CANADA: Boom creates 'perfect storm' of domestic abuse in Calgary

. CALGARY, Alberta (Calgary Herald), September 8, 2008: By Valerie Fortney, Calgary Herald The appointment was for 11 a.m., the plan to discuss how to stem the tide of Calgary's increasingly troubling domestic violence problem. But police Chief Rick Hanson kept this writer cooling her heels for a good two hours on Friday before he was finally ready to sit down and talk. It's not that the 32-year Calgary Police Service veteran isn't passionate about the issue; in fact, he has long been an outspoken proponent of improving the ways in which the police, courts, social agencies and others on the front lines of domestic violence deal with this threat to both private citizens and society at large. The reason for the delay on this day was that Hanson had to attend a news conference on yet another domestic homicide in our city. The night before, a man called 911 to report he had killed his wife; when two officers arrived at the couple's Bankview home, the man, bloodied and brandishing a knife, threatened officers. One officer shot the man, killing him. In another room in the apartment, the officers found Sabah Rizig -- who friends say had recently left the marriage -- but it was too late to save her. "We can never put enough emphasis on dealing with domestic violence," says Hanson with a weary shake of his head. "But your timing is impeccable." Some of the country's most high-profile incidents of deadly domestic violence in years have occurred in our city just these past nine months: the murder-suicide of the Lall family and tenant Amber Bowerman; the death of Darcy-Rae Elder, whose husband, Ricky Anguish, later drove into the path of an oncoming semi-truck; the death in Ottawa of former Calgarian Alicia Bateman, whose fiance, Ryan Sawchuk, hanged himself after killing her; and the life sentence handed to Steven Mitchell for killing his common-law wife, Mary Kay Schmidt. And while each story is unique in its own way, these headline-making tragedies, unfortunately, are anything but isolated incidents. Alberta leads the country in rates of stalking, domestic assaults and murder-suicide. We're also second in the country when it comes to spousal homicide. The Alberta Council of Women's Shelters reports that since 2006 there has been a 35 per cent increase in calls to the province's 41 centres; over the past several years, the Calgary Police Service has seen a 10 per cent annual increase in domestic reports, now averaging 1,100 per month. For a crime long considered the most unreported, domestic violence is now in the top five of calls to the police. Our province's dubious title as domestic violence capital of Canada caught the attention of Governor General Michaelle Jean last year while on a visit to Calgary. "I think violence against women is unacceptable, and when you look at the number of incidents here in Alberta . . . it's the most acute situation in the whole country. Why? I don't know," Jean told the Herald in an exclusive interview. "In the last five years, we are talking about 90,000 incidents of domestic violence here in Alberta. It's not an aboriginal problem, it's not a non-aboriginal problem, it's a global problem and we are all concerned about it." Interesting? Click to read more....... "We know so much more about domestic violence, about its complexity and ways to fight it," says Reimer, who will host the inaugural World Conference of Women's Shelters in Edmonton from Sept. 8 to 11, bringing together the world's top experts, educators and workers in the field of domestic violence. "It's been slow going, and we still have far to go . . . but at least they don't laugh about it in the House of Commons anymore." vfortney@theherald.canwest.com © The Calgary Herald 2008