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Remember
Yesterday, December 6, was the 25th annual National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. The day was chosen because it falls on the anniversary of the massacre at L’Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. On that day in 1989, 14 women were murdered because they were women.
Last week, the body of a well-respected family physician was found in the GTA her husband, a professor and neurosurgeon with the University Health Network. stands accused of her murder. She was beaten, strangled and stuffed into a suitcase. And although she and her husband had a cheery public profile, she had revealed to her friends shortly before her death that she had decided to leave her husband.
The story has been upsetting for many reasons. The doctors were well known and influential, both within the medical community and for their patients. Doctors are given a certain status in our society, trusted with our bodies and our lives, and it is always a shock to hear a medical doctor has committed a violent crime.
But it is also a sobering reminder that domestic assault, identified in Canada as one of the most common forms of violence against women, is not restricted to any one group of people. In studying the background of victims of domestic violence, research has found no significant statistical difference in occurrence based on education or income.
December 6 has come and gone, but statistics prove how necessary the day is, 27 years after that terrible day in Quebec. It’s worth remembering them.
According to the province’s Women’s Directorate, more than one in every 20 women experience violence at the hands of a partner, with women representing more than four out of every five victims of abuse.
And the severity of that abuse is often more serious, with 42 per cent of female victims suffering physical injury, compared to 18 per cent of male victims.
That abuse includes being choked, beaten, threatened with a deadly weapon and sexually assaulted.
And like that alleged homicide in Toronto, women account for 95 per cent of victims murdered by their spouses.
The biggest danger to a woman’s life comes in the period after she leaves or attempts to leave an abusive relationship—-six times more likely than if she stays.
On the cold, deep world of the Internet, women who speak out against violence against women, whether it be on school campuses, in the workplace or at home, are attacked. Even women who simply live as leaders in their field online are harassed, threatened and have their privacy violated, in itself a form of violence against women.
And the Internet is one of those places our next generation dives into while they’re still forming ideas and opinions about the world. They should also be remembered.
It’s up to us to remind them that those insidious frustrations are dangerous, that to overwhelm them with love and respect are values that will protect us from such ugly endings.
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