Until the mid 1970s violence against women in relationships was concealed in obscurity and relegated to an ill-defined area of unexplored crime and would have remained so were it not for the attention it was to garner in subsequent years. The physical and emotional manifestations of violence against women in relationships was once treated as "just a part of the constellation of the woman's disease," to be managed with medication. This "management" was usually followed by a woman's return to her abusive husband after a few weeks in a hospital or psychiatric institution, only to be re-admitted weeks or months later to begin "treatment" once again for "her disease" (DeKeseredy & MacLeod 1997:22, 13). However, within a decade, violence suffered by women in intimate relationships was to be transformed, through the efforts of women's groups and especially the feminist anti-violence movement, from this obscurity into a serious social issue that demanded recognition as such from governments and the general public, alike (Currie 1998; DeKeseredy & MacLeod 1997:12-27; Flynn & Crawford 1998:91).
The first formal acknowledgement of the problem of wife battering in Canada came in a 1982 report to the House of Commons on its nature, dimensions, and impact on society (Light & Rivkin 1996:175). Governmental response to this report was first manifested in December 1983, when companion directives were issued by the Attorney General of Ontario and the Solicitor General of Canada calling for police agencies and Crown Counsel offices to "encourage rigorous investigation and prosecution of wife assault cases," and suggesting that the judiciary consider pursuing "the goal of deterrent sentencing" (Wilmshurst 1997:1). By 1985, new policy initiatives had been developed and introduced by every provincial and territorial government aimed at ensuring greater protection for battered wives and strong sanctions for their abusive partners (Light & Rivkin 1996:175). This nationwide pro-arrest, pro-charge policy, the first of its kind in the world (Begin 1991:17) was meant to send a convincing message that violence against women in relationships was a serious crime with serious consequences, and would not be condoned in Canadian society.
Following the lead of governments elsewhere in Canada, BC's Attorney
General responded to increasing public awareness that violence
against women in relationships was a major social problem by introducing
a gender specific "Wife Assault Policy" in 1984. The
intent of the policy was the prevention of wife assault through
legal intervention. To this end, a set of detailed guidelines
and procedural instructions was developed, directing each component
of the justice system to emphasize the serious criminal nature
of wife assault and to prioritize the safety of the women involved.
While legal intervention was deemed crucial by the Attorney General
to stopping violence against women in relationships (Ministry
of Attorney General 1993a:3), securing the needed commitment from
the criminal justice system was, and continues to be, fraught
with difficulties. Three revisions of this policy have attempted
to overcome these difficulties with limited success. However,
a close analysis of the policy as it has evolved over the last
fourteen years illustrates that the difficulties in actualizing
its intent can not solely be attributed to lack of compliance
by the criminal justice system.
Clearly many of the patriarchal, sexist, heterosexist, and racist attitudes and biases often cited as underlying reasons for non- or partial compliance by criminal justice system components with the "Wife Assault Policy" (e.g., Hannah-Moffat 1995; Jaffe, et al. 1986; Rigakos 1994, 1995) were, particularly in its earlier versions, reinforced within the policy itself. For example, both the original 1984 and the revised 1986 Wife Assault Policy reflected a heterosexual bias both in its name, the "Wife" Assault Policy and in the definition of "wife assault" which restricted relationship violence to assaults of women by men to whom they are or have been either married or in a common-law relationship. This narrow definition of "wife assault" led to the re-naming of the Policy in 1993 to the "Violence Against Women In Relationships (VAWIR) Policy" in which the meaning of relationship was expanded to include not only married and common-law relationships but dating and same-sex relationships as well. This expanded definition of relationship in the revised 1993 VAWIR Policy, also broadened its intent to not only stopping wife assault in heterosexual relationships but to bringing about the "elimination of violence against males in homosexual relationships, against vulnerable males in heterosexual relationships, and against women in lesbian relationships." Now the definition of victim is no longer gender specific in the VAWIR policy, instead a victim can be either male or female as long as the power imbalance and dynamics of relationship violence defined in the policy exist (Ministry of Attorney General 1993b:4). These changes have worked to counteract much of the heterosexism of earlier versions of the policy, which is a positive and important gain but the changes, as they are articulated in the current VAWIR policy, have also opened the way to a gender neutral interpretation of whom violence in relationships is directed against, which could have negative repercussions for the very women the policy is designed to protect.
Patriarchal attitudes toward the role and obligations of women as "wives" also filtered what was and was not viewed as abuse in the early Wife Assault policies. While marital rape had been a Criminal Code offence since January 4, 1983, both the 1984 and the revised 1986 Wife Assault Policy continued to define wife assault solely as "physical assault or threat of physical assault." The reason for this definitional restriction was articulated in "Wife Assault: A Policy Paper of the Ministry of Attorney General" (Cronin, Gifford, & Light 1983:3)--the precursor to the 1984 Wife Assault policy--as being necessary "so that it falls unambiguously within the realm of the criminal justice system". However, by the time the recommendations in this policy paper became part of the Wife Assault Policy in 1984 and certainly by 1986, sexual assault of women in intimate relationships should also have fallen "unambiguously within the realm of the criminal justice system". In 1993, sexual assault and threat of sexual assault were included in the definition of violence against women in relationships, yet no procedural guidelines that specifically dealt with either offence were included within the VAWIR Policy. Instead, the Ministry of Attorney General indicated that the VAWIR Policy produced in 1993 was just Part One of its response to violence against women in relationships. The second component of the VAWIR policy that was being worked on in 1993 and still not finalized in the summer of 1998 is "policy guidelines for the justice system response to sexual assault" (Ministry of Attorney General, 1993b:1, 1996a:1). That the policy makers have not yet come up with a "coordinated and effective response to this type of violence", strongly suggests that sexual assault against women in relationships is still not an "unambiguous" part of violence against women in relationships within the realms of either the legal system nor the Ministry of Attorney General.
Patriarchal views of women in relationships and heterosexism were not the only attitudes and biases shaping the 1984 Wife Assault policy and its 1986 revision. In these early policies, the assaulted woman was assumed to be "generic" and given this assumption, no specific procedural instructions were included to inform criminal justice system personnel of how best to deal with the special needs and fears of assaulted women whose first language was not English; who had physical or mental disabilities; or who were First Nations Women or women of colour. Guidelines for training courses to be given to police and other justice system personnel on how to respond to wife assault cases reinforced this view of the "generic assaulted wife" by making no mention of how relationship violence and subsequent criminal justice system intervention might have different repercussions for women from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds and/or for women with disabilities than for their white, able-bodied, English-speaking counterparts (see Cronin, Gifford & Light 1983; Ministry of Attorney General 1986). What little cross-cultural training police did receive prior to 1991, the British Columbia Task Force on Family Violence (Jaffer, et al. 1992:219) found was not extensive and did not focus on family and sexual violence issues at either the recruit or advanced level. Similar cultural training, according to the BC Task Force findings, did not extend to either Crown or the judiciary. This meant that racism encountered in the criminal justice system toward both themselves and their abusers that often made First Nations women and women of colour reluctant to take their complaints of assault by their partners to the police (see Currie 1998; Flynn & Crawford 1998; Jaffer, et al. 1992; McGillivray & Comaskey 1998; Snider 1990, 1995; Zellerer 1996) remained unacknowledged and unaddressed. This lack of cultural education to dispel biases and myths about for example, the attitude toward violence in certain cultures, or training to create an awareness by police, Crown, and the judiciary of how to correctly interpret cultural cues, also meant that, especially for assaulted immigrant and refugee women, these situations were often not taken seriously and arrests were not made (Jaffer, et al. 1992:219-220).
Another major consequence of the "generic assaulted wife" assumption for women whose first language was not English was that procedural guidelines in the 1984 Wife Assault policy and its 1986 revision, made no reference to the importance of making available interpreters at each level of the criminal justice system to assaulted women who require them. The need to ensure the availability of interpreters when needed is first mentioned in the procedural instructions of the 1993 VAWIR Policy, and that these interpreters should not be either the accused nor young children was added in the revised 1996 VAWIR Policy. However neither of these later VAWIR revisions has addressed a critical gap in services for immigrant and refugee women, articulated by the BC Task Force (Jaffer, et al. 1992:221), namely that these interpreters, and especially court interpreters, need to be trained to interpret the cultural context of the people involved and not just the language. This failure suggests that even in the latest revision of the VAWIR policy, the needs of women from culturally and ethnically diverse backgrounds are still being interpreted through a "white, dominant cultural" filter.
Finally, neither the 1984 nor the revised 1986 Wife Assault Policy made any mention of how to deal with the special needs of abused women with mental and physical disabilities who may have difficulty in communicating with components of the justice system, or who may be dependent on their abuser as a primary caregiver. The 1993 and 1996 revised VAWIR policy do at least give cursory attention to these needs, directing police to "be sensitive and accommodating when dealing with victims/witnesses who have special needs by virtue of isolation, mobility restrictions, language or communication abilities" and to "clearly indicate on the RCC [Report to Crown Council] witness page that the victim has special needs because of mental or physical disability, or by virtue of age, religion or cultural values," and also to note whether a victim or support service is available to meet these needs (Ministry of Attorney General 1996a:10). But other than explicitly making police and Crown aware that assaulted women with mental or physical disabilities do have special needs, the VAWIR Policies (both 1993 and 1996) leave it up to the individual police department or Crown to develop procedures on how these special needs should be met and to provide training that would ensure all police officers and other criminal justice personnel were adequately trained to "be sensitive and accommodating" to victims with "special needs."
Perhaps the greatest failing of the 1984 and revised 1986 Wife
Assault Policies was their inability to effectively persuade the
justice system that wife assault was not a private
matter to be dealt with through mediation, but rather was a crime
that warranted a rigorous approach to arrest, investigation and
prosecution. Certainly policy writers recognized that this was
a problem. As was pointed out in the 1983 policy paper (Cronin,
Gifford, & Light 1983:6) the view of "the sanctity of
and need to preserve the traditional family unit." held by
police and other justice system personal was a major stumbling
block to effective intervention by the legal system in violence
within the family setting. As well much of the preamble of the
1986 revision of the Wife Assault Policy was devoted to dispelling
the myth that legal intervention would "break up families,"
claiming instead that studies indicate that such intervention
actually "reduces violence and stabilizes the family"
(Ministry of Attorney General, 1986: 1-2). Training programs
that would have reinforced the policy stance, however, were limited
in number, largely due to inadequate funding (Lannon & Rivers
1994:4).
While it is true that the Wife Assault Policies of 1984 and 1986 did emphasize the "law enforcement" role of police stressing that arrests should be made whenever sufficient evidence was found, it is also possible by viewing the "order maintenance" function which police tended to favour, that is conciliation or counselling as a supportive or secondary function, their pro-arrest stance was weakened. It is apparent by examining the "cleared by charge"(1) rate of many police departments in the 1980s and early 1990 that, "contrary to policy,"(2) many law enforcement officers still did not view wife assault as a criminal matter. For example, a joint study of wife assault incidents by the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) and Simon Fraser University for the year 1991 found that in January forty-seven percent and in July forty-five percent of such incidents were "cleared by charge" (Jaffer, et al. 1992:83). The study further revealed that during January 1991 in thirty-four percent and during July of the same year in twenty-one percent of incidents of wife assault, police proceeded contrary to policy and charges were not laid (Jaffer, et al. 1992:83). It was this realization that the overall attitude toward and treatment of wife assault incidents by the criminal justice system had not been significantly changed, despite the policy being in place for seven years, that initiated a two-year consultation process in 1991, leading to revision, expansion and re-naming of the 1986 Wife Assault Policy. The resulting 1993 Violence against Women in Relationships (VAWIR) Policy was based on the comprehensive, community-based program for intervention in domestic abuse developed in Duluth, Minnesota and adapted in London, Ontario (Jaffer, et al. 1992:85; Ontario Women's Directorate 1997).
Briefly, the underlying premise of the Duluth and London models is that institutions within our society, in particular the criminal justice system, must take responsibility to end violence against women. To help achieve this, it is argued, the offender in "spousal assaults" must be held accountable for his use of violence to send a clear message to the community, victims, offenders, and children that battering is not acceptable "even" within the confines of the family (Welch 1994:1151). These models map out a four-part approach to combatting woman abuse. First, they call for swift police response, available emergency shelters, advocacy and education for victims, and temporary court intervention such as no-contact orders which will provide victims of abuse with immediate protection and safety. Second, the models emphasize the importance of bringing domestic abuse into the court system for resolution to deter, punish, and rehabilitate abusers. It is suggested that this be accomplished by a combination of a firm pro-arrest policy by police, strong guidelines and procedures to increase prosecution convictions, pre-sentence investigations and post-conviction probation guidelines, enforcement of civil protective orders, and the coordination of the flow of interagency information. Third, the Duluth and London models stress the need for the imposition and enforcement of legal sanctions through the courts, with increasingly harsh penalties for repeat offenders. Finally, the provision of treatment programs for offenders to change their abusive behaviour is called for. It is asserted that mandatory long-term court-ordered and monitored group counselling is an important component in conveying to men that relationship violence is not acceptable in society, with any repeat acts of violence being reported to the court to reinforce this message (Ontario Women's Directorate 1997, Pense 1996).
Like its 1993 predecessor, the latest revision of the VAWIR Policy
(1996), appears to embody this approach in its procedural instructions
to the criminal justice system. In the analysis that follows,
the difficulties of putting these models into practice at each
level of the criminal justice system will be outlined.
1. The rate at which reports are forwarded to Crown counsel with a recommendation to charge (Jaffer, et al. 1992:83).
2.
Includes cases in which the
occurrence report indicates that the police had grounds to submit a
Report to Crown Counsel recommending charges but chose not to. Also
can apply when the victim chose just to make a report only. Both
the circumstances of the incident and the victim's written statement
are recorded (Gill 1998).