What drives men to kill? Edmonton Indigenous activist pushing for prison interviews to stop the bloodshed

Original Article: Omar Mosleh  |  StarMetro Edmonton  |  January 13, 2019

One Edmonton Indigenous activist is making the case that solving the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls means understanding why men prey on women in the first place.

On Wednesday, Muriel Stanley Venne, founder of the Institute for the Advancement of Aboriginal Women, made that very point to Correctional Service Canada as part of the National Aboriginal Advisory Committee. She recommended that Corrections Canada place a greater emphasis on interviewing convicted killers who are locked up to get a better sense of their motivations, their psychology, and, ultimately, to learn more about how society can prevent women from being murdered.

Indigenous women are six times more likely to be victims of homicide than non-Indigenous women, according to 2017 numbers from Statistics Canada. An 2014 RCMP report said 1,181 Indigenous women and girls were killed or have disappeared in Canada between 1980 and 2012, although some advocates say the number is closer to 4,000.

“We have the opportunity to turn things around and get good research done so we could take the next steps to prevent these killings,” Venne said after attending the meeting with Correctional Service Canada commissioner Anne Kelly in Laval, Que.

“People have been saying this for a long time, and I think we’re at an important time in our history where we can really take a serious look at the factors faced by Indigenous women, but equally important is the research (into) how we stop the killers.”

Experts believe there are two types of men who kill women, with different motivations. One is serial killers — the real-life bogeymen who commit incomprehensible acts again and again, preying on the vulnerable for their own sadistic pleasure.

And while they occupy a large space in our imagination, they are, in fact, exceedingly rare.

“If we’re talking about the Willy Picktons of the world, we’re talking about a very, very narrow slice,” says Liam Ennis, an Edmonton-based forensic psychologist.

He’s referring to Robert William Pickton, the British Columbia pig farmer who confessed to 49 murders, but was only convicted of six, making him one of Canada’s most well-known and prolific serial killers.

Ennis has worked extensively on violence risk assessment as well as at dangerous-offender designation hearings. He’s assessed a large number of men who have murdered women.

Research shows serial killers are usually individuals who feel isolated, rejected, or humiliated, who tend to use drugs or alcohol, and who are not successful at careers or relationships. Killing gives them a sense of power, Ennis says.

“That’s what’s driving the behaviour for them, as opposed to most men who murder women, it’s a flash of anger,” Ennis said. “Even if there’s a sexual component to it, it’s an impulsive sort of outburst. Rather than hunting, that sort of predatory, deliberate violence.”

Ennis said in the majority of cases where women are murdered (75 per cent of cases), it is by an intimate partner or family member – not a serial killer. Statistics Canada numbers from 2017 show that Indigenous women are more likely than their counterparts to be killed by an acquaintance or stranger: of the total solved Indigenous female homicides reported to police between 1980 and 2014, 53 per cent were committed by family members.

“There’s nothing unique about that to Indigenous peoples. Women are at most risk from men they are close to, in their own homes, at the hands of men who they’ve had intimate relationships with,” Ennis said.

“(On that) we have tons of research, because there’s so many more of those men,” he added. “We understand those men much better.”

Men who kill their partners tend to fall within one of two categories. There are those who have a criminal history, are anti-social and are violent across the board. Then there are those who Ennis says have borderline personality disorder.

“The most key characteristic there is this chronic fear of abandonment,” Ennis said. “They’re always afraid the partner is going to leave them. And they would rather break all their toys than let someone else play with them.”

Those men tend to come from chaotic upbringings and had poor relationships with their parents as kids. Unlike killers who murder for pleasure, Ennis said if you were to measure the heart rate of a man involved in intimate partner violence, it wouldn’t be relatively stable.

“They’re not in a state of great arousal when those things happen,” he said.

In contrast, what defines serial killers is that they kill for the sake of killing, with a cooling-off period in between each murder. They are often driven by sexual deviance and violent sexual fantasies, which ultimately turn into acts of violence and murder.

“If we’re talking about those individuals, the best studies out there will have maybe 175 of those guys in North America … so that’s a pretty small pool to draw from if you’re trying to understand those individuals,” says Ennis, who was involved in the dangerous offender case for Thomas Svekla, an Edmonton man convicted of murdering a sex worker in 2008, but who was suspected of having more victims.

“Because that’s such a relatively rare bird, we don’t know a lot about (them).”

But Venne, who has dedicated years of her life to addressing systemic violence against Indigenous women is hoping to help change that – and to learn more about serial killers and intimate-partner killers.

“We have the opportunity to turn things around and get good research done so we could take the next steps to prevent these killings,” Venne said after attending the meeting with Correctional Service Canada commissioner Anne Kelly in Laval, Que.

“People have been saying this for a long time, and I think we’re at an important time in our history where we can really take a serious look at the factors faced by Indigenous women, but equally important is the research (into) how we stop the killers.”

According to Ennis, there was a time in Canada when federal institutions carried out in-depth assessment on incoming inmates. They assessed those convicted of murder to better understand what drives them to become killers.

“I had some recent experiences with federal Corrections that led me to believe that it’s not happening very much (anymore),” Ennis said.

There is no clear reason why, but he said correctional facilities have moved toward a more “assembly-line processing” approach.

“I think (Correctional Service Canada), over the last 15 to 20 years, has gravitated away from rehabilitative emphasis towards a punishment and warehousing sort of angle,” he said.

But Ennis too sees value in interviewing killers, including on a personal one-on-one basis as well as with a more quantitative, academic approach.

“I don’t know that is being addressed in a very in-depth or comprehensive fashion at this point … It hasn’t fed into the larger literature,” he said.

There are two distinct conversations when it comes to men who kill women, and Ennis said much can be learned from comparing the two groups.

“You’ve got lots and lots of violent-towards-women men in this country, who have those similar characteristics,” Ennis said. “They feel isolated, they have low self-esteem, they blame women for their problems … but why aren’t they serial killers? What differentiates the guy who is more methodical and is killing for the sake of killing?”

The ultimate goal for research into killers is prevention, and Ennis sees two sides to that coin. When it comes to serial killers, a better understanding of what drives them and how they commit their crimes could help women protect themselves — especially those at higher risk, such as sex workers or those who live a transient lifestyle — from becoming victims.

For intimate-partner violence, research into the factors that lead men to kill their partners could prevent boys from growing up to be men who perpetrate that type of violence.

“Ideally, what you want is research that covers the entire spectrum, so you’ve got that individual level of analysis, but you also have enough of those individuals so you can draw broader conclusions about them,” Ennis said.

Venne said she felt “good” about her meeting with the Correctional Service Canada commissioner, and they seemed open to her suggestions. She plans to meet with the service again in the future, although no date is set.

The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls is scheduled to release its final report April 30. Venne said a lack of information on what drives killers will leave a “gaping hole” in the inquiry.

“My position was this vital information needs to be addressed. Perhaps it’s too late for the inquiry, but it still can happen because there’s still all sorts of injustices that affect the lives of Indigenous women, families, and boys and girls,” she said.

“Hopefully it’s not too late,” she added. “The inquiry is coming to a close, but I’m convinced that killings aren’t going to stop … The numbers have increased steadily. The numbers of women being murdered has increased. And it’s shameful. Here we are in the greatest country in the world and we have this terrible black mark against us. And I think we’re at a stage where we have to deal with this.”