Sharing an opinion piece I wrote this week that was published today in the Times Colonist, sparked by the sentencing of a serial assaulter of women.
Tyler Mark Denniston is going to jail. And on the one hand,
that’s a win in the world of intimate partner violence, where 80 per cent of
the crimes aren’t even reported to police and a conviction is far from certain.
But the impact of the Greater Victoria man’s beatings will be
felt by the women he attacked for so much longer than he’ll be in jail. That’s
not just about having to live with the trauma - it’s about brain injury.
People experiencing intimate partner violence end up with a
brain injury (IPV-BI) from that violence as frequently as 90 per cent of the
time. A majority of them, in fact, end
up with multiple brain injuries, because intimate partner violence is rarely
something that only happens once.
Denniston was given a four-year jail term this week for
attacking his then-girlfriend in 2018 and 2019. But he has a history of major
assaults of previous girlfriends before that, all of a type most associated
with brain injury. He strangles his intimate partners. Hits them in the head.
Smashes their heads into furniture.
One of his victims said in an impact statement at
Denniston’s trial that since her abuse, she has become someone she doesn’t
recognize. She has trouble falling asleep, has terrible nightmares when she
does, and is experiencing periods of explosive anger, panic and suicidal
thoughts.
Whether she knows it or not, that could be because she is
now living with a brain injury on top of all the trauma she has endured.
But if she’s like the vast majority of victims of intimate
partner violence, her brain injury will go undiagnosed and unsupported. IPV-BI
is such a newly emerging concept that even victims themselves don’t think about
whether they’ve incurred a brain injury. The impact of their untreated brain
injury can put them at risk of losing their job, their housing, their kids and
so much more, and they won’t even know why.
It seems unbelievable that a woman who is beaten by her
partner violently enough to incur a brain injury could suddenly find herself on
the precipice of profound poverty, homelessness, child-protection involvement
and social isolation as a result of the assault. Surely services are there to
support her, or she could move to the head of the line for housing and supports
to keep her safe?
Unfortunately, there are no designated services at any level
– in BC or Canada – specifically for people experiencing IPV-BI. While some
bright spots are emerging within Island Health around piloting occupational
therapy assessments as a means of helping victims get past diagnosis barriers, that
work is in its earliest days.
More broadly, there are no guidelines for health
professionals to follow to ascertain IPV-BI-caused injury. No overarching plan.
No targeted funding. No consensus as to what should be done, or data being
collected.
And if work on all of that got going tomorrow, there are
other hurdles. Start with the fact that only one in five women beaten by their
partners even report the assault to police, rendering most victims of IPV-BI completely
invisible in our systems.
Add in the stigma, lack of witnesses and fear factor for the
victim around doing anything that might spark a whole other assault, and it’s
not surprising that the majority of women aren’t even going to visit the doctor
about that hit to the head they took, or after they’ve regained consciousness
from being strangled.
And even when they do seek medical attention, there are no
provincially funded community services for them unless their concussion shows
up on an MRI scan. Which is not often the case, because it’s an injury that
doesn’t show up well on an MRI, and is much better diagnosed through its impact
on a woman’s ability to function.
At any rate, unless a woman can pay for that assessment of
her functioning, and the services she needs as a result of what’s discovered, she’s
never going to get that support anyway. It was nice to see IPV-BI get some
solid mentions last fall in the BC government’s Safe and Supported action plan against gender-based violence, but
we are so badly overdue for some genuine action on this appalling state of
affairs.
So yes, Tyler Mark Denniston is going to jail. But he’ll be
out in not much more than a couple of years if he behaves himself, and his life
will carry on pretty much the way it always has. His victims, on the other
hand, have been handed a life sentence.
Jody Paterson is a
lobbyist and advocate on the issue of intimate partner violence and brain
injury on behalf of The Cridge Centre for the Family and the Board Voice
Society of BC.
