“They Just Don’t Care” : Women Charged with Domestic Violence in Ottawa

This article explores the phenomenon of women in Ottawa being inappropriately charged in situations of intimate partner violence, despite policy in Ontario mandating that police are obligated to lay charges against the primary or dominant aggressor. This therefore begs the question of how police apply the policies designed to identify primary aggressors. Some of the 18 women interviewed for this article have reported that they experience the failures of the police as betrayal, and that they would be unwilling to turn to police for protection in the future.