older story--Size shouldn't matter



EDMONTON - Ken Charbonneau feels he's been victimized twice -- once by the woman sending him threatening letters and flammable packages, and again by the police officers who came to investigate.



By The Edmonton Journal

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EDMONTON - Ken Charbonneau feels he's been victimized twice -- once by the woman sending him threatening letters and flammable packages, and again by the police officers who came to investigate.
Charbonneau broke up with his girlfriend and moved out after she began hitting him. She didn't take it well. She began harassing him, he says, once even smashing a molotov cocktail against his door. Charbonneau got fed up. He called police.
Then, he says, he had to face a new problem.
Some of the officers didn't believe the six-foot, 245-pound Charbonneau could be a victim. Regardless of his size, he said some of the officers had a hard time with the idea that a man could be pushed around.
"They didn't believe a woman would do this," he says. "They asked why I couldn't take care of myself, why I didn't just move. I just wish the Edmonton police would take better care of male victims."
Charbonneau, 45, estimates the police have been to his house to investigate incidents 14 times.
Some of the officers were decent and respectful of him, he says. Some of the officers took the complaint seriously enough that they set up a surveillance camera outside his home. Others were amused or skeptical of his reports.
"They were cold, standoffish and verbally abusive," he says. "Every time I went to police, I felt like I was banging my head against the wall."
Charbonneau says officers never offered to set him up with a victims services group. Instead, he has attended therapy sessions for abused men. "It's not being weak," he says. He feels betrayed by the police after following the proper procedures and reporting the crimes against him instead of doing something on his own. "I wanted to do it properly. I went to the law and the law didn't help me."
He filed a complaint with the internal affairs unit and spoke with the Edmonton Police Commission. His complaint is still being investigated.
Police spokesman Dean Parthenis said Charbonneau's complaints have been thoroughly investigated over the months they have gone on. Investigators are awaiting the results of forensic tests. However, a city lawyer says that Charbonneau is not alone. Grant Brown has studied abusive relationships between men and women, and he isn't surprised by Charbonneau's story.
"I get clients all the time who say that police laugh when they say their wife hits them. If a big, six-foot-something, 200-pound guy says his wife is hitting him, they chuckle and say, 'You can handle it, can't you?' "
"It's devastating," Brown says. "They come in here and they're completely beaten down."
Brown says many of his clients are caught in a catch-22.
If they go to the police, they face ridicule. If they fight back in their relationship, they can have the police called on them.
Brown researched Crown prosecution files in 2001 and found "quite stark differences in treatment between men and women who are accused. Men are treated more harshly every step of the way."
Brown has found that just as many men are abused by their partners as women. According to a Statistics Canada survey released in July, an estimated seven per cent of women and six per cent of men suffered spousal violence from 2000 to 2004.
The study also found that women are more than twice as likely to be injured during such abuse. The problem is compounded because male abuse gets little attention and never becomes a political issue, Brown says. Also, a lot of men don't report the abuses they suffer.
Men don't report it out of shame or because they don't see it as a crime, says Don Dutton, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia. Dutton has done many studies on gender and violence and teaches police services about spousal abuse intervention.
"The notion is always that the male is the bad guy," Dutton says. "The old argument that men are bigger, therefore they're not at risk, is simple-minded. It assumes a male will use that size. It assumes a female won't use a weapon. It assumes a whole lot of things that aren't true."
Dutton believes that when gender violence became an issue in society, men were designated as abusers and women as victims. When Dutton tells police officers that some studies show that men are as likely to be abused as women, they are shocked.
"They were stunned," Dutton says. "They heard 95 per cent of victims were female, but they couldn't say where they learned that from.
"There's a societal thing that a man's pain isn't taken seriously."
The harassment of Charbonneau started slowly. The woman would give him the middle finger when they saw each other, or dragged her hand threateningly across her throat.
Then she smashed a lawn ornament through his screen door. She left threats on his answering machine and a box of dead fish on his front step. A Molotov cocktail was smashed against his door and his welcome mat was burned. A red X was spray-painted on his bedroom window. Letters were left in his vehicle, even when it wasn't parked at home.
Charbonneau, who plays Santa Claus for kids every Christmas, became scared. He slept on his couch with a baseball bat next to the door. He lined soup cans along his windowsills. He gets edgy if he hears someone walking outside.
"What happens if someone brings a gun? What if one of those Molotov cocktails works when I'm asleep and I wake up and this place is ablaze?"
On Oct. 7, Charbonneau awoke to a surprise on his front step, a gift bag containing the bizarre combination of a bottle of gasoline, matches, candles, newspapers and Brillo pads.
The bomb squad has been to his house three times.
He has a binder containing 14 police reports and character-reference letters he's collected from friends and family, including his ex-wife.
During his ordeal, Charbonneau got a neck tattoo of a Cantonese symbol that means "inner strength."
Charbonneau has picketed in front of police headquarters, carrying a sign that reads, "EPS takes no care of male victims."
He knows he might be setting himself up for ridicule and he's ready for it.
"I'm going to be laughed at, but my shoulders are broad enough to take it. At the end of the day, I can say I didn't get angry and I didn't react."
rcormier@thejournal.canwest.com
© (c) CanWest MediaWorks Publications Inc.


Size shouldn't matter