Violence Against Women

"The victim reported she was struck by a male in the home." Police-issued news bulletin, names withheld. Belleville, Ontario.

"Common practise of police services, including the Belleville Police Service, is to not identify anyone involved in domestic incidents in order to protect victims and their families. I feel that given my position in the community it is important to acknowledge that I am the victim.

"The impact of physical violence as well as emotional abuse in domestic incidents, including unfounded allegations and rumours that further traumatize victims and their families, is well documented. At this time I ask the public and media to respect my privacy while my family and I work our way through this extremely difficult time."

It is endemic within all societies, the kind of rage and control exerted by men infused with a sense of their resentment toward women for whatever reason, culminating in physical violence. Canada is an exemplary country guaranteeing equal rights to all its citizens. The country and its people, at least theoretically, values everyone equally, presenting as a completely egalitarian society, respectful of the differences between people, eager to bridge gaps, assertively protective of the vulnerable.

Despite which, reality is that according to polls a majority of women in the country claim to have been at some time in their lives a victim of violent abuse or sexual molestation. A victim of violence, whether having been emotionally abused as a result of their gender, or physically beaten. The country, at every level of its public administration is dedicated to protecting the rights of women; the courts of law, the police and public service agencies.

A peaceful country by all measures, yet a minuscule proportion of violence and sexual attacks against women are actually reported, let alone prosecuted. Domestic assault, rape by friends, family members, strangers, all assail the security of women in every age group. This is a serious issue taken seriously. The number of women murdered by their estranged husbands, common-law spouses, boyfriends, is nothing short of alarming.

Restraining orders are useful to a degree but no guarantee of real protection against someone determined to stalk and to harm. For resourceful and criminal determination, there is even the case of a woman living in Regina who has been stalked for 35 years, and there is no workable deterrence to give her permanent relief from a repulsive man who obsessively haunts her life. A judge has given her a reprieve by banishing the man from the city for a year.

Women have achieved much in the way of empowering themselves as fully equal members of Canadian society. We even have female chiefs of police in our cities. One such law-and-order achiever is the police chief in Belleville, Ontario. She's had her professionalism tested in the last while, having to marshall her resources with respect to an abnormally high murder rate in her jurisdiction; 8 in the last 10 months.

Chief Cory McMullan has had a plenitude of experience as a law and order professional. She was formerly, along with her husband David McMullan, now retired, in service with the Peterborough-Lakefield police force before her promotion to chief of police in Belleville. She has two children, managing family life along with her professional life, just as many women nowadays balance a career with motherhood.

She has proven herself adept as a conciliator in community affairs, and knows the bleak backside of humanity's failings and fallibilities through exposure to crimes of passion, emotions run amok and all civil, social constraints fallen by the wayside. And has doubtless seen more than her share of cases of spousal assault. Police are called upon to intercede, to intervene, to isolate the abuser from the abused. And to not name names.

The community of Belleville, Ontario is in shock. We make the assumption that certain people are exempt from either being victims of violence or of perpetrating violence. It is fairly certain that the Belleville police force was shocked just as much as the larger community was, and in fact, the country at large, to discover that the head of nearby CFB Trenton, Col. Russell Williams, was guilty of sexual assaults and serial murders.

Chief Cory McMullan herself dealt with that horrifying fall-out of reality versus public perception evading suspicion. And she has had occasion to reiterate that experience on a more personal level. She recently had occasion to call in her own officers to her home after she herself became the victim of spousal abuse. An outside force has since been called in to fully investigate the matter.

And Police Chief Cory McMullan made the difficult decision to release names in the interests of full disclosure and undoubtedly to impress upon the public that few are immune to the potential of realizing victimhood. It can happen, it does happen, it will happen. "I am acknowledging that I am the unnamed victim in a domestic incident", she revealed in an email sent to the local newspaper, the Intelligencer.

The determination to embark on a course of full disclosure in such an instance takes a high degree of courage, to decide in the public interest to lay oneself bare to public scrutiny. There will be details that will be published, and a curious public will find itself with knowledge about the personal, private life of a public persona.

It will take an equal amount of courage to successfully relay to her children how and why their father, her husband, loosed his inner restraint - as her husband, their father and a former police officer dedicated to upholding the law and the protection of individuals - to violently attack his wife, their mother.