Calgary police say five dead in 'domestic homicide' II

I read that book. And it was very interesting, though I did not agree with all of it, somce of it was really good rock solid advice. Specifically paying attention to gut signals, which many people apparently try and overide. If you [i]feel[/i] something is wrong, maybe something [i]is[/i] wrong.

He put a lot of emphasis on not second guessing your own feelings.

They sure do.

quote:

---

potential for violence from psychotic males should always be taken seriously

---

Of course, that also goes for non-psychotic males. And males whom you have no idea whether they will be labeled psychotic by whomever after they turn violent.

quote:

---

Originally posted by scooter:
[b]Even Mr. Lall's doctor didn't catch this just a few days before he started killing.[/b]

---

How do you know this?

And if it is the case that the Dr missed it, i would think the Dr learned huge a lesson.

quote:

---

Originally posted by scooter:
[b]And what would you suggestion society should do? Should we lock them up? Force them into medical treatment? Heck, how would you spot someone like Mr. Lall?

Last time I checked, forcing an adult into medical treatment, specially mental treatment, is extremely difficult.[/b]

---

This is a [i]fundamental[/i] difficulty regarding [i]preventing[/i] these killings. If a person has a mental condition that is medically treatable, either the individual has to voluntarily accept treatment or be forced to undergo treatment. Forced treatment of medical conditions is usually not successful.

And, as martin dufresne correctly pointed out in the other thread, many (most?) potential killers are not "treatable" (i.e., they don't have a medical condition that is treatable).

Locking people up for "pre-crimes" (ala "Minority Report") has its own difficulties.

quote:

---

Originally posted by martin dufresne:
[b]Interesting how both of you are in lockstep with a straw man about "locking up" people like Lall when no one else has suggested any such thing.[/b]

---

Actually, no one has suggested that anyone be locked up. The issue is, in part: What steps can be taken to prevent an individual from killing people? There are a finite number of options: (1) Treatment (if possible), (2) retraining them if they exhibit tendencies that indicate they may kill, (3) education (although that may have limited success for someone who possesses tendencies that indicate future homicidal behavior), (4) taking steps to secure the safety of those who may be most likely to be the victims of the individual, (5) ???

quote:

---

Originally posted by martin dufresne:
[b]If you really want to know what is being proposed, you could re-read the previous thread.[/b]

---

Most of what has been proposed, I think, has been a focus on (4).

[ 01 June 2008: Message edited by: Sven ]

Thanks for being so straightforward. Sharing this concern with her without being judgmental is extremely important. I think she needs to talk to women who know such situations very well. She doesn't have to check into a women's shelter to contact one and learn what are her rights, options and local resources. There is a very good book by Ann Jones and Susan Schechter called When Love Goes Wrong (Harper-Collins, 1992) that helps readers makes sense of a controlling situation. There is a whole chapter on what you can do as a friend of a woman caught in such a situation, how to deal with your own feelings of fear and occasional frustration. I highly recommend it.

Sven, please pass on info about [url=http://www.awhl.org]this website[/url] which, although based in Ontario only, has very useful general info about abuse and support, as well as how to cover your tracks while looking on different support sites on the internet. They even have a section about when you clear the memory of visited sites it might look suspicious, so after you check out sites re. abuse and support, delete them, then go visit a bunch of non-related sites in order to not have an empty cache. Yes, abusers look for this, and are this smart. Women who work in this field, however, are smarter.

Sven, you've actually provided an example that fits very well in this discussion. This man [b]will[/b] be violent towards his partner if she doesn't leave. He will likely be violent towards her if she does leave, but she must leave as soon as possible, not wait for her children to leave home some mystical time in the future. If she can hear this advice, and have a safety plan in place (there's ton of info about what is a safety plan on the internet) she needs to leave as soon as possible. This is the moment, before lasting physical harm has occurred, that there is opportunity to salvage the rest of her life.

I agree there's a limited amount of support you can provide, given she's not your friend, so please pass this info on to your wife.

As for option 4, I agree with you, it's not fair. But when it comes to keeping a woman safe and alive, issues of fairness are [b]irrelevant[/b]. I can't emphasize this enough. She is the top priority, as well as her children if they are at risk.

Letter to the Sun: Ryan Sawchuk made his intentions clear

"Without telling anyone, Sawchuk booked a last-minute flight from Calgary to Ottawa," writes the Winnipeg Sun.
And yet, a few lines below, you quote the murderer's father: ""He wasn't going to let Alicia go," he replied. "He said 'I won't let her go.' "
Men who murder their partner almost always signal their intentions, testing the ground so to speak. Not taking these statements at face value can cost a woman her life. It did for Alicia Bateman.
Please, let's all stand up to abusers and make it clear to them that possessivity and "crimes of honour" are unacceptable in Canadian society.

Martin Dufresne
Montreal, Qc

I hesitate to generalize but here are a few patterns I have noticed:

Many of the murderers do not suicide.

Others self-inflict mere superficial wounds, as if to paint themselves as the co-victim of events they had no agency or control in.

Those that do complete suicide probably do not do so in order to avoid prison - since they are choosing a worse fate - but because they are too spineless to accept the loss of someone whom they are deeptly invested in controlling and they are socially entitled to use violence agaunst when they do not get/keep what they want.

And, worse of all, those who do not suicide almost always are allowed to plea-bargain a reduced charge depite clearest indications of premeditation, as soon as they plead any combination of grief, provocation or temporary insanity. Prison sentences for wife-murder often sometimes run as short as one year.

Consider the case of Cйline Carriиre, 35, strangled by her husband, Pierre Larochelle, 36, on October 12, 2000 in Omerville (Qc).
He left a 10-page letter attempting to justify the murder by smearing the victim as having told him he was a failure, she had a lover, etc. A Montreal tabloid hammered home this message for days during his trial, presenting the murderer as the real hapless victim in this case. The Crown only charged him with involuntary homicide and the Crown merely asked for 5-7 years of detention. Despite acknowledging the "voluntary character" of Larochelle's act, the trial jusge sentenced him to a mere three years (that is one year with parole). To justify his request for such a short sentence, the [b]Crown prosecutor[/b] had the gall to argue that "Two children have lost both their mother and their father in this sad affair..."

Arrrgggghhhh... [img]mad.gif" border="0[/img]

[ 02 June 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

That's so true... and scary. For monitoring these murders, I have often noticed a clear "copy-cat" pattern where a man will kill a partner or children within days of such a murder by another man in the same province or region - in the context of the predictable media barrage of compassion heaped on the murderer's "issues". Women's shelters also often report being told by battered women at such moments that they would rather stay or return home rather than be stalked and killed (as Ms. Bateman was in Ottawa).

quote:

---

Originally posted by martin dufresne:
[b]For those who may have missed it, Canwest announced 19 hour ago that Sawchuk - the man who flew from Calgary to kill his fiancee after playing a golf tournament - was an employee of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).[/b]

---

I thought that it was his fiance, Alicia Bateman, who was employed by CSIS and that Sawchuk tried to find a job while in Ottawa but didn't succeed so he returned to Calgary.

I find these crimes terrifying. I appreciate all the great links that have been provided but I fear that too many people aren't aware of the tell tale signs or think that preserving a relationship should be the ultimate goal, despite what can be devastating consequences.

The Joshua Lall case really disturbs me, or at least how it has been covered. It reminds me of the Andrea Yates case. In addition to suffering from severe depression, she was involved with a very fundamentalist fringe Christian group that had her convinced that she was evil/possessed etc.

Alison Lall was described by her friends as being very Christian, as in that would be one of the three words she would use to describe herself. That rigidness in raising their children and almost obsessive scheduling of their daily activities that Martin pointed out is something that I have seen as being a huge focus of some religious sects who are into the whole Christian home schooling movement.

I have to wonder whether there was some other dynamic going on in that household, including his so called seeking of help (as implied by Alison's last e-mail to their nanny) including a private chat with a pastor who insisted that family was primary and he couldn't walk away from his responsibilities.

Little has been said about their religious background. Kind of ironic given how it's the opposite when it comes to domestic violence that involves Muslim family members killing their female offspring.

quote:

---

Originally posted by laine lowe:
[b]Little has been said about their religious background. Kind of ironic given how it's the opposite when it comes to domestic violence that involves Muslim family members killing their female offspring.[/b]

---

Yes, well someone brought up the issue of the possible Muslimness or Hinduness or Budhistness of the family on the original thread before the facts were known, and this post was erased. I guess because of the discovery of the facts. I guess Lall is an ambiguous name.

[ 02 June 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by scooter:
[b]What lesson do you think the doctor learned?[/b]

---

Much more about mental health issues, and how some present.

quote:

---

[b]To second guess their decision?[/b]

---

This is an offensive comment, there would be no second guessing it would be looking at presenting symptoms a little closer.

quote:

---

[b] Over react and notify the police of all depressed/troubled patients?[/b]

---

This is even more offensive given the end result of the Drs failing to understand where Lall was at. I do not think in this case, the case we are discussing, it would have been over reacting to anything, eh?!

quote:

---

[b]Catching serious mental health issues is difficult and complex at the best of times. Why do you think the courts have a 30-day psychiatric assessment. If it was easy then it would be a 3 minute assessment.[/b]

---

An actual psychiatric assessment does not take 30 days scooter.

[ 04 June 2008: Message edited by: remind ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by martin dufresne:
[b]If it's so difficult and complex, why treat it with such superficial comments, scooter?[/b]

---

I guess I'm just following your lead. My bad.

Maybe we should put a lock on this thread and return to it in a few months when we have more facts instead of making them up.