Working with METRAC, days 1/2

Well, these days have been pretty interesting. The weekend was spent getting oriented in Toronto and sightseeing (I walked a lot, had some fun, made my feet complain incessantly, etc...) and I got a general gist of the city (which I think has a lot of character in some places, but is also quite sterile in others, just like every other city I've been to).

On Monday I went with my advisor at CCI to the METRAC office. METRAC is an organization that specializes in advocacy and education for domestic violence against women and children in particular. They complete a large range of work, and not just the policy stuff; it was great to talk to people and get a sense of their community outreach activities, their educational programs, and their general sense of where lessons can be addressed.

METRAC also completed a court watch study in Toronto in the years 2005-2006 concerning victims of sexual abuse. Overall, the findings were that the justice system, while procedurally fair (in theory per the Code) to the complainant, was often fraught with elements that increased the difficulty complainants had bringing their testimony and case to court.

Sexual assault tends to have the testimony of the complainant and defendant as the primary pieces of evidence (and in many cases, the sole), and so it is clear that the complainant (the one bringing the charge) be able to give their testimony and above all to feel safe and comfortable. For most people, testimony in court is already a nervewracking ordeal because of the probing nature of cross-examination and the fact that the court is watching and observing your every word and move. This is magnified in a case of sexual assault because the victim is often socially stigmatized - for instance, a normal assault victim (a gunshot wound, etc) will often elicit some sympathy, or the community will generally accept that the inflicted damage was not caused by him, by caused by those who perpetrated the damage, and at the very least society tends to examine the perpetrator more stringently than the victim. In sexual assault, certain social viewpoints exist which shift the community's examination onto the victim, mostly because people have preconceived myths about the parties who could inspire the act. Often, the victim has to have been "asking for it" in some way, or the perpetrator has to fit into some typecast mould of just who is a sexual predator. This kind of preconception does exist for all crimes but people seem to realize it is a preconception when the crime is something like an assault or theft or even murder.

In Canada, there are some efforts made to try and break down these perceptions but they do persist even in the legal system. I think that in Ghana there will usually be difficulties for complainants in bringing their case to court, which may discourage people from testifying. In Canada, the rate of prosecuted accusations is extremely low (somewhere in the single digit percentage range), and that's with what many Westerners perceive as a greater position of economic and social parity between the sexes. In Ghana, are the rates even lower, and does that actually distort the image of just what forms of domestic violence take place (since prosecution of the crime might need to fit under certain social beliefs held by the Crown attorney)? And how are things such as testimony, complainant anonymity, the rules of evidence, and procedural training for Crown and judges handled?

The Crown has a simpler role in some ways because in prosecuting the case they can at least state that they take the side of the complainant, at least for the facts of this offense. This might lead to better interaction between the complainant and Crown, though:
- even in Canada the Crown may not advocate as strongly as they should (ie, they don't raise as many objections as they could when certain things such as the relationship between complainant and accused get raised - though it may be important to determining a future sentence, the real fact of the matter is not whether they were husband or wife or strangers, it's *whether there was no consent and if the elements of sexual assault occurred*...)
- the Crown may not strongly argue to eliminate certain other myths that might get raised (one myth the defence tends to raise is that consent can be implied, and it simply cannot for the purposes of sex... if one views sex as a contract between two consenting parties, then by contractual rules there has to be a clear and unequivocal offer and acceptance of the contract in order for it to be considered a real contract; it's like telling someone to show up at 9AM and them then assuming that you instantly offered them a job and they are then entitled to all manner of pay, without the formal document)
It's things like this which may discourage complainants from participating in the process, but at least the Crown lawyer will not be accused of bias if they advocate more strongly on behalf of the complainant - after all, it is the case the Crown chose to pursue.

Where I think the matter gets difficult is to what degree judges should accommodate the complainant. Testimony from any witness can be spotty, but for many victims of sexual assault the testimony may be incoherent if the questioning is not performed in the right manner. Much more often than other victim types, victims of sexual assault will work to forget the experience, or block out certain replaying memories, which may then be exploited by the defence in cross-examination, and harsh cross-examination may deflate the complainant's will to fully testify and participate by their perceptions of how court is going. While the defence's job is definitely to argue on behalf of the defendant (and I thus agree that some level of probing cross-examination has to be allowed in order for the trial to be fair), it becomes difficult for a judge (or those organizing judicial-education seminars) to determine what line to take in trying to make the courtroom an environment where the complainant feels safe. Is the most clinical, most professional attitude, without a trace of emotion the best course of action to take, or should there be a concerted effort to give some lenience to the complainant in order to encourage them to participate? Also, does this concerted effort cause the court to become procedurally biased, and diminish the rights of the accused? All of these questions are difficult to answer, which is what I found from the METRAC reports.

I have also had the chance to read quite a bit about Ghana's DVA, some of Ghana's DVA itself and many reports about Ghanaian society. What is interesting about Ghanaian society is the growth of "consensual unions", which in some ways are like the common-law status conferred in North America. There is some recognition of these, though many Ghanaians feel that they have only come because of the imposition of Western values and systems which erode the sanctity of marriage. Because of this, consensual unions have some very different effects for the parties involved upon dissolution. Property, for instance, does not get divided per a time fashion (how long the relationship existed) or in many cases an effort fashion (how much work or resources parties put into an asset), but gets divided between genders along some lines which are often detrimental to women (for instance, property bought using the efforts of both people in the relationship [I refer to heterosexual because, as far as I can recall, homosexuality is still unmentioned or perhaps illegal in Ghana] will revert to the male). This raises the question of just how far I should look into acts which aren't strictly related to domestic violence: it might be quite possible that the fear of a dissolution of the relationship and the resultant loss of property in a consensual union influences certain women in Ghana to not report cases of domestic violence or sexual assault. Does this mean that in trying to look at potential reasons why certain countries may be successful over others, I should look at variables which may not have a strict relation, and if so, how far should this examination go?

The rest of the week should be interesting. I want to go see court procedure for trials involving sexual assault - reading about it is informative but watching it first-hand will give me a better sense of what Canada attempts to employ. I also am currently reading something that looks at land divisions in Ghana along a gender perspective, and I'm trying to take notes on that with respect to both domestic violence and/or power imbalances, as well as the resultant health status of people in the region (per some work I want to do for Judy). I'm looking forward to the rest of this week! And hopefully, I'll sit down more tomorrow, since my legs are starting to grow sorer! But my head is spinning in a good way and I'm having a great time!

Until the next entry!