I've got it. I just didn't hear you.
In 1979, two women's groups, The Hub in Almonte and The Exchange in Carleton Place, worked together to establish Lanark County Interval House. I volunteered in the shelter and served on the board. Later I was hired as a counsellor and public educator.
Working in the shelter opened my eyes to the violence rural women were enduring. I didn't know that friends were being abused. No one talked about it until there was a safe place for them and their children. The following is a stark example of such hidden abuse.
My eldest daughter’s best friend—I’ll call her Mary—was raped for years by her father. I’ll call him Robert. We were friends of the family. Robert was the photographer at our wedding. Mary was a vivacious, smart, athletic and delightful girl. We had no idea of what she was enduring. At age 14, Mary became pregnant. Robert took her to the Ottawa Civic Hospital for an abortion and then bought her birth control pills. That is when Mary ran away from home. She told her mother, who took the children and left him. We knew about the separation but didn’t find out about the abuse until years later, when Robert was charged with the rape of his new wife’s sister. Both women had immigrated from the Philippines. He actually said to the police, “I don’t know why she complained. My daughter never complained.”
The police interviewed Mary. They charged Robert with the sexual abuse of his daughter but not the sexual assault of the immigrant woman. Robert was convicted and served two years less a day.
Mary is still a delightful person and holds a responsible position in the Government of Canada.
My book, A Narrow Doorway: Women’s Stories of Escape from Abuse, was published in 1996. It contains interviews with 10 women who had been in our shelter, as well as updates written several years later, because it took me nine years to find a publisher.
Recently I reread my book. What is stark is the fact that nothing has really changed. Men are still beating their wives, raping their girlfriends, committing incest against their daughters, abusing pets, etc. Our society, and especially our judicial system, has yet to find appropriate measures to address this reality and stop it.
Rural women face significant barriers. In rural communities, everybody knows everybody. An abused woman would be concerned about the reaction of her partner’s parents, who probably live next door, or concerned that others would not believe that Joe, a favourite on the local hockey team, could be abusive. The police officer who plays hockey on the same team may be reluctant to get involved or to believe the woman’s story. Neighbours of Joe, knowing that he was abusive, might be afraid to support his partner for fear of reprisal. Sometimes there is no telephone or Internet service in the home. Winter plays a special role in isolation in rural areas. Some women have no transportation. There is a higher ratio of guns in rural homes. A woman told us that after an argument, her husband would clean his gun. She took that as a threat.
The status of the abuser in the community is significant. Sometimes he is the employer and his employees are dependent on him and can’t support his wife, or he is the landlord and a friend of the abuser and doesn’t want to get involved by renting to the wife. He may be the reeve of the township and highly regarded by many.
The number of church ministers who were abusive was a revelation to me. One minister immediately cleaned out his wife’s bank account on the day she left him. The teller didn’t question his action. After all, he was the local minister.
A group of rural ministers used to meet with me in the shelter. There were four women and two men. I eventually learned that both men were sexually abusive. One was sexually abusive to one of the female ministers.
She puzzled about how to deal with this man. She didn't want to upset his wife or damage his reputation.
A public health nurse told me that when she was in training in Toronto in the mid-1960s, the students were sent to North Lanark, where there was the largest percentage of people in Ontario with congenital heart anomalies, an indication of a small gene pool. She said it could be due to the result of isolation, intermarriage with cousins or incest.
I used to assist the local health unit in finding transportation for women who needed abortions. Some of these women were new immigrants working as nannies. I was curious as to how they got pregnant. I am sure that some were raped by the man of the house, but couldn't risk losing their job by revealing their condition to his wife.