Susan Butlin was killed by Ernie Duggan in September, 2017, after her sexual-assault complaint against him was deemed ‘unfounded’ by police.Supplied
In a very real sense, the RCMP played a role in killing Susan Butlin of Bayhead, N.S. No, they didn’t pull the trigger. Her neighbour, Ernie Duggan, did that, and is ultimately responsible. But with their manifold failures, their astonishing incompetence, they might as well have.
It’s a disturbing story. In 2017, Ms. Butlin made a sexual-assault complaint against Mr. Duggan. The Mounties’ understanding of sexual-assault law was decades out of date; they rejected the complaint as “unfounded.” As detailed in a civilian complaint body’s report last month, a cascade of errors followed, as if the Bible Hill detachment was determined to repeat its initial mistake at any cost.
All this was six months after a Globe and Mail investigation found some Canadian police departments were rejecting sexual-assault complaints as “unfounded” at high rates. The RCMP had promised to address its shortcomings in this area. Bible Hill had the second highest rate of “unfounded” sexual-assault complaints in the country, at an astounding 54 per cent. The average was 20 per cent.
This was not a hidden problem, in other words. It was supposedly top of mind. Two officers interviewed the 58-year-old Ms. Butlin. The lead investigator, Constable Patrick Crooks, held a 15-minute phone call which he did not record, and concluded without explanation to Ms. Butlin that her complaint was unfounded. A second officer, Constable Christiana Whalen, had a longer, recorded discussion, and affirmed the judgment of the first.
Why? On the basis of myths and stereotypes that the Supreme Court of Canada rejected in the late 1990s, in a case, called Ewanchuk, that has remarkable echoes of the Butlin case – a small woman, afraid of a much larger man, saying no repeatedly while making appeasing comments to protect herself. Ms. Butlin’s grandchildren were in the house; she couldn’t run.
Serious RCMP failures in N.S. sex-assault case before woman’s murder, watchdog finds
Consent requires an affirmation, in word or gesture, the Supreme Court said in Ewanchuk, a principle later embodied in the Criminal Code. There was none. Far from it. To repeat, Ms. Butlin said no again and again.
And yet the Mounties concluded Ms. Butlin had consented to her neighbour’s drunken advances. Constable Whalen thought Ms. Butlin said no only because Mr. Duggan was married; no meant yes. A third officer blamed Ms. Butlin for giving Mr. Duggan a glass of wine. Incredible.
It gets worse.
Ten days after the sexual-assault complaint, Mr. Duggan’s spouse called 911 to say her husband had a gun and intended to kill Ms. Butlin. The 911 call was interrupted by the spouse’s door being kicked in; she screamed. Somehow Mr. Duggan wound up being charged with impaired driving. No officer looked for the gun. The incident wound up in a file out of sight of officers investigating multiple reports from Ms. Butlin that she and her children were being threatened.
Even then, there was still hope; a Provincial Court judge who heard Ms. Butlin’s application for a peace bond took the extraordinary step of pausing the hearing and contacting the Crown’s office, so police could take a fresh look at the sexual-assault allegation.
And what did the police do? The RCMP said Ms. Butlin told the judge a different story than she told police, informing her police must consider charges of public mischief when faced with contradictory accounts. He had never bothered to listen to Ms. Butlin’s recorded statement. There were “no such inconsistencies,” according to the report of the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP. None of the Mounties could even explain why they believed there were.
Three days later, Susan Butlin was dead. Mr. Duggan killed her with a single blast of a shotgun at close range, while Ms. Butlin was in her own home.
In 2007, a review found the RCMP “horribly broken.” Little seems to have changed – and the denials keep coming. The Mounties asserted that they can never completely ensure a person’s safety. The commission, having found “serious deficiencies in every aspect” of the RCMP’s actions, somehow accepted this explanation: “A different handling of the investigations might not have changed the outcome for Ms. Butlin. It is uncertain if any measures could have averted the tragedy.”
This helpless attitude leaves women vulnerable to murder. There was every chance to save Ms. Butlin. But for the mystifying incompetence, not for the first time, of the national police force, she would be alive today.