m familiar with goes like this:
A husband turns to the media in an outpouring of anguish about his wife, who has disappeared — only to be accused later of killing her.
Let’s face it: we have a serious problem in our society. That problem is called woman abuse, abuse that all too frequently escalates into murder. We sidestep the issue by calling it “domestic violence”, a clever way of turning it into a problem with families. It’s not a problem with families, it’s a problem, by and large, with abusive men.
According to a recent survey by Statistics Canada, “seven per cent of women and six per cent of men end up abused by their current or former partners”. To all those men who cower in fear at the very sight of their domineering, violently abusive wives, allow me to apologize in advance for saying: bullshit. I’m reminded of a conversation I had with a man who works with abusive men. Two things stick out in my mind: he said that when he deals with these men, “it’s never their fault”, and he described one conversation where the guy said “well, she hit me first” to which he responded, “yeah, but you hit her back, and look at the size of you.”
Maybe you are a victim of abuse when your wife slaps you and you punch her in the face so hard you knock her unconscious. I do realize and recognize that there are some situations – there are always exceptions – where a man may be well and truly abused by his wife. But anecdotally, from what I’ve read and from all my conversations with social workers, I just don’t think that’s the big problem here.
As much as I cast doubt on the main conclusion of the Statistics Canada survey, the rest of it seems to bear that out, as the article I linked to affirms: “The data collected show the nature and consequences of spousal violence were more severe for women than for men.” It goes on to say:
Female victims of spousal violence were more than twice as likely to be injured as male victims.
Women were also three times more likely to fear for their life, and twice as likely to be the targets of more than 10 violent episodes.
And, overall, female victims were twice as likely as male victims to be stalked by a previous spouse. Eleven per cent of female victims and six per cent of male victims reported being stalked by a previous boyfriend or girlfriend.
The link between abuse and murder is clear: 58 percent of “spousal homicides”, as this report on the Canadian Department of Justice website calls them, “followed a history of reported domestic violence between victims and offenders”. This same report, which analyzes the murder rates between partners, says that:
Women were the victims in more than three-quarters of the 2,600 spousal homicides recorded in Canada between 1974 and 2000.
So men accounted for one-quarter of the victims during this period, which is hardly something I ought to dismiss. Except that “men were much more likely than women to initiate the violent incidents that resulted in men’s deaths”. In other words, it’s much more likely that the man dies as a result of something he started than the other way around.
All too familiar, indeed.
July 20th, 2005 at 11:02 am
Leaving an abusive partner is one of the most difficult things to do. There are so many barriers within the system that prevent women from being able to leave safely and stay safe once they have left.
Let me give you a concrete example in my own experience of a woman who has endured years of emotional, financial and physical abuse. Her partner calls her names, puts her down, and tells her she is worthless. Over the years, he has isolated her from friends and family. She has a good education but has been told that she cannot work because she has to stay at home and raise the children. Her partner does not allow her to have access to money but she is given an allowance for emergency purposes only. She has tried to talk to friends and family over the years but they tell her “why do you stay? you shouldn’t let him do that to you”, in a sense blaming her for what he has done to her and contributing to her self-blame. She has no self-esteem because he has taken that away and she begins to think that she deserved this life. She has dreams about leaving and getting a job but she is so broken emotionally that she can’t see outside of the fog that she is living.
On one Sunday evening, they begin to argue because she wants to call and talk to her mother. Just as she is about to pick up the phone, her partner grabs it and threatens to hurt her if she does not put it down. This is one of the several incidents that she has experienced over the years. She persists while her partner holds her down, yelling and screaming at her. Defending herself, she grabs the phone and hits him with it. His response to her is “I’ve got you now bitch” and he calls the police.
The police arrive and by this time she is so affraid that she can hardly breathe. Naturally, her partner fabricates a story about how she is crazy and that she attacked him. The police, two armed large men, interview her while her partner is in the room and she reluctantly tells them that she did hit him with the phone but tries to explain how it happen. The police are there for no longer then 30 minutes. During that time, they inform her that because of the “visible” marks on her partner’s shoulder they are going to have to charge her with assault with a weapon. On their way out, they also inform her that they are going to call the Children’s Aid Society and report “this incident”. She is offered no support. I can see a lot of things wrong with this picture.
July 20th, 2005 at 12:53 pm
For me, this topic naturally adds perspective to a couple of past topics from this blog. To mind, these are the issue of lax criminal sentencing in Canada and gun control/ownership.
Two facts: men get away with a good deal in our criminal system; and gun ownership is a big part of domestic violence (or a syndrome better described as domestic intimidation – since not all crimes are perpetrated on the body, some are crimes of the mind).
Justice for women is stunted in many regions of Canada due to these two factors. Particulalry in the north, or rural areas. Specifically, in many First Nation and Innu communities within Canada. Violence against women occuring in these two overlapping realms (the rural and Indigenous) is under-reported and often ignored. One almost gets the feeling that it is simply not ‘news’ anymore.
For every story newsrooms cover, there are likely a dozen more with similar circumstances. To put this further in perspective – its only news if she dies.
July 20th, 2005 at 3:22 pm
It’s interesting what you describe wemi. You probably describe the day to day events that Liana White went through before she was murdered. Why didn’t she leave? For all the reasons you describe, and more. Society has failed her and provided her with nothing but systemic and structural barriers – long waiting lists, a cousellor who can’t see her for 2 weeks, a lawyer who asks for a $3000.00 retainer, and a support system influenced by patriarchy to “stick it out for their unborn child”. It’s also a proven fact that violence gets worse when women become pregnant. To me, it’s obvious who murdered her in cold blood, and one can only imagine what the secondary charges involve. It’s deplorable.
What do we do with men like him? What is the solution? Can we ‘fix’ men like him? I really don’t think so. So, he’s put in jail and we pay for him to live off the system for life. I come to work every day to work with women in violent interpersonal relationships….I then pay taxes that support a man in jail who murdered a woman who could have been my client. It does not add up in my mind. Eye for an eye maybe?