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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 June 2017
On July 13, 2013, the Commission for Public Complaints released the Report Following a Public Interest Investigation into the Conduct of RCMP Members in Nova Scotia in Respect to Matters Involving Nicole (Ryan) Doucet. After interviewing all parties involved and reviewing 25 incidences involving Ms. Doucet and Mr. Ryan, the Acting Commissioner, Ian McPhail, concluded the RCMP’s policy regarding violence in relationships “was followed at all times.” According to The Report, the RCMP did not fail to protect Ms. Doucet. These conclusions, however, seem to be at odds with the evidence presented in The Report. After discussing coercive control and reviewing R. v. Ryan, the paper analyses the Commission’s findings to argue that the evidence presented to the Commission clearly illustrates that police ignored Ms. Doucet’s repeated pleas for help. The Commissioner missed a real opportunity to review current RCMP policies on domestic violence to bring them in line with current and on-going research on coercive control.
Le 13 juillet 2013, la Commission des plaintes du public contre la GRC publiait le Rapport produit à la suite d’une enquête d’intérêt public sur la conduite de membres de la GRC en Nouvelle-Écosse en lien avec l’affaire concernant Nicole (Ryan) Doucet. Au terme d’entrevues menées auprès de toutes les parties en cause, et d’une étude de 25 incidents impliquant Mme Doucet et M. Ryan, le commissaire intérimaire, Ian McPhail, concluait que la politique de la GRC concernant la violence familiale « a été observée en tout temps ». D’après le Rapport, la GRC n’a pas failli dans son devoir de protéger Mme Doucet. Toutefois, cette conclusion semble être contraire aux faits présentés dans le Rapport. Ayant abordé la notion de contrôle coercitif et examiné l’affaire R. c. Nicole (Ryan) Doucet, cet article analyse les conclusions de la Commission et affirme qu’au contraire, l’information présentée à la Commission prouve clairement que la police a fait la sourde oreille aux demandes d’aide répétées de Mme Doucet, et que le commissaire a laissé passer une occasion en or de repenser les politiques de la GRC sur la violence familiale afin de les harmoniser avec les recherches actuelles et en cours sur le contrôle coercitif.
1 R. v. Ryan [2013] 1 S.C.R. 14, at para. 35.
2 Ian MacPhail, Interim Chair of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, Report Following a Public Interest Investigation into the Conduct of the RCMP Members of Nova Scotia in Respect to Matters Involving Nicole (Ryan) Doucet, 41.
3 Ibid., 23.
4 Recent recommendations for police action regarding responses to intimate partner violence also implicitly criticize the approach taken by the RCMP in this case: Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP). National Framework for Collaborative Police Action in Intimate Partner Violence, March 2016.
5 MacPhail, Report, 27.
6 We are, as Elizabeth Sheehy writes, “acutely aware” that because of our choice to write about this trial and the subsequent investigation of the RCMP, Nicole Doucet may experience further suffering. We believe that the public needs to know about the challenges she faced and the problems her case exposed. We apologize for any hurt she may experience and seek to treat her with the utmost dignity and respect: Sheehy, Elizabeth, Defending Battered Women on Trial: Lessons from the Transcripts (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014), 18.Google Scholar It is also for this reason that we refer to Nicole Doucet as Ms. Doucet throughout this article. She has legally changed her name, and does not wish to be associated with her former husband in any way. Even when describing events when she was known as Ms. Ryan, we use her preferred name.
7 Sheehy, Defending Battered Women on Trial, 315.
8 We echo the Legal Education and Action Fund and the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, joint intervenors in the case at the Supreme Court. The Report, they argued, “does not hold any hope for correcting these services.” Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, “Joint Statement Regarding the Report Following a Public Interest Investigation into the Conduct of the RCMP Members in Nova Scotia in Respect to Matters Involving Nicole (Ryan)/Doucet: www.caefs.ca/joint-statement-regarding-report-following-a-public-interest-investigation/. Accessed July 2013.
9 Stark, Evan, Coercive Control: The Entrapment of Women in Personal Life (New York: Oxford Press, 2007), 5.Google Scholar
10 MacPhail, Report Following a Public Interest Investigation, 1.
11 R. v. Ryan (2010) N.S.C.C., at para. 114.
12 Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, “Joint Statement.”
13 R. v. Ryan (2010), at para. 154.
14 Ibid., at para. 155.
15 Ibid., at para 157.
16 Stephen Kimber, “The teacher, the hit man, and the questions that remain,” Halifax Metro, May 28, 2010. Ironically, he later recanted these questions and concerns, on the basis of The Report: “since neither Mr. Ryan nor the RCMP were called to testify about Doucet’s allegations of spousal abuse and failure to act, how could so many courts mindlessly accept these allegations as proven facts?” Stephen Kimber, “The hit man, the sexual assaulter, the courts and justice,” Halifax Metro, July 15, 2013. For a critique of undercover stings, see: Jason MacLean and Frances Chapman, “Au Revoir, Monsieur Big? Confessions, Coercion, and the Courts,” Criminal Reports 23, no. 2 (2016).
17 R. v. Ryan [2011] N.S.J. No. 157, at para. 99.
18 Ibid., at para. 121.
19 R. v. Ryan [2013] at para. 35.
20 Ibid., at para. 37.
21 Barbara Kay, “Innocent, by reason of gender,” National Post, July 3, 2013, A 12. The commentary in the National Post reflects what Florian Sauvageau, David Schneiderman and David Taras have described as the “glaring reality” that complicated legal stories are glossed over in the press in favour of more salacious, and better-selling, political arguments and that most commentators on Supreme Court of Canada cases have little to no legal background and often make mistakes in their descriptions of important legal issues: Florian Sauvageau, David Schneiderman and David Taras, The Last Word: Media Coverage of the Supreme Court of Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2006).
22 Michael Ryan, “Teacher Nicole Ryan hires hitman to kill ex husband Supreme Court sets her free husbands response,” Youtube video, 9 minutes, Posted January 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq2WWsY8Rmc.
23 Dragiewicz, Molly, Equality with a Vengeance: Men’s Rights Groups, Battered Women and Antifeminist Backlash (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2011), 64–65.Google Scholar
24 Ryan, Youtube video.
25 Philip Slayton, “A new kind of case commentary,” http://www.canadianlawyermag.com/A-new-kind-of-case-commentary.html.
26 Tristin Hopper, “See the husband in the Nova Scotia hitman case deny allegations he pursued a ‘reign of terror’ against his wife,” National Post, January 21, 2013. http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/01/21/nicole-ryan-michael-ryan/.
27 MacPhail, Report Following a Public Interest Investigation, 1.
28 Perrott, S. and Kelloway, E. K., “Scandals, sagging morale, and role ambiguity in the RCMP,” Police Practice and Research 12, no. 2 (2011): 120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
29 Ibid.
30 Brown, Lorne, An Unauthorized History of the RCMP (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1978), 127.Google Scholar
31 Schmidt, Bonnie Reilly, “The Greatest Man-Catcher of All: The First Female Mounties, the Media and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 22, no. 1 (2011): 201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
32 Deukmedijan, J. E., “From community to intelligence: Executive realignment of RCMP mission,” Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 48 (2006): 523–542;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Deukmedijan, J. E. and de Lint, W., “Community into intelligence: Resolving information uptake in the RCMP,” Policing and Society 17 (2007): 239–56;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Perrott, S. B. and Taylor, D. M., “Ethnocentrism and authoritarianism in the police,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 24 (1994): 1640–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
33 Jim Bronskill, “RCMP earmarks $100M in compensation for sexual harassment against female Mounties,” October 6, 2016, http://globalnews.ca/news/2986688/rcmp-to-settle-in-class-action-harassment-claims-from-former-mounties.
34 Critics have noted the vast majority—over 90%—of complaints are dismissed at the local level: Giuseppe Valiante, “RCMP rejects 90% of formal complaints,” Toronto Sun, October 27, 2014.
35 Under significant criticism, in 2013 the CPC became the Civilian Review and Complaint Commission for the RCMP (CRCC). The intention of this change was to “improve transparency and modernize the RCMP’s human resources regime.” Enhancing RCMP Accountability Act S.C. 2013 c. 18, assented June 19, 2013. The reforms may be largely superficial, as Ian MacPhail, the interim Commissioner of the CPC from January 28, 2010, until July 14, 2013, was immediately appointed as Commissioner of the CRCC.
36 MacPhail, Report Following a Public Interest Investigation, 2.
37 Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act 45.34 (1) and (2).
38 Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act 45.76 (1).
39 Peter Kasurak, “Is there a British solution to the RCMP’s problems?” Policy Options September 11, 2007, at para. 22, policyoptions.irrpp.org/magazines/reasonable-accommodation/is-there-a-british-solution-to-the-rcmps-problems/.
40 Canada (RCMP Public Complaints Commission) v. Canada (Attorney General) 2004 F.C. 830.
41 Kasurak, “Is there a British solution?,” at para. 22.
42 Mr. Big stings are not permitted in either the United States or the United Kingdom. In Canada, however, the legality of such operations was upheld in R. v. Hebert [1990] 2 S.C.R. 151. Canadian courts have found that people in situations such as those of Ms. Doucet are not under detention and therefore are not under the coercive power of the state, so the evidence has not been obtained improperly.
43 According to Lenore Walker, abuse consists of “three phases that repeat themselves in a cycle”: first, the tension building phase; second, the acute battering phase; and third, the loving contrition phase. When women experience the complete cycle, they develop learned helplessness, where the battered woman becomes increasingly passive and “feels that she has no control over the abusive relationship and that she cannot leave.” Lenore Walker, “Battered woman syndrome,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1087, no. 1 (2006): 146. See also: Walker, Lenore, The Battered Woman (New York: Harper and Row, 1979);Google ScholarPubMed and Walker, Lenore, Terrifying Love: Why Battered Women Kill and How Society Responds (New York: Harper Collins, 1989).Google Scholar
44 Ellen Anderson, Bertha Wilson: Law as Large as Life (Toronto: University of Toronto Press and the Osgoode Society for Legal History, 2001), 218–21.
45 Sheehy, Defending Battered Women on Trial, 23. These self-defence standards were first challenged in the United States in State v. Wanrow (1977), 559 P2d 548 (Wash S Ct) and State v. Kelly (1984) A2d 364 (NJ S Ct).
46 R. v. Lavallee [1990] 1 S.C.R., 883.
47 And even these reduced sentences are now more difficult to assign given new mandatory minimum sentencing regulations: Sheehy, Defending Battered Women on Trial, 7 and 9.
48 Stark, Evan, “Re-Presenting Woman Battering: From Battered Woman’s Syndrome to Coercive Control,” Alberta Law Review 58, no. 4 (1994–1995): 973.Google Scholar
49 Rebecca Bradfield, “Women Who Kill: Lack of Intent and Diminished Responsibility as the Other ‘Defences’ to Spousal Homicide,” Current Issues in Criminal Justice 13, no. 2 (2001–2), 143; Elizabeth Comack, “Do We Need to Syndromize Women’s Experiences? The Limitations of the ‘Battered Women’s Syndrome,,” in Unsettling Truths: Battered Women, Policy, Politics and Contemporary Research ed. Kevin Bonnycastle and George Rigakos (Vancouver: Collective Press, 1998); Grant, Isabel, “The Syndromization of Women’s Experiences,” University of British Columbia Law Review 25, no. 1 (1991);Google Scholar Lazar, Ruthy, “Reconceptualizing Victimization and Agency in the Discourse of Battered Women Who Kill,” Studies in Law, Politics and Society 45 (2008);Google Scholar McColgan, Aileen, “In Defence of Battered Women Who Kill,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 13, no. 4 (1993);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Noonan, Sheila, “Battered Women’s Syndrome: Shifting the Patterns of Criminal Law Defences or (Re) Inscribing the Familiar,” in Feminist Perspectives on Foundational Subjects of Law, ed. Bottomley, Anne (London: Cavendish Press, 1996);Google Scholar Randall, Melanie, “Domestic Violence and the Construction of ‘Ideal Victims’: Assaulted Women’s ‘Image Problems’ in Law,” St. Louis University Public Law Review XXII (2004), 07;Google Scholar Schaffer, Martha, “The Battered Woman Syndrome Revisited: Some Complicating Thoughts Five Years After R. v. Lavallee,” University of Toronto Law Journal 47, no. 1 (1997);Google Scholar and Stubbs, Julie and Tolmie, Julia, “Defending Battered Women on Charges of Homicide: The Structural and Systemic versus the Personal and Particular,” in Women, Madness and the Law: A Feminist Reader, ed. Chan, Wendy, Chunn, Dorothy, and Menzies, Robert (London: Glasshouse Press, 2005), 191.Google Scholar The propensity of courts to blame racialized women for their own victimization, and to assert that such women are aggressors, has also been critiqued: Stubbs, Julie and Tolmie, Julia, “Gender, Race and the Battered Woman Syndrome: An Australian Case Study,” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 8, no. 1 (1995).Google Scholar Walker’s most recent re-formulation of Battered ’Woman’s Syndrome asserts that critical responses have missed her central point that the severity of abuse increases over time and that “the impact from the most recent event would include the totality of the battering experience,” and that Battered ’Woman’s Syndrome should not be used independently of more wide-ranging evidence about the risk of femicide. Lenore Walker, The Battered Woman Syndrome, 3rd ed. (New York: Springer Publishing, 2009), 55–56.
50 Stark, Coercive Control, 5.
51 Ibid., 5.
52 Ibid., 131.
53 Herman, Judith Lewis, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 86.Google Scholar
54 Ibid., 86.
55 Sheehy, Defending Battered Women on Trial, 235.
56 Nancy Janovicek, No Place to Go: Local Histories of the Battered Women’s Shelter Movement (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007); and Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses, Shelter Voices, March 2014, www.oaith.ca/assets/files/shelter%20voices%20%20Ontario,%202014%20FINAL.pdf.
57 Ida Johnson, “Victims’ perceptions of police response to domestic violence incidents,” Journal of Criminal Justice 35, no. 5) (September–October 2007), 498–510; and Trujillo, Monica Perez and Ross, Stuart, “Police Response to Domestic Violence: Decisions about Risk and Risk Management,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 23, no. 4 (2008).Google Scholar
58 Chewters, Cynthia, “Violence Against Women and Children: Some Legal Issues,” Canadian Journal of Family Law 20, no. 1 (2000): 99;Google Scholar and Schaffer, Martha, “Joint Custody since Kaplanis and Ladisa: A Review of Recent Ontario Case Law,” Canadian Family Law Quarterly 26, no. 3 (2007): 315.Google Scholar
59 See Elizabeth Sheehy, “Bonnie Mooney,” in Defending Battered Women on Trial, for a detailed examination of the consequences of such failure for one battered woman, Bonnie Mooney, who was attacked in a friend’s home after separation. Her friend was killed, and her daughter gravely injured, by her ex-partner. She had repeatedly sought help from the police and ultimately sued them for negligence. The police were exonerated on the twin mistaken beliefs that Mooney could have saved herself by leaving (although she had, in fact, left) and that her ex-partner was too violent and unpredictable for his actions to have been prevented.
60 Stark, Coercive Control, 57.
61 Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 94. See also: Liz Kelly, Surviving Sexual Violence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987).
62 Stark, Coercive Control, 280.
63 Mahoney, M., “Legal Images of Battered Women: Redefining the Issue of Separation,” Michigan Law Review 90, no. 1 (1991): 8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
64 Stark, Evan and Flitcraft, Anne, Women at Risk: Domestic Violence and Women’s Health (Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 1996), 12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
65 Ibid., 21.
66 Ibid.
67 Gina Gallo, “Airing Law Enforcement’s Dirty Laundry,” Law Enforcement Technology 31, no. 6 (2004): 132; and Diana Wetendorf, When the Batterer is a Law Enforcement Officer: A Guide for Advocates (Battered Women’s Justice Project, 2004), http://www.vaw.umn.edu/.
68 MacPhail, Report, 1.
69 Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP, “Complaints Commission releases report on RCMP’s handling of complaints involving Nicole Ryan Doucet,” July 10, 2013, https://www.crcc-ccetp.gc.ca/en/newsroom/complaints-commission-releases-report-rcmps-handling-complaints-involving-nicole-ryan.
70 Joint Statement Regarding the Report Following a Public Interest Investigation into the Conduct of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Members in Nova Scotia in Respect to Matters Involving Nicole (Ryan) Doucet; Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act Subsection 45.43 (1), http://www.caefs.ca/joint-statement-regarding.
71 MacPhail, Report Following a Public Interest Investigation, 21.
72 Ibid., 8, 16, and 19.
73 Stark and Flitcraft, Women at Risk, 263–64.
74 The home in which the family resided had been purchased by Nicole Doucet and her father. Her father had then transferred his share of the property to two of Doucet’s sisters. Repeated disputes arose about ownership of the property. MacPhail, Report, 3.
75 R. v. Ryan [2013] at para. 164.
76 MacPhail, Report Following a Public Interest Investigation, 11.
77 Helen Baker, “The Significance of Shame in the Lives of Women Who Experience Male Violence,” Liverpool Law Review 34, no. 2 (August 2013); and Paula Wilcom, Surviving Domestic Violence: Gender, Poverty and Agency (Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006).
78 MacPhail, Report Following a Public Interest Investigation, 8.
79 Ibid., 9.
80 Ibid.
81 Ibid.
82 Ibid., 10.
83 Ibid. While we cannot know which assessment tool was used by the social worker in this case, a number of such tools are available and are considered by social workers to be crucial to safety planning: Allison Millar, Ruth Code, and Lisa Ha, Inventory of Spousal Violence Risk Assessment Tools Used in Canada (Ottawa: Research and Statistics Division, Department of Justice, April 2009, updated 2013): www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cj-jp/fv-vf/rr09_7/rr09_7.pdf. Further, studies of risk assessment suggest that women themselves are often the most accurate at assessing potential escalation and lethality: Lauren Bennett Cattaneo, Margaret Bell, Lisa Goodman, and Mary Anne Dutton, “Intimate Partner Violence Victims’ Accuracy in Assessing their Risk of Re-abuse,” Journal of Family Violence 22, no. 6 (August 2007): 429–40.
84 MacPhail, Report Following a Public Interest Investigation, 23–24.
85 Ibid., 13.
86 Ibid.
87 Ibid., 15. The file on this incident has since been purged.
88 Ibid., 16.
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid.
91 Ibid., 17.
92 Sheehy, Elizabeth, “Causation, Common Sense and the Common Law: Replacing Unexamined Assumptions with What We Know about Male Violence Against Women or from Jane Doe to Bonnie Mooney,” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 17, no. 1 (2005), 114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
93 MacPhail, Report Following a Public Interest Investigation, 17.
94 Ibid.
95 Ibid., 20.
96 Ibid., 28.
97 Ibid., 18.
98 Ibid.
99 Ibid., 19.
100 Ibid.
101 Ibid., 29.
102 Ibid., 21.
103 Ibid., 21–22.
104 Ibid., 22.
105 Ibid.
106 Ibid., 23.
107 R. v. Ryan (2010), at para. 154.
108 MacPhail, Report Following a Public Interest Investigation, 23–24.
109 Ibid., 24.
110 Sheehy, Defending Battered Women on Trial, 87.
111 MacPhail, Report Following a Public Interest Investigation, 27.
112 Ibid., 25–26.
113 Colin Freeze, “RCMP ‘did not fail’ abused woman agency finds,” Globe and Mail, July 11, 2013, A.7.
114 Douglas Quan, “RCMP didn’t fail Doucet,” The Gazette, July 11, 2013, A.11.
115 Jonathon Kay, “The dangerous expansion of ‘battered woman defence’ in Canadian law,” National Post, July 15, 2013, http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/07/15/jonathon-kay-decision-to-clear-woman-who-hired-hit-man-sets-dangerous-precedent/.
116 Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, Joint Statement Regarding the Report.
117 Elizabeth Schneider, “The Violence of Privacy,” in The Public Nature of Private Violence: The Discovery of Domestic Abuse, Martha Albertson Fineman and Roxanne Myitiuk, (London: Routledge, 1994), 42.
118 Sheehy, “Causation, Common Sense and Common Law,” 116.
