This Sask. woman called police for help after a fight with her ex. She ended up getting charged
Experts say a call for charges in domestic violence incidents has backfired against women
WARNING: This article contains details of domestic violence.
Tasha Dobni says she doesn't feel safe calling the Moose Jaw, Sask., police anymore. That's because the last time she called them for help after a former partner assaulted her, she ended up getting charged herself.
"I was crying because I kept saying to them, 'I called you to protect me,'" Dobni said. "I won't ever do that again. I'll phone a friend, I'll phone a neighbour, but you people are the last people I will call if I'm ever in a situation."
Dobni said she called police to her home on Oct. 1, 2024, after a fight with her former partner ended with her pinned under him. When police arrived, they spoke to her about being in a 'toxic' relationship, charging both her and her partner with assault. Both parties' charges have since been stayed due to not meeting prosecutorial standards and there being no reasonable likelihood of conviction.
Dobni's ex declined to comment.
Experts say they have pushed for police to lay mandatory charges when they're responding to domestic violence incidences, in the hopes it would lead to better protection for women. They say that push has at times been used against women in danger, with both women and men involved in altercations getting charges laid against them.
Violence myths persist
It's a situation that happens more often than people might expect, says Elizabeth Sheehy, professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law and author of Defending Battered Women on Trial, which examines how the justice system responds to domestic violence.
"It's completely wrong, but it persists. It's a way of saying 'you want equality, you got it. Here's how we're going to interpret these scenarios, right? We're going to interpret women as violent, equally dangerous, equally implicated,'" said Sheehy.
Statistics Canada self-reported data shows that women and men both report having experienced physical assaults from partners at similar rates (23 per cent versus 17 per cent, respectively), but Sheehy points out the nature of those assaults and their impact are often vastly different.
The data shows women are considerably more likely to experience the most severe forms of intimate partner violence, including more devastating physical injuries and emotional suffering.
Women are also four to five times more likely to die at the hands of their partners than men are. Saskatchewan's 2024 Domestic Violence Death Review Report found that 83 per cent of homicide victims were female and 82 per cent of perpetrators were male. The review also found that when it comes to the perpetrators' history of violence, 64 per cent had prior police involvement with the victim.
Studies show that women's use of force is often in self-defence and in response to a pattern of sustained violence.
Still, Sheehy writes in her book that women's acts of resistance and self-defence, like pushing a man away, throwing a plastic water bottle or biting a partner that is pinning her down, can become the basis for assault charges.
How one confrontation escalated to charges
Dobni said she ended her relationship with her former partner over infidelity concerns.
On the evening she was charged, he had come to her house in an attempt to convince her to "start over."
She said she had her phone out ready to call one of the women she suspected him of still seeing. She said that's when he grabbed her wrist, taking her phone out of her hand and throwing it into the living room, almost hitting her cat.
"Of course I got upset and I pushed him. I got very upset with him because that's my property," she said.
According to Dobni, that's when he pinned her face-down on the kitchen floor with his entire body weight on top of her.
She has photos of bruising on her eye, nose, chest, and wrist from the incident.
"He's a 250-pound man. He had his entire body weight on me," she said. "I kept yelling 'I can't breathe, I can't breathe!'"
She says he eventually got off of her and ran out the door.
That's when she called the police.
Dobni's lawyer confirmed that those allegations were shared with police.
Dobni said a male and female police officer responded to her call. Her ex-partner was still on her property, lying in her hammock when the officers arrived.
The officers first asked her what happened.
"I said, 'I went ballistic when he threw my phone and it almost hit my cat… I'm going to protect my property. This is my home,'" she recalled telling them.
"Unfortunately I used the word 'ballistic' and they didn't like that. So then they went and spoke to him and came back in and basically chalked it up to a toxic relationship and charged us both," she said.
The Moose Jaw Police have confirmed that as a result of this incident, both Dobni and her partner were charged with assault.
It was the second time police have responded to a physical altercation involving the two, according to Dobni.
Pushing for changes
Senator Kim Pate was the executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies prior to her Senate appointment. She said she, along with many others, advocated for mandatory charges when men were abusive, thinking it would result in better protection for abused women.
"What it led to was mutual charging... When the police were called to an incident, if the woman was distraught, crying, upset and the man said, 'Oh, well, she started it'... in those sorts of situations, more often than not, the man's version of events will be believed over the woman's," said Pate.
"Every time we have come up with a solution that involves using a law and order response … it has tended to be twisted and used against the very people it's intended to protect. Particularly when it's women, even more particularly when it's racialized [women], even more particularly when it's Indigenous women."
The Moose Jaw Police Service said it does not have an internal policy specific to mandatory charging. In a statement, it said where a comprehensive investigation has revealed reasonable grounds to believe that an intimate partner violence offence has been committed, charges will be laid.
When it comes to analyzing who the primary aggressor is in a relationship, they said in an email, "assessments are made by analyzing information gathered including but not limited to physical evidence, eyewitness testimony interviews and other evidence gathered resulting from an IPV [intimate partner violence] incident."
When police are trying to determine the primary aggressor, Pate said police should look at who is calling for help, just as they would for a crime such as a break and enter.
"Why on earth would she call the police if she wasn't in need of protection?" she said, adding women are more likely to end up not just harmed, but dead in situations of domestic violence. She says it's a situation in which police need help to understand their own biases and look at their own attitudes toward women experiencing violence.
"We've had far too many examples of women who have called police, have been ignored and then have ended up dead down the road because… their reporting of a crime wasn't taken seriously."
Moose Jaw Police would not respond to any more specific questions about Dobni's situation.
Dobni said the officers advised her if he keeps coming around, she should phone the police.
"'And do what?' I said, 'Phone the police and look what happens?' I'm not phoning the police and then getting charged because without having it on video or something. It's his word against mine," she said.
No answers from police
Dobni appeared in court to answer to her charges in November. She says she was surprised to see her ex-partner in the courtroom, given that she understood he had a no-contact order with her.
She says her ex slid a birthday card for her under her door a few days later. The card had a handwritten note saying, "You are … one in a million and I'm so glad that I got to know you. We should be together. But I messed it up. I'm sorry for that."
Dobni's lawyer and her counsellor at the Moose Jaw Transition House advised her to follow up with police, something that took a while for her to get the courage to do. She called police twice in December to ask about whether they would still be enforcing a no-contact order against her ex.
She says she still hasn't received answers or a call back from Moose Jaw Police.
Over Christmas, she says she received a card from her ex and another letter, asking forgiveness.
"It's the mental anguish, right? I think that's why people… keep going back, because it's manipulation," she said.
Dobni thinks police need to be better educated on mental and emotional abuse – not just physical abuse – and look at the overall patterns of behaviour in the relationship in order to respond to these situations.
"I'm fortunate I have the resources to help cope through these things, but there's lots of women out there that don't and they don't leave these situations for those reasons," she said.
"They stay in those situations because they know if you phoned the police, you could possibly be charged."
Support is available for anyone affected by intimate partner violence. In Saskatchewan, www.pathssk.org has listings of available services across the province. You can access support services and local resources in Canada by visiting this website. If your situation is urgent, please contact emergency services in your area.