Domestic violence is an ongoing issue for families, police, social services and entire communities throughout Alberta - Bonnyville is no different.
"It is definitely an issue for us. It is an issue for every detachment in the province," said Bonnyville RCMP Staff Sgt. Luis Gandolfi. "It is a high-risk, high-priority type file that obviously we have to pay close attention to and do a good job on."
It isn't a small issue; in fact it is one of the more prominent issues that Dave Zimmerman, coordinator of Cold Lake Victims Services, which serves the Bonnyville-Cold Lake area, has to deal with. He says he usually sees two to three family dispute cases every week.
"Honest to goodness it is probably almost a quarter of my files," said Zimmerman. "I have over 500 files and I would guess I have about 125 (related to domestic violence) and that is just this year."
He added, "Family violence in the area is huge. You have all these different kinds of dynamics. You've got the military base in Cold Lake, you have people who have come here for jobs in the oil field, and you've got a First Nations community and a Métis settlement as well."
Gandolfi says the RCMP in the region treat domestic violence issues seriously and has started to track incidents in order to better understand possible cases.
"Over the years, I think events that took place between couples weren't always classified as high risk the way that we do now," said Gandolfi.
"If you look at the pattern that maybe goes on for a number of years, and it's slowly escalating but it is not full blown violence. There are usually indicators earlier on," said Gandolfi. "So what we have begun to do is we have started to pay closer attention to some of those earlier indicators so that we are not caught at the 11th hour with a fairly serious domestic situation and there is no background on it."
Any public arguments reported to police, such as an argument at a local restaurant or at the corner store, would be classified as early indicators for a serious domestic situation. These incidents are documented and tracked so that officers responding to a future situation can have a background on the people they are dealing with and better handle the situation.
"A few years ago we would look at each individual event as its own separate event. Now we look at the totality of the situation," said Gandolfi.
"It is a balancing act until we can determine which (incidents) are serious and which ones are not. We like to think that they are all serious until we can convince ourselves otherwise."
Although more common, the domestic violence incidents in the region don't always involve a female victim.
"We are seeing more men that are being abused in domestic violence situations then we ever had before," said Zimmerman. "I think it has always been there but I think it is being reported more."
Gandolfi said the RCMP work hand-in-hand with several different organizations and services offered in the community when dealing with domestic violence cases.
Cold Lake Victim Services, the Bonnyville Family, Child and Support Services (FCSS), Alberta Health Services addictions and substance abuse services and the Margaret Savage Crisis Centre in Cold Lake are the services available to families in the area.
All of these organizations have partnered together to provide a program called "A better way", which is an eight-week information course that teaches men and women the skills to a good relationship.
"It is based on Dr. David Wexler's material. It is to stop the violence," said Zimmerman.
RCMP facilitators work alongside community members who help co-facilitate the program. It is offered in two separate sessions, one for men and one for women.
"The program helps people out and gives them better coping methods and skills," said Zimmerman. "There is a section in there about self-timeouts, a section about anger management, a section about communication, and a section about children exposed to family violence, so there are some really, really powerful lessons in there."
According to Zimmerman the program is working really well and has even helped in saving some marriages, although he said it doesn't always work for everyone.
"I believe in it. I believe it will help people but not everybody is receptive to it and not everybody is ready to change," said Zimmerman. "Some of these guys are assigned by probation officers to attend. Some of it will help. I think just being there will help. I really think you don't change 100 per cent until you are motivated to do so."
However, the program is not solely for victims, but rather to help out struggling relationships and often both partners in the relationship are urged to attend classes.
There are cases of domestic violence that "A better way" wouldn't work for and in those cases there are a variety of other references victim services can help out with.
The Dr. Margaret Savage Crisis Centre is one of the organizations victims services work with. The centre has a residential shelter in Cold Lake with priority going to abused women and children looking to start over.
The shelter has seven bedrooms and usually allows victims to stay there for about three weeks or until they can find a new permanent residence.
"We have a full time advocacy worker who works one-on-one with the families. We also always have a front line crisis intervention worker on shift," said Lisa Morgan, associate director of the crisis centre. "We have two full time child support workers on staff who work with children and help the moms with parenting and other issues."
The centre opened in September 1982 and was registered with the provincial government in March 1993. It has been helping abused women and children cope with difficult situations ever since.
According to Morgan, unfortunately they aren't always able to help.
"Last month was the first time since the shelter has been open that we have actually had to turn away people because we didn't have room and other nearby shelters were also full and all the hotels in the area were full."
Morgan hopes it will be the last time the shelter will have to turn away people as the shelter recently acquired more residential housing space.
On Nov. 6, the shelter was handed the keys to the entire fourth floor of apartments in the newly opened Habitat for Humanity building in Cold Lake South. The units are fully furnished and will provide residency for mothers and children for a one-month to one-year time period.
For Bonnyville residents, unfortunately many of these services aren't offered locally, with most of the services only offered in Cold Lake or a bigger city.
The Bonnyville FCSS acknowledged domestic violence is a problem in the community but the centre does not have the services needed to deal with the problem.
"It is something that we are aware of but in Bonnyville we do not have any treatment programs specific to (domestic violence) that I am aware of," said FCSS Director David Beale. "There have been, in the distant past, programs that had been funded from time to time."
"We wish that mental health services provided this kind of counseling outside of the city, but currently they don't."
Beale said that Bonnyville FCSS occasionally runs anger management programs but nothing specific to domestic violence issues. The programs tend to be more focused on teaching parents how to deal with their children.
Some local politicians have recognized the need from more social services in growing rural communities such as Bonnyville for a while now. Unfortunately, organizations like the FCSS are only able to refer victims to other services outside of town.
The referrals from Bonnyville and other communities in the region is what keeps Zimmerman and others working for victims services quite busy.
Zimmerman has an office inside the Cold Lake RCMP detachment and can help take a more serious tone with domestic violence cases if need be.
The organization can help victims of abusive relationships acquire restraining orders or emergency protection orders if the case is serious.
"An emergency protection order (EPO) is a protection order that has teeth," said Zimmerman. "The police have it in their system and if the person is in a house where they are not suppose to be the police can arrest them."
In November of 2012 changes were made to EPOs and the consequences for breaking the order were strengthened.
The one downfall mentioned by Zimmerman was the lack of programs for the children involved in domestic violence cases.
"The biggest thing we want to make sure is that the kids are alright," said Zimmerman. "A lot of people think that their kids don't really see or know. Those kids are so smart. They know that their parents are fighting. They know that something is wrong and something is going on."
The transference of bad habits and attitude toward their spouse is what Zimmerman worries about in these situations. If a child sees a parent using physical abuse in their relationship they may think it is okay to use in their own relationship later in life, said Zimmerman.
"There are programs in the bigger cities but in rural Bonnyville and in rural Cold Lake we don't have the programs that we could have to really help," said Zimmerman. "Unfortunately there is not a lot we can do to help the children in our community that have been exposed to family violence. That would probably be a deficit that we have. We don't have a lot of service to help the children. We help the wife or the husband or whoever is the victim but not the children."
Zimmerman offered one solution to stopping domestic violence, noting that alcohol and substance abuse is often involved.
"Alcohol is a main contributor and that is even what the RCMP would say. Members of the RCMP and myself work very closely on a lot of family violence cases and there is a check box on our referral sheet that asks if alcohol is involved. Nine out of ten times it is yes," said Zimmerman. "If you took out alcohol you would eliminate a lot of family violence."
