In the early years of her journalism career at The Globe and Mail, Ann Rauhala was among the first reporters assigned to cover women’s issues.
But even then, in the late 1980s, there was one story Rauhala could never bring herself to tell: the murder of her best friend, Donna Mae Evoy.
In 1975, the 20-year-old had been shot to death by her former boyfriend, whom she had recently broken up with, on a remote road outside Sudbury, Ont. Her body had been found lying in the snow.
Decades later, Rauhala is now revisiting Donna’s life and death in She Ran, published by ECW Press on Oct. 27.
Drawing on interviews with Donna’s friends, family and witnesses, Rahaula uncovered new details about the killing and traced the warning signs that led up to it.
But the book goes beyond Donna’s murder to examine the broader problem of intimate partner violence in Canada, including the attitudes that perpetuate it and the challenges of preventing it.
Rauhala, who also spent 21 years teaching journalism, spoke with Canadian Affairs reporter Alexandra Keeler about Donna’s murder, what drives intimate partner violence, and the changing treatment of violence against women in Canadian newsrooms.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
AK: You wrote that when you first became a reporter covering women’s issues, you considered writing about Donna’s murder but decided against it. What changed for you, and why did you feel compelled to write this book now?
AR: In 2012, I was sitting in a restaurant in Sudbury with two women, one of whom knew some details about Donna’s death that I didn’t know. At that moment, I realized just how much I didn’t know. I asked myself why I’d never thought more carefully about it or asked those questions.
I think enough time had passed that I could start unpacking the past. And several people whose opinions mattered to me said I needed to address the intimate partner violence issue in a broader sense.
AK: Throughout your exploration of Donna’s murder, you spoke with many people who knew Donna, including witnesses to her murder. What did you learn that surprised you?
AR: I did not know that the gun that he used to kill her was a gift that she had given him for Christmas 11 months before. I did not know that her home life was as unpredictable and as violent as it was.
In all the teen queen flicks, she might have been cast as a mean girl, but she wasn’t a mean girl at all. She was a very kind and funny and relatively unpretentious young woman.
AK: You said in your book that every expert on intimate partner violence begs people to stop asking why the victim stays, and instead ask why the perpetrators do what they do. Based on your research, what drives this violence?
AR: Every act of intimate partner violence has multi-layered causes.
You start with the individual. Maybe he witnessed his father hurting his mother, or he has a substance abuse problem. Then there’s the relationship layer. Maybe he happens to meet a woman who also has a substance abuse problem, and that creates a different dynamic. Then there’s social pressures on the next layer, like casual misogyny and the victimization of women. Then you move outward to economic factors, global factors.
The short answer is they do it because they can get away with it. They have probably witnessed violence and anger being used as tools to get their own way and exercise control in relationships.
They’re also influenced enormously by the cultural misogyny in our society. I think the backlash against the strides women have made has unleashed a really ugly form of sexism.
AK: You write that people tend to ‘romanticize’ intimate partner violence by suggesting that abusive men are driven by love or jealousy. Why do you think this happens, and how has that shaped our response to femicide?
AR: When he killed Donna, I remember the most common cliché people put forward was, ‘He must have snapped.’ I also heard people say things like, ‘He must have loved her so much.’ He loved her so much that he killed her? That was outrageous to me. I think there still lingers some victim-blaming attitudes like, ‘Well, she must have provoked him.’
I think another factor is this: if you are an adult and you have a romantic-slash-sexual relationship with another adult, then you have experienced conflict with them. I’ve felt like slamming the door after my partner says something really outrageous. Someone might think: ‘I’ve felt like slapping my husband or slapping my wife, but I don’t do it.’
So there’s a lot of discomfort about talking about what’s going on or passing judgment on the violence.
AK: As both a journalist and journalism professor, how have you seen coverage of violence against women change over the years? Where are newsrooms still falling short?
AR: Donna’s story was a story because she was from a prominent family, by Sudbury standards. I have no doubt that there were many women who died in Sudbury in 1975, killed by their partners, who went unnoticed. Even though domestic violence accounted for 50 per cent of police calls, it was barely covered because a domestic violence call was ‘no big deal.’
There has been a great deal of improvement as women have entered more professions — teaching, education, health care, doctors, lawyers, criminal justice, journalists — and they have influenced decisions. Reporters now look beyond the police for sources, and stories about intimate partner violence often include information about where to get help.
But we continue to treat these horrific cases as unusual circumstances. They aren’t unusual.
AK: Canada recently introduced laws to address coercive control — a pattern of abusive behaviour that can include intimidation, isolation, threats and controlling a partner’s finances or daily activities. Do you think these changes will make a difference?
AR: Unless the police and everybody in the criminal justice system has a full appreciation of what coercive control is, it’s not going to be well enough understood to be acted on. I think the next year or two will be really interesting.
AK: What are your thoughts on the male loneliness epidemic?
AR: The male loneliness epidemic reflects our society’s failure to focus on emotional health, well-being, empathy and altruism, and to help young men — especially between about 10 and 18 — figure out who they are in a more compassionate way.
I’m all for healthy competition, but I’m repelled by this model of masculinity that emphasizes sexually exploiting women, taking pleasure in cruelty and in winning competitions.
AK: You researched the online manosphere’s misogyny. What did you learn?
AR: I felt strangely optimistic afterwards. It occurred to me that the manosphere is not speaking to some kind of natural tendency towards brutality in boys and men. It’s a marketing technique where they’re marketing this really distorted, stunted sense of masculinity to a bunch of vulnerable kids.
We can market back at them. We can make them understand the kind of heroism it takes to actually stand up for the underdog against the bully.
My son and his friends want to do heroic and admirable things. They want to be good men, and if you offer them the option of how to be a good man, they will adhere to it.
AK: After spending so many years carrying Donna’s death with you, and then revisiting her life through this book, has your understanding of what happened to her changed? And what do you hope readers will remember about Donna herself?
AR: I want people to see that it doesn’t have to be this way. These deaths are not inevitable. We can actually predict and prevent them.
But most of all, I want people to see the Donnas in their own lives right now. That may even just mean looking in the mirror and seeing themselves.
