Whats Wrong with the Legal Responses to Violence Against Women?
by Pamela Cross, September 7, 2004 The recent, highly dramatic story that unfolded largely in front of Toronto’s Union Station has once again made the issue of the legal response to violence against women headline news. Why? In most ways, this story is almost identical with the stories of thousands of women’s lives. It is different in only two respects: • the violence, so often hidden behind the front doors of people’s homes became very public when Mr. Brooks first attacked his wife in the food court of a large, downtown Toronto commercial building and then held another woman hostage on a main street in front of the train station during morning rush hour, and • it was Mr. Brooks and not his wife or the hostage who was dead at the end of the day.We have no doubt that without these two factors, the violence experienced by Mrs. Brooks and her children for almost two decades would not have received this kind of public attention. This became a story largely because what is usually private b
