“Please help me. My husband has a gun and he’s in the house with my son!”

These were the words uttered by a young mother, clutching her baby, as she ran into my office one sunny summer day in 1995. I didn’t flatter myself that she had sought me out because I was known as an expert on the issue of intimate partner violence (IPV) or, as we called it then, domestic violence. After all, I had just opened my practice and I wasn’t much of an expert on anything. Passion, I had; expertise, not so much. I didn’t even have any clients yet.

Susana (not her real name) was clearly in great distress and she had turned to me for help. So I sat her down at my as-yet-unused client table, brought her a glass of water, pulled out my brand new legal pad, and asked her to tell me her story.

Our initial encounter was a matter of coincidence. She later told me that she had come into my office simply because she’d spotted it as she got off the bus. Although I was sadly lacking experience in the real-life practice of law, I was able to be of assistance in her immediate moment of need. Then, over the next several months, we were able to get court orders that reunited her with the son she’d had to leave behind and that kept her and her children as safe as possible.

I have thought about Susana often in the three decades since, because whatever help I was able to offer her was far eclipsed by what I learned from her. Susana’s case opened my eyes to the reality that the legal systems to which many women turn are ill-equipped to respond effectively or compassionately to the violence in their lives.

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This is a book about gender-based violence, with a focus on intimate partner abuse. It takes place mostly in Ontario and uses women’s stories to illuminate the repeated failures of systems and institutions to keep them and their children safe. 

The book is shaped by my experiences as a lawyer working on the front lines to try to make those systems and institutions better. Because of that, it looks most closely at legal responses to intimate partner violence, while also recognizing that the changes needed to meaningfully respond to and, ultimately, end gender-based violence must go much further than the law. Until women achieve meaningful equality in every aspect of our lives; until poverty and racism are eradicated; until everyone can be housed safely, affordably, and comfortably; until women can control our bodies, especially with respect to reproduction; and until we implement the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission, law can provide only band-aid responses to the problem of gender-based violence.

My own understanding of gender-based violence, and my ideas about what we need to do about it, have changed significantly as a result of the work I do. But from the beginning and still today, how I think about gender-based violence and the systems and institutions that respond to it has been inexorably shaped by my own lived experience.

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When I started law school, I thought of the institution of law—particularly the criminal law—as a neutral framework that provided guidelines for how we ought to behave and treat one another. It was a rude awakening to learn the extent to which the laws on which the Canadian legal system is built were created to protect the interests of property owners (at the time, white men) and that women were considered the property of those men. In particular, I have learned the many ways in which the colonial laws of this land, and those of us who work within this legal system, have been complicit in and have benefited from the violation of the rights of Indigenous Peoples and, especially, Indigenous women, girls, and gender-diverse people. It is my responsibility to be part of the work to reconcile these past and ongoing harms.

Once I began working as a lawyer, it was easy to see the formidable challenges the structure of law itself created for women who turned to that system believing it would offer them justice. I quickly learned that law does not equal justice. I got lots of things wrong and made plenty of mistakes on my journey to understanding that, when things didn’t go well for my clients, it wasn’t just because I could have done a better job or the woman could have been a better witness or we’d encountered a not-so-great judge but, rather, a problem with the entire legal framework. That’s why, as I come close to the time when I will retire from this work, I find myself increasingly wondering—even as I continue to work passionately for changes to the law and legal processes—whether we need to build an entirely new system for responding to gender-based violence.

Some days I want to scream, “Enough! I’ve learned all I possibly can.” But I know that I will never reach the end of this path of learning I have been walking since Susana came into my office all those years ago. I know that I will keep making mistakes, and I trust that I will continue to have the humility to accept constructive criticisms that help my ongoing learning.

Excerpt from And Sometimes They Kill You: Confronting the Epidemic of Intimate Partner Violence, by Pamela Cross (2024), with permission from Between the Lines.

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Learn more about And Sometimes They Kill You: Confronting the Epidemic of Intimate Partner Violence:

Despite decades of activism by feminists and their allies, women and their children continue to be killed by their partners and former partners in shocking numbers, leading the federal government to describe intimate partner violence (IPV) as an epidemic in Canada. Why have we failed to respond effectively to a social problem that affects millions of women and children? 

After working for more than three decades with survivors, frontline workers, and the systems they turn to for help, lawyer Pamela Cross provides an in-depth look at intimate partner violence in Canada. And Sometimes They Kill You untangles what intimate partner violence is, the barriers to its eradication, and what we could be doing to eliminate those barriers. Told in an engaging and accessible fashion, the book weaves together Cross’ personal experiences and reflections on what she has learned with the heartbreaking stories of victims, survivors, and the alarming but convincing data. Cross offers practical and hopeful ideas for how each of us can engage in the vital work of eradicating intimate partner violence. This a call-to-action for the all-of-society, revolutionary response to gender-based violence needed to build communities that are safe and healthy for everyone.