Why women fearing domestic violence may 'cloak it under PTSD'

Lionel Desmond killed his mother, wife and daughter last week, and much of the discussion has focused on Desmond's apparent post-traumatic stress disorder from his Canadian Forces service a decade ago. 

Lucille Harper is the executive director of the Antigonish Women's Resource Centre, which is about a half-hour drive from the scene of the triple murder and suicide in Upper Big Tracadie, N.S. She says PTSD is a real issue, but so is violence against women. 

She spoke to CBC News. The interview has been edited for clarity and length. 

Q. How difficult a situation is that for women?

A: The situation for women is very difficult. The situation for the community is very difficult. One of the questions we ask around this is, What does it mean when someone we care about hurts somebody else that we care about?

It can be an absolute tragedy that is very difficult to understand when one person in the community commits that kind of violence and kills other people in the community who are near and dear to everybody.

Q. A lot of people have pointed to PTSD. What do you make of that?

A: I think PTSD certainly is very real. I do not know the family and it sounds to me as though it was a key issue for Lionel. 

But what we need to look at here is what were the other factors? Certainly violence against women is pervasive. We see violence against women not only in our own community, but in our province and our country. 

There are a lot of questions that don't get asked about violence against women. What we saw here clearly was a commission of violence against three women — a mother, a wife, and a daughter. Complicated by PTSD, but again, one of the questions we want to ask is, 'What are the stories that we tell?'

I think in small communities, telling a story of PTSD — which is a very real story and needs to be addressed — is not the only piece of the story here. 

I think that other piece, which is very difficult to tell ourselves as a community, is that it was an act of violence that resulted in the deaths of three women.

We have resources in our community for addressing that, but very often women who are experiencing disruptions in their homes, or violence in their homes, tend not to reach out for help as a first response.

They try to manage it, they try to quiet it, they try protect themselves and their children from that violence. 

'Both are very real in this situation'

When you have a diagnosis of PTSD, that complicates it even further because then you really do want to manage it because you know that the person that you care about is suffering. So you are even less likely then to perhaps frame it as violence that is perpetrated against you, and to cloak it under PTSD. 

I think both are very real in this situation and as a response, both need to be addressed.

• One in four solved homicides in Canada was an incident of intimate partner violence. The victims are overwhelmingly female.