Life sentence for victims of intimate partner violence

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.

Women still wearing the blame for rape

A young Saanich woman was allegedly kidnapped and sexually assaulted last week. Police were in the media soon after warning women to take more care.

Yes, 40 years after “women’s liberation,” sexual assault is still our fault.

Women’s issues were a bit of a darling in the media industry when I first got into journalism in the early ‘80s as a “women’s page” reporter. So I wrote a lot about the kinds of things that were considered women’s issues at that time.

They ran the gamut, from jam-making and wedding dresses to abortion, rape and sexual harassment. There were some pretty heavy issues on the table at the time, and I’m glad to say that several are history now.

When I started out reporting, a husband in Canada couldn’t even be charged with raping his wife, because there was no such offence. Sexual harassment had barely even been conceptualized. Hospital boards were being ripped apart by the abortion issue.  All of that has changed.

But the way we talk about rape and sexual assault hasn’t changed a bit. It’s still all about victim-blaming and shame.

Don’t women know better than to walk home alone at night?  Why aren’t we catching cabs and going everywhere in big groups? Could it be that we’re dressing just a bit too skimpily? Or getting sloppy about monitoring our drinks constantly at the bar so nobody can slip drugs into them?

A friend of mine used to work as an aide in a local elementary-school classroom. He once told me the story of a little girl who was getting her pants pulled down by a group of boys every lunch hour. The principal addressed the issue by ordering the girl to quit wearing elastic-waist pants.

I love that story for how perfectly it sums up the way it has always been for girls and women around rape and sexual assault. Honey, it’s all up to you.

We like to think we’ve gotten past blaming women for their own rapes. But I don’t think we’ve ever internalized the message. Good on UVic’s Patty Pitts for stating the obvious to local media after the Saanich incident - that warning women to stay safe is not nearly as meaningful as challenging “the core beliefs that allow sexualized violence to occur.”

Want to avoid being raped? Don’t dress provocatively. Or drink too much. Or leave your drink unattended, or pick the wrong date. Don’t go around doing wild things like walking home in Saanich alone.

 It’s like rape is an unstoppable force waiting to happen to all women unless they learn to keep themselves out of danger.  

I don’t mean any of this as an insult to men. The majority are good people who are not rapists, and not the reason why women continue to be blamed for their own sexual assaults.

Nor do I mean to absolve women. They’re half the population, after all, and really do have the ability to affect major change if they’d ever just pull together to get it done.

But let’s get beyond the gender issues and just agree that it’s ridiculous to respond to any terrible crime solely by exhorting future victims to be more careful. We need to be talking about rape and sexual assault in meaningful ways, and not just piling more responsibility and shame onto the victims.

I guess we’re supposed to consider it progress that rape now figures so prominently in TV and movies. The Law and Order franchise has for many years had a “special victims” series that provides a handy reason for starting virtually every episode with a graphic rape or equally disturbing sex crime. As an issue, rape is seriously out of the closet.

Or is it? In real life, victims still go unnamed in court proceedings - understandable on one hand, deeply shaming on the other for the way it stigmatizes the person. Women still frequently keep their rapes and assaults secret, fearing the traumatic things that can happen to sexual-assault victims once they’re in the justice system.

Sexual assault is still not a subject we raise with our sons, despite having normalized it as a form of home entertainment. Nor have we come up with any more creative ways of preventing it than to send police out after each new rape to warn women everywhere to mind their skirt lengths and stay home after dark.

What a sad, slow ride to nowhere. Ladies, lock your doors.

Let's hope somebody is blushing in the United Church and at BC Housing after learning that their spokespeople are making insulting and poorly considered comments about the risks to women at some of the co-ed shelters in the Downtown Eastside.

Change the system to get more women into politics
Apr. 27, 2007

So the debate around how to get more women into politics is back in the news again. I have to admit, it’s much harder to feel enthusiasm for the fight this time around, having already seen how the story ended last time.
I note that we’re currently at the point in the discussion where we’re trying to decide whether it’s worth it to infringe on the democratic election process in order to jump-start the number of women elected to government.
I remember the previous discussion well - what was it, 10 or 15 years ago now? Oh, we had a good go at it, to the point that the federal Liberals did eventually bypass the nomination process to hand-pick female candidates in a few ridings.
Don’t get me wrong - it’s a vital discussion to have.
After all, what could be more vital to fair and democratic governance than political representation that mirrored the mix of the Canadian population? I’d love it if our politicians looked more like us on all fronts.
But like I said, enough years have gone by since then that I know how the story ends - right back here, with all of us talking about the same issues like none of it ever happened.
Our typical pattern is to toss the issue around for a few years and then forget all about it. A brief flurry of activity pops up the rate of female candidacy for one election, but efforts aren’t sustained enough to create genuine change.
Theories abound as to why female politicians are so scarce in Canada, particularly at the federal level. Take your pick of opinions: That it’s because the electorate doesn’t vote for them; or the political parties don’t support them; or that they hate the life; or are preoccupied with child-rearing.
Likely there’s some truth in all of those. But I think the bigger problem is the political system itself. It’s not only built to thwart any attempts to change it, but fewer and fewer Canadians are paying attention to begin with. If we actually want change, that has to end.
So if our country truly wanted to get more women involved in politics, the first step in my mind would be electoral reform. As B.C. already knows from dabbling with the concept, there are any number of voting systems around the world that yield more gender diversity than ours.
Strategies like fixing nomination meetings can be another way of getting at the problem. But they’re short-term fixes, and justifiably controversial. Unless we still want to be fussing about this in 2020, maybe it would be better to strive for more fundamental changes - ones that would increase the odds for any number of underrepresented groups.
Somewhere out there is a democratic electoral system that’s just right for us. And here’s a bonus: We already know a heck of a lot about the options, thanks to the brilliant work of the citizens’ commission on electoral reform in 2004.
But time’s a-wasting. We can’t afford to fritter it away on tired old 15-year-old arguments as to the rights and wrongs of leveraging women into politics.
Do we need more women in politics? Absolutely.
Had there been more women in politics from the start, I’m guessing it never would have been legal in Canada for a husband to rape his wife. Instead, it took until 1984 to make that happen.
And women obviously wouldn’t have been shut out of the voting process in Canada’s early years if we’d actually been part of it in the beginning. We’d likely have assumed control over our own bodies much sooner.
Wage inequities? Wouldn’t have happened. Nurses being fired if they chose to marry? Nope. Decades of problems with sexual harassment in the workplace? Probably not.
In defence of the existing political process, those changes did eventually come about. Just because men rule the world doesn’t mean that everything turns out badly.
But each victory is pretty hollow when you consider that all we’re trying to do is catch up to men. We started at the bottom and think it’s heavenly to be halfway up, when what we ought to be doing is claiming our place as equals. Enough with this wishful thinking that such transformation is possible within our current political and voting processes.
Women could, of course, continue to try to slug it out with the boys. Take it like a man. Look at the inroads that gays and ethnic minorities made into politics in the last couple of decades - what’s stopping women?
Clearly, something is. Gays and minorities fought hard for their gains, but at least they saw some. Women are still lost in the trenches. Despite decades of effort, we still account for just 20 to 25 per cent of provincial and federal elected seats, and are even rarer in cabinet.
Maybe that really is a sign that the female sex isn’t compatible with the rigours of the Canadian political scene. So let’s change the scene.