New book outlines one woman’s experience as staff at a local women’s shelter

This week’s tragic developments at a north-end medical clinic have experts like Jan Steele calling for a solution to the city’s domestic violence problem.

Issues of domestic violence are dramatically on the rise in the city, something Steele equates to Calgary’s economic troubles.

“We do have a danger assessment, there is a universal danger assessment that’s used and one of the indices is unemployment increases the likelihood of domestic violence. Certainly it adds tension, any money woes will increase the likelihood of domestic violence,” she said.

Steele adds if the couple is together all the time too, it’s never a good thing for any relationship.

“It does both sound when I’m working at the shelter now and even before that all these women are married to the same man,” she said. “They have the same ‘you belong to me, how dare you contact your friends, I think you’re flirting with that guy, I wanna see who you’re talking to online’ very possessive, very insecure, all of that type of behaviour seems common all the way across the board.”

She wasn’t surprised after hearing what happened in the Perpetual Wellness Chinese Medicine Centre and calls it a horrific reminder that men can be victims too.

“Someone basically has the idea that his partner is his possession hence if an interloper comes along he simply needs to remove that interloper and that is somehow acceptable, it’s just a mindset that is very hard to break in some people.”

Her book “Jawbreaker; Memoir of a Women’s Shelter”, outlines her past experience and things she’s seen these past few decades working in Calgary.

Steele says she was so upset about what she initially saw when she began working there 32 years ago that she kept a diary and it took her several years to put this down to paper.

“It did help to sort of focus some of the issues; my editor looked at the raw memoir and said ‘we really need to look at what’s changed, what’s stayed the same and where it should go from here.”

After that she researched where things are with the current field, if anything she says people are more open about the subject.

She describes it as an interesting mix of people that involved conflict but also had its funny moments.

“I recount in the book where there is an incident where there is a man chasing me around on the front lawn with a shot gun, I was trying to lock the dead bolt to keep him out, I phoned 911 and the operator said ‘look lady, if he’s not on your property, stick your head out the front door and tell me where he is.”

Steele immediately hung up until she got someone who would help the centre appropriately.

Her book is available now; you can find it in the downtown core at “Shelf Life” or by visiting the website.