About 25 years ago while covering provincial court for a Calgary newspaper on a decidedly unsettling Monday morning, Judge Hubert Oliver had decided enough was enough.
Oliver, then the assistant chief judge of Alberta, decided to take a serious matter in his own hands.
His docket was full of men charged with assaulting women. Not just any women but spouses.
During a succession of bail hearings, defence lawyers pronounced each accused as otherwise good men. Oliver wouldn't have any of that. Every accused faced the hammer. All were denied bail.
“I don't like wife beaters. This is just getting to be too much. They all can spend some time back there in cells. Let them try their luck down the street at Court of Queen's Bench,” said Oliver.
Sadly, a quarter century later not a whole lot has changed. In 2011, Statistics Canada released a report that said Alberta and Saskatchewan had the highest rates of spousal abuse in the country. From July 26 to Aug. 1, Innisfail RCMP responded to seven serious cases of domestic assault in this community. Yes, one a day.
Last year, a survey conducted by Leger Marketing of more than 1,000 Alberta men, revealed that nearly one in 10 believe it's justified to physically assault a woman if she does something to make him angry. The survey, which was examining men's attitudes towards domestic violence, also revealed that 52 per cent of men said they believe a woman can leave a violent relationship if she really wants to.
But there was room for hope. The survey also showed that 56 per cent of men said they're more aware of domestic violence issues than they were five years ago, while 91 per cent say they would intervene if they knew someone in a violent relationship.
However, the physical violence against women in a domestic relationship is just one sordid component of the issue.
As Innisfail Cpl. Jeff Hildebrandt points out in the Province's story in this week's newspaper, innocent children are too often caught in the middle of these tragedies. Many times they are witness of one spouse, who more often than not is under the influence of alcohol, beating another. Children hear and are witness to the escalating fury around them. They hear the screaming. They see the blows from one parent to another. They are terror stricken and helpless to intervene. By the time police arrive, many are found hiding in closets, confused, shaking and desperate for comfort that has been taken away from the violence that unfolded outside the closet door.
And then, as was the case last week in Innisfail and area, social workers enter the picture. The children are often taken away. A once loving family dynamic is shattered for months and even years as each case goes through a heart wrenching legal quagmire. It all ends with courts once again sending the abuser to jail. The victims of the abuse are left to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives and trudge a path of emotional and financial hardship.
While these incidents get plenty of media coverage, as do surveys like last year's Leger Marketing report, public reaction too often morphs into silence, a phenomenon that erroneously suggests there was no pressing problem to begin with but in reality is a sign of fear of confronting the issue head on, or just indifference.
Sadly, that collective silence, is the issue's biggest barrier of all.
