Climbing Out Broken Windows: Domestic Violence and Abuse: Signs and Symptoms of Abusive Relationships

This is an excellent resource for warning signs and a description of what a severely abusive relationship looks like. Nanc's experiences, as related to myself, her lawyer, and led as evidence in court, matches this description to a "t". It is a blog by a New York survivor, so resources listed are mostly American.


Climbing Out Broken Windows: Domestic Violence and Abuse: Signs and Symptoms of Abusive Relationships

FAMILY RELATIONS ACT - NEEDED CHANGES

Nanc's lawyer, Jack Hittrich, has been practising family law for many years and has become concerned by certain deficiencies unique to family law. He is part of a working group of lawyers that have come to grips with ways to address these issues. Many of these issues were central to Nanc's experience with the justice system. This post is a preliminary report:


C.B.A. FAMILY LAW SUBSECTION SUBMISSIONS ON DISCLOSURE PRINCIPLES IN REFORMING FAMILY LAW RULES

Mr. Justice Fraser in Cunha v. Cunha [1994] B.C..No. 2573, brilliant description of “non disclosure” as “the cancer of matrimonial property litigation” is applicable to all areas of family law. Accessing reliable financial information at an early stage and with a minimum of expense and complexity should the primary objective and underlying rationale in the current review of our disclosure rules.

The current Supreme Court and Provincial Court Rules are a good start but simply do not go far enough. Very real barriers continue to exist to obtaining accurate and reliable financial information upon which informed decisions can be made. A complex, expensive, and often unpredictable court process is frequently necessary to determine income and asset information in cases of self employed individuals.

It is unfortunate that our adversarial legal system places the onus on usually the weaker spouse, who lacks the knowledge and often the financial means, to prove on a balance of probabilities that her spouse (yes, this is usually gender specific) has income at a certain level or has this or that asset and what its value is. Why force the weaker party to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on lawyers, forensic accountants and business valuators to prove income levels and business values when the party in control of the key financial information can often sit back and wait to see if his (yes, it is usually “his”) spouse will tire and hopefully give up and take a settlement which is less than fair?

The key here is to shift the burden and expense of disclosure to the spouse who controls the financial information. The traditional burden of proof on a balance of probabilities on the claiming party is deeply flawed in the area of disclosure in family law.


Why should there be a requirement to commence litigation before the disclosure rules of our courts apply? Why should the party seeking the disclosure through the court process be required to seek costs, usually at a small fraction of their real costs? Why should the non disclosing party have the opportunity to delay and then produce at the last minute knowing very well how lax courts tend to be about awarding costs?

There are a number of useful ideas in this area and they include the following:

1. There should be an automatic right to seek full financial disclosure by means of appropriate demands, without the need to start any legal action. Supreme Court Rule 60D could be amended to include pre writ disclosure demands.

2. If the demand is on a self employed individual, in addition to the usual disclosure requirements, there should be a clearly specified requirement to produce banking records, both personal and business, over a period of 2 to 3 years.

3. The forms for financial demands should clearly spell out that failure to produce by a stipulated date will automatically result in a fixed financial penalty unless the non disclosing party brings on a successful application in court to show cause why the penalty should not apply.

4. If the commencement of legal action is required for failure to comply with disclosure, special costs should normally be awarded unless the offending party can show compelling reasons to the contrary.

5. The scope of Interrogatories should be broadened to include demand for specified documents.

6. There should be the option in family cases to specify on a Demand for Lists of Documents the subject area in issue.

7. Photocopying costs and costs of accessing third party documents should be controlled as much as possible with an automatic payment out of family assets unless cause can be shown otherwise.

8. Judicial Case Conference and Family Case Conference Judges and Masters should have broad and specific powers to order extensive financial disclosure with meaningful penalty provisions in case of non compliance.



9. At any stage of the proceeding, either party should be able to bring on an application to fund the full costs of an appropriate investigation and report into financial matters with legal fees, accounting fees, and disbursements paid by the other party or from family assets.

10. Non disclosure, partial disclosure, and financial ability to bear costs, should be specified criteria in the awarding of costs to fund investigations and reports into financial matters.

11. Rule 60D should be clearly linked to Rules 32 and 32A with expanded powers for court appointed masters, registrars, special referees and experts to investigate and report on financial matters. FRA s. 15 investigations and reports into custody and access matters are well known and routinely ordered while Rules 32 and 32A are little known and rarely used to investigating and report on financial matters.

12. If there is a judicial finding of material non-disclosure, there should be specific legislative authority for judges to reverse the onus of proof on evidence and to draw appropriate adverse inferences against the non disclosing party, essentially incorporating the rationale of Cunha v. Cunha. This goes beyond the scope of procedural law and will require amendments to the FRA and possibly the Divorce Act.

The foregoing ideas are expressed in very general terms. They arise from the collective financial and emotional pain of numerous disadvantaged spouses who have a bitter taste in their mouth about the substantial procedural hurdles that they faced in the current family justice system. It is time to make the family justice system more user friendly and more just.

ALL OF WHICH IS RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED
September , 2007

Jack Hittrich, Chair of the Law Reform Committee of the Westminster Sub Section
David Hart
Janet L. Clark

David Halkett
with input from David Dundee
and J.P. Boyd

What IS the role of the church in family violence events?

Jeannie Babb Taylor: An open letter to Christian pastors

09/23/07
Jeannie Babb Taylor
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Jeannie Babb Taylor, On the Other Hand

Pastors, have you ever preached a sermon against domestic violence? Odds are, you haven’t. I’ve listened to approximately 4,000 sermons and have yet to hear a pastor condemn domestic violence from the pulpit.

Southern preachers prefer to pontificate on matters like abortion and homosexuality. Sometimes they rail against feminism. On occasion they preach against pornography, using the occasion to slam churchwomen over immodest attire. In every denomination, pastors preach often enough on tithing, and never fail to pass the plate. Yet they fail at addressing an issue faced by approximately one fourth of their congregation.

Recently a wildly popular pastor shoved the problem of Christian violence into the spotlight when he choked, kicked and stomped his wife in the parking lot of an Atlanta hotel. In the South, beating your wife may or may not be a crime. Records show that the most common law enforcement response to domestic violence is “separating the parties.” Victims rarely press charges because they fear reprisal. Law enforcement rarely presses their own charges (though they could and should), essentially treating wife-beating as a “victimless crime.”

Bishop Thomas W. Weeks, III crossed the line that even Georgia will not tolerate: He was wearing shoes when he kicked his wife. That’s a felony. Besides that, he committed the acts publicly and on video surveillance tape. He also threatened to kill her, which is another Georgia felony.

The abused wife, Prophetess Juanita Bynum, is an internationally acclaimed televangelist and best-selling author who empowers Christian women with her preaching. Church members say that couple of weeks before the attack, Weeks announced that Bynum would no longer be preaching at the church they founded.

Bynum is pressing charges against Weeks and seeking to end the marriage. Attorneys for Weeks say he will contest the divorce on the grounds that she was cruel. The strangest part of this story is not that the man who kicked and stomped his wife is contesting the divorce or fighting the charges; that happens all the time. What is so bizarre is where this man was just a few days after the beating: He was behind his pulpit telling his congregation that the devil made him do it.

Finally, a preacher is talking about domestic violence! If only his congregation had responded with a resounding movement down the aisle – and right out the church door. No one should sit under the teaching of a wife-beater. The elders should have stripped this man of his title and never let him behind the pulpit again.

T. D. Jakes, the famous televangelist who helped bring Bynum to power, condemned violence against women in a written statement two weeks after the attack. He pointed out that every day, four American men murder their wives or girlfriends, resulting in 1,400 deaths per year. That’s an FBI statistic. He also mentioned that over half a million cases of intimate assault are reported each year. Most cases go unreported. According to the most conservative estimates, between 2,000,000 and 4,000,000 women are battered each year. In 1990, the U.S. had 3,800 shelters for animals, and only 1,500 shelters for battered women.

Other Christian leaders even try to blame the victims. Christian author Gillis Triplett claims that there are thirteen traits common to abused wives, including “THEY LOVE THE DRAMA!” (Emphasis his.) Evangelical leaders John MacArthur and James Dobson have both gone on record stating that women must be careful not to “provoke” abuse. In the 1996 printing of “Love Must Be Tough,” Dobson told a story about a woman who was physically beaten by her husband. Dobson concluded that the woman “baited” her husband to hit her so that she could show off her black eye, which he calls her “prize.”

Following the advice and example of such leaders, thousands of pastors regularly dismiss domestic violence and send women back into dangerous situations. With “saving the marriage” as the highest aim, these pastors seek to prevent divorce at all costs. Women receive the subtle message that their pain – or even their lives -- are not as important as keeping the marriage intact.

One woman told a victims’ support group how she took her children and fled the state in fear of her life. Her church responded by sending her a letter of ex-communication.

In the introduction to her new book “Woman Submit! Christians & Domestic Violence,” Jocylen Andersen states that “The practice of hiding, ignoring, and even perpetuating the emotional and physical abuse of women is ... rampant within evangelical Christian fellowships and as slow as our legal systems have been in dealing with violence against women by their husbands, the church has been even slower.” The Christian wife abuse cover-up is every bit as evil as the Catholic sex abuse cover-up.

Christian leaders set the stage for domestic violence by perpetuating pop-culture stereotypes of femininity and masculinity. T. D. Jakes claims in his book “Woman, Thou Art Loosed” that all women were created to fulfill the vision of some man. Jakes bases his gender theology solely on the physical characteristics of male and female genitalia, insisting that all women are “receivers” and all men are “givers.” This false dichotomy breaks down quickly when one considers that female sexuality includes giving birth and giving milk. More importantly, Jakes deviates from Scripture in claiming that women and men must operate like their genitalia in every facet of life.

John MacArthur also does his part to set the stage for female subjugation. He calls the women’s movement “Satanic.” In a sermon called “God’s Design for a Successful Marriage: The Role of the Wife” MacArthur blames working women for everything from smog to prison overcrowding. As an antidote, he offers this quote from Charles Haddon Spurgeon on the disposition of a godly wife toward her husband: “He is her little world, her paradise, her choice treasure. She is glad to sink her individuality in him.”

Finally, consider Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Patterson recently dismissed Hebrew professor Sheri Klouda, simply because she was female. He claims the Bible does not allow women to instruct men. Patterson then launched a new major at the seminary: Homemaking. Only women are allowed to take these courses, which focus on childcare, cooking and sewing -- as well as a woman’s role in marriage. The courses are taught by Patterson’s wife, who is the only surviving female in the school’s 42-person theology faculty.

Considering Patterson’s view of women, we should not be surprised at his response to domestic violence. Participating in a panel on “How Submission Works in Practice,” Patterson tells abused wives to do three things: Pray for their husbands, submit to them, and “elevate” them. He admits that this advice sometimes leads to beatings, but also claims that the men eventually get saved. Apparently, it’s only the men that matter.

Pastors who truly want to help people and save marriages should stop attacking feminism. Instead, teach couples never to hit, choke, kick, threaten or verbally batter their spouse. Preach against domestic violence from your pulpit. Help abuse victims to escape their batterers – permanently. Encourage them to press charges so that justice can be served.

Pastors, if you want to defend marriage, set an example of a loving relationship. Instruct couples to live in a way that makes their spouse want to stay with them. It really does not take a six-tape series to teach the number one tool of a successful marriage: the golden rule.

Jeannie Babb Taylor is a local business leader and author. She also teaches Sunday school, educates her children at home, and engages in Georgia politics. Jeannie may be contacted at jeannie@babb.com, or you can leave a public comment on her blog OntheOtherHandColumn.blogspot.com.

NANC'S WORDS

MY WORDS – MY TRUTH

Nanc Rick

About a year before I left the abuser, I remember walking through the kitchen door to see him sitting at the table. In the depth of my soul I prayed hard “Lord, let him shoot me, I can’t take this pain no more.” But he let me keep on breathing….

I will share with you a dream or nightmare I have had many times:

I am with my children, we are walking on a painful path, cliffs on both sides. My feet are bare and the rocks are sharp. “Stay close” I say, for fear they would fall. At the end of the path is a raging river. I glance down to see its fury. When I look up, I see the abuser with my children on the other side, laughing and taking them away. Then I find myself in a house on top of the river, with posts to hold it in place in the raging water. I stand at the end of the house over the river. Just stand. The posts start to crack and break, the walls fall into the river, the roof crumbles down on me and I go down.

WRITTEN BY NANC'S SISTER, HER TRUTH

This post was written by Nanc's sister Carla

Carla Schellenberg: I AM MY SISTER’S VOICE

She’s done all she can. But her story still needs to be told. Most she did tell, but people refuse to believe her……or worse yet, know it to be true, but won’t do anything to help her.

I remember the night she told me. We were driving around town when she said: “Nothing I can’t handle now, I’ve been through everything already, did you know that I’ve been beaten for the past 21 years?” She still sees the look in her husband’s eyes when she screamed “if you beat me again I’m gonna call 911!” He knew she meant it.

The first time he beat her, she was 18 and pregnant with his child. She had learned, as a child, to stay quiet throughout the ordeal or the punches would become more violent.

And so secret beatings unfold. Each time things would go wrong in the barn, he would enter the house…..fiery red eyes….foam spewing from his mouth…..he walked toward her. She would dash to the bedroom to keep the kids from seeing….daddy’s anger was not for their innocent eyes to see. But children are not easily fooled.

And so…. In the privacy of her own home, she endured her pain, always hoping that maybe, if she would be good enough, the beatings would stop. She would show him how much she loved him.

My sister kept her secret well. She hid it in the form of a bottle hidden somewhere in her home….but even alcohol couldn’t disguise her soul from slowly dying.

After 21 years of beatings, reality has kicked in. Her day to day survival turns into emotional turmoil.

She continually relives her past, each hit, each bruise, now more real than ever. Her fear turns into ‘Post Traumatic Stress Disorder’ She panics at his every move. He’s afraid that their secret might leak out, He becomes gentle and kind. She can’t stand the touch of those hands that tried to strangle her. She knows her marriage is over.

She fills for divorce. She doesn’t trust him. Her head is all confused. Her P.T,S,D, takes over. Everything is overwhelming.

Two years come and go. Most of it a blur. Her children are torn, some in silence, some in rejection. And so my sister endures still yet another kind of pain.

There’s a new court case. This one’s to prove money was hidden from her in her first settlement. Maybe now’s her chance to tell her whole story.

The court hears it all. Each memory she recalls allows her to become vulnerable to her hidden pain. But the court demands hard proof evidence. Pictures…Witnesses….The court silences her story. Oh Yes! There was substantial evidence of hidden money. She will get her due…. But what of her beatings…..’I only wanted to make a difference. To tell my story, to help others, to change laws so such abuse will be criminalized.’

Well sis….your story will not end in court. Hear it again. Maybe someone, maybe just one person, will hear your story, speak up, keep evidence, talk to someone they trust, and abuse such as this will be exposed for what it is,

I LOVE YOU SIS

SCC CASE SUMMARY- WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT

I linked to the SCC case on the first post, but the SCC just got the official summary post up, so I thought I should post it here.

Case summaries are prepared by the Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada (Law Branch) for information purposes only.

Contracts - Validity - Remedies - Unconscionable transactions - Family law - Separation - Family assets - Separation agreements - Does mere access to legal advice fully compensate for a weakened mental state - What is the duty on a spouse, if any, to provide accurate values of assets within his or her control both in the mediation process and the finalization of the agreements - Does it matter that the mediation and the minutes arising from it refer to an equalization payment and that the final agreements makes the accuracy of a sworn financial statement a condition precedent - What constitutes res judicata where statutory rights are involved - Miglin v. Miglin, [2003] 1 S.C.R. 303, 2003 SCC 24.

The Applicant and Respondent separated after a 27 year marriage. They had five children, and they had established a dairy farm business, of which they were equal shareholders. They had acquired land, vehicles, RRSPs and real property as family assets. The wife retained a lawyer to commence divorce proceedings, but twice terminated his services. First one mediator was retained and then another, and a memorandum of agreement was drawn up providing that the husband could keep the farm and another dairy farm business, while the wife would retain a house purchased with farm funds and receive an equalization payment of $750,000. The amount was proposed by the wife before information on the value of the assets was final. There was a $100,000 lump sum payment to the wife for child support, but no provision for spousal support. Although a second lawyer advised the wife that the $750,000 amount could be low and that she should not give up spousal support, the separation agreement was signed. The parties were divorced and a consent order was entered dismissing the wife’s claims against the husband. Later the wife initiated a court action seeking rescission of the separation agreement on the basis of misrepresentation and unconscionability. She alleged misrepresentations on the value of disclosed assets and a failure to disclose some assets, and asked in the alternative for a variation pursuant to s. 65 of the the Family Relations Act, R.S.B.C. 1996, c. 128. She also brought claims for physical and sexual assaults alleged to have been committed by her husband throughout the course of their marriage.

NEWS STORY FROM NYC

Interesting story from NYC. Striking similarities to Nanc's story, although it didn't end for her with murder, obviously. Her two youngest daughters packed her and her personal stuff into her car and drove her to a safe house. She was basically catatonic at that point.


http://www.nationnews.com/editorial/290184017300243.php

NATION NEWS

---

New York New York – No need to suffer domestic abuse
Published on: 9/21/07.

by Tony Best

"I KNOW from personal experience (as an attorney) how traumatic it can be for women who are being abused by spouses."

Nigel Gittens, a Barbadian attorney in Washington D.C. who once practised law in Massachusetts, was making a point about the fate of his sister Joycelyn Watson, who was killed by her husband in Brooklyn more than two years ago.

His message was straightforward: when a relationship becomes abusive, get out of it, even if means leaving the comfort of your own home.

"Don't stay in the home with an abuser," he advised women after his sister's funeral. "If I had known my sister's situation, I would never have allowed her to agree to live in the same house with him [her husband]."

The attorney hopes his advice will be enough to prevent other women and men from suffering a fate similar to his sister's – death at the hands of someone who says: "If I can't have you, no one else will."

The final chapter in the saga of Joycelyn and Remington Watson was written recently when a New York State Supreme Court judge, Mathew D'Emic, sent the abusive spouse to prison for 18 years after he had pleaded guilty to a manslaughter charge in a Brooklyn court. The husband, a soft drink salesman, had beaten his wife to death with a brick in their Brooklyn home in 2005, then stabbed her in the heart.

It was a relationship with a long history of spousal abuse, which the woman had hidden from her close relatives, including her brother. She had even gotten a court order of protection, but it may never have been served on the man, who continued to live in the house, even after divorce proceedings were started.

Familiar case

The case of the West Indian couple has become a familiar one to Charles Hynes, Brooklyn's District Attorney (DA) whose office prosecuted the case.

The DA has established a highly successful domestic abuse prevention programme designed to shield spouses from violence and it offers protection to immigrant women in the country illegally who are often verbally and or physically abused by their partners.

Domestic violence is at epidemic proportions in the West Indian immigrant communities in the city. It isn't difficult to see why. Immigrants from almost every nation in the region have grown up in an atmosphere in which men feel it is okay to beat women.

Peruse any human rights report on the Caribbean, especially the annual document prepared by the United States State Department and sent to the United States Congress, and a hard bit of reality stares you in the face.

Even after strict laws have been enacted to punish wrongdoers and hotlines and counselling programmes established, the scourge remains a fact of everyday life.

But the DA noted that people from the Caribbean aren't alone either as victims or perpetrators. Domestic violence cuts across ethnic and geographic boundaries.

"It's a problem in all groups," Hynes said in an interview in his office some time ago. "We want to make it easier for victims to come forward to get help."

That's what more Caribbean nations need to do: smooth the path for victims, men and women, to come out from the shadows of abuse
so they wouldn't end up as a statistic, much like Watson.

NEW ADS

We are adding Adsense Google ads to the blog, strictly to generate funds to carry on the fight. Nanc and I have put all of our resources into this 5 year (so far) battle for justice, and resources are getting thin. I've concluded that I probably should have been a lawyer! :)
I am assured that the ads will be content relevant - I'm dying to see what kind of ads are relevant to the topic here - so hopefully won't offend anyone that is here looking for serious info.

RESPONSE! SOMEONE ELSE DOES CARE

Well, the feelers we've been putting out have - perhaps - borne fruit. We were contacted today by a national umbrella group for women's issues. I sent them our factum and further info including the text of the decision by the BC Appeals Court, both of which are too long to post here. we'll gladly email them to interested parties. Our email is:

baer1@telus.net

CONTACT DAY

Have spent the day contacting women's groups in BC and nationally. Last time I tried I must have had an old contact list, because 10 of 12 emails sent bounced. So far, no bounces and we sent about 15 out. Also tried to contact some respected feminist leaders. Hopefully one or more will see the implications and help us connect into feminist networks. Trying to create some buzz here, people need to look at this!

THIS IS THE WEEK

This is the week we launch our Supreme Court media campaign for Nanc's case. (see first post) We have some local interest, but we have to get the story out to the national media. Nanc is scared to death, based on her experience in the past, that no one does care about abused women, children, elderly, but I don't believe that. And yet, I have been pushing the Family Violence Education Initiative (see post 2) for about 4 years now, and we keep getting this "soft resistance" to it. Everyone says, "oh yes, this is so important and your idea makes sense" but nothing comes of it. No one has been willing to step up to the plate and promote the idea or raise the issue in public forae.
We have had numerous conversations about why it is so difficult for people to come to grips with this issue, and our best conclusion, and probably not the only one, is that people don't want to admit to themselves or others that it has happened to them, in their families, or to those they know. If they admit it, then it means that there is something wrong with their family. Also, If they admit there is a problem, they may have to take some action, which is typically a last resort that people have to be pushed into when things get so bad that lives are at stake. Unfortunately, that is sometimes too late.
This problem IS that pervasive in our society. Almost every single person that I have talked to over the last few years about this has had their own stories, and those that didn't probably could if they were willing. This issue is, perhaps, the last bastion of barbarism in North American society. Is that why we cling to it? Is the right to assault family members a final link to our animal selves?
Anyway, it's time to lock and load. We're going over the top.

PAIN AND VALUES

I originally wrote this for Jack Hittrich, Nanc's attorney in this case. Hopefully, readers of this blog will find it inspiring:

"Great events and horrific trials identify the outstanding individuals among us. They take the ordinary man or woman and, if they have the right steel, forge them into the tools of history. Pain is the birthright of humans. What the individual does with that pain is the story of their life. For the few that find their true temper – turning their personal suffering to the service of others – there we see the shining blades that are the power and the real value of our species."

SOLUTIONS: A FAMILY VIOLENCE EDUCATION INITIATIVE

Facts

• 200 000 women and 177 000 men reported abuse in 2000 in Canada
• The abused were children, spouses, and the elderly
• This represents about one in ten Canadians each and every year
• These are only those we know about. Abuse is severely underreported
• Many victims are unaware that what they suffer is abuse until informed by friends, relatives, or professionals. They believe “that’s just the way it is.”
• Once aware that they are in abusive relationships, victims are often advised or believe they should not report

1. to keep the family together at all costs

2. to avoid community or family knowledge of the situation

3. to protect the abuser

4. to protect their financial situation

5. to avoid retaliation by the abuser

6. because the abuser will never do it again

• Abusers almost always do it again and usually escalate their abuse over time
• Children raised in abusive families often become abusers themselves, even when they are not the direct victims of the abuse
• A large percentage of violent offences are committed by victims of abuse
• Victims frequently do not know what they can do about their situation
• Adult abusers rarely stop abusing

Needs

• Children must be taught
  1. to recognize abuse in all its forms
  2. that abuse is wrong
  3. what they can and should do about an abusive situation
  4. what a healthy relationship looks like
• A national commitment to actively address family violence
• Emphasis on stopping the cycle of violence for future generations
• Provide honest and impartial advice to victims

One Solution

A nationally mandated curriculum on family violence delivered to all Canadian children in both public and private schools. It can be delivered in an annual seminar/special assembly format by specially trained facilitators that travel from school to school. It must begin at the kindergarten level, and be targeted to the developmental level of the group. It should include dramatic enactments of healthy vs. abusive interactions so that children can recognize abuse when they see it.

Conclusion

There is no “quick fix” to the problem of family violence. Education of our children, however, does provide hope for future generations to be free from the cycle of violence.

THE LEGAL DEATH OF HOPE

On April 18, 2007, three male judges of the Appeals Court of British Columbia rendered a decision in the case of Rick vs. Brandsema that removes any hope for women in abusive relationships.

The effect of this decision is to say to those women that matters of conscience, justice, equality, equity, and fairness, do not apply to them. It matters not that there was a power imbalance in the relationship, lack of sophistication of the victim, proven fraud on the part of the abuser, diagnosed and treated Post Traumatic Stress, and emotional fragility clearly demonstrated in court. If an abusive spouse can withhold information, hide money, and con you into signing a patently unfair agreement, you are done and no one cares.

Apparently British common law no longer works for women in Canada. That bastion of fairness that protected the average person from bad applications of statutory law, is irrelevant now. The abusive spouse can coerce you, con you, hide things from you, use your children against you, beat you down until you are just breathing, and then: if you sign it, you are done and no one cares.

When the letter of statutory law becomes more important than the people it is meant to serve and protect, it is fatally flawed. We do not believe that it was the intent of those who drafted or enacted our laws that they be applied in such an unforgiving, inflexible, and unjust manner. We do not believe that it was the intent of legislators to deprive abused women of hope, and of their rights. The Charter of Rights, Freedoms, and Responsibilities speaks to a fundamental right to equality under the law. Does “equality” mean that an undereducated woman that has been kept in an isolated farm culture, where lack of real information or outright misinformation and tolerance of spousal abuse is the norm, stands before the court on an equal footing with her “husband”, a sophisticated wife beater that sits on numerous corporate and organizational boards? Is she equal when she signs documents that she cannot see, let alone understand? Does the Charter err in demanding equality for each man and woman vs. fairness in circumstance? We do not believe that the Charter excludes consideration of circumstances, but will leave that issue to scholars to debate. If it is true, then the Charter is fatally flawed as well.

This decision has created a legal precedent that offends every sense of conscience. It is a greater crime against humanity to kill an abused person’s hope, than to kill their body. Death of the body ends pain and suffering, death of hope makes pain and suffering a permanent condition. We are offended by conditions in Darfur, Afghanistan, and other places where human rights are trampled by governments. We must be offended by this decision.

Ms. Rick has applied for leave to bring this matter before the Supreme Court of Canada, and the panel has been assigned to consider the application. The panel includes Chief Justice Beverly Maclachlin and Justices Charron and Rothstein.

Ms. Rick feels that it is a matter of national importance and wishes to know if the appeals court ruling is, in fact, the will of the Canadian justice system. She does not believe that “no one cares.” She asks that you review this decision and, if you decide that you do care, take action to let the Supreme Court of Canada know how you feel. Please circulate this message to others who may also care. The fundamental right of fair treatment of all abused women, and men, before the law is at stake.

This letter will form the body of both a press release and a campaign for support and public action from women’s groups across Canada, and perhaps beyond. It indicates a fundamental erosion of the rights that suffragettes fought for over the last hundred years, and is an erosion of our commitment to human rights in this country. Women comprise some 50% of the votes, while First Nations wield only some 3%. We think there is a base for some political action here. It is time for women and men of conscience to stand united once again to demand fairness and real justice before the courts.

Ms. Rick can be contacted at:

baer1@telus.net

Link to SCC case info:

http://cases-dossiers.scc-csc.gc.ca/information/cms/docket_e.asp?32098