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The general public has lengthy struggled with which survivors of intimate companion violence to imagine. Assist typically hinges on an expectation that they are going to be excellent, as if this have been remotely attainable. The fact is that survivors are complicated, like all of us. Over time, they’ve turn into trapped in a nightmare they really feel they will’t escape.
Lisa Banfield survived the evening of April 18, 2020, when her common-law companion tied her up, brutally assaulted her and went on a murderous rampage in Portapique, N.S. Earlier than that, she survived 19 years of abuse at his palms.
Twenty-two members of this group didn’t survive that evening of violence. Neither did the assassin, who was killed by police in a bid to finish his assault — and due to this, there isn’t a felony trial. As a substitute, there’s the Mass Casualty Fee inquiry, a fact-finding course of meant to stop future massacres of this type.
Banfield has been absolutely co-operative for the reason that evening of the murders, together with offering an announcement to the police from her hospital mattress. When she testified earlier than the fee on Friday, many relations of the victims walked out of the courtroom earlier than her testimony. The fee had made the sound but controversial resolution to defend her from cross-examination, a defend additionally afforded to witnesses, together with the RCMP.
Critics contend that, regardless of Banfield giving 5 interviews to the Fee and at the very least 4 others to the RCMP, there are holes in her testimony. How did she survive an evening within the woods in her yoga pants? How did she untie herself? These match right into a narrative of suspicion that she in some way was an confederate to her ex-partner’s plan for the mass taking pictures. Police haven’t laid costs, suggesting they don’t imagine Banfield knew what her abuser deliberate. The one cost laid towards her — supplying ammunition — was stayed, and might be dealt with by means of a restorative justice course of.
The demand to prod her for inconsistencies is an try to fulfill the devastating but comprehensible want to show the fee right into a felony trial. This effort has sadly relied on victim-blaming tropes, which anticipate perfection on the a part of survivors of intimate companion violence. Banfield isn’t, and shouldn’t, be on trial.
Observers on social media have repeatedly requested, “If the abuse was so horrible, why did she keep? Why didn’t she report it to the police?” These misguided questions fail to grasp the complexity of intimate companion violence, particularly over an extended interval. Banfield testified that her ex-partner saved weapons all around the residence and would transfer them about, save for one constant place — the gun in his bedside desk.
Banfield stated she was terrified for her security and doubted she could be believed. This mirrors the experiences of these subjected to intimate companion violence throughout the nation. Ladies keep for a lot of causes, particularly if their abuser is somebody like Banfield’s companion, who was rich and revered in the neighborhood. It has been reported that dozens of individuals knew concerning the abuse, together with the police, who have been referred to as at the very least twice by involved group members — with no obvious motion taken.
The query shouldn’t be why Banfield stayed; it ought to be why we nonetheless dwell in a society that couldn’t make it protected for her to go away. Intimate companion violence is commonly seen as a non-public challenge, the duty of these inside the relationship. This bloodbath has revealed it’s a raging public well being and security downside that ought to be handled just like the epidemic it’s — one that may be a warning signal of mass violence.
Because the fee strikes on with its work, we should do not forget that Banfield isn’t an extension of her violent companion; she is a survivor of his violence. Vilifying her is not going to carry again the 22 folks murdered that day.
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