In 1996, a 20-person research team was established jointly by the Muriel McQueen Fergusson Centre for Family Violence Research at the University of New Brunswick and the RESOLVE Violence and Abuse Research Centre at the University of Manitoba.
The sad thing is that to date, NO ONE has spent one single iota of time looking at child abuse in military families living on military bases in Canada.
Yes, there’s no doubt that women were being abused.
But at least they could leave.
Kids were often left behind.
The wife / mother could simply move on with her life.
Sure, she might be initially upset after her husband used the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations to have her booted out of the PMQs and off the base with no access to her children.
But quite often the husband was more than happy to not have her contribute child support in trade for her not bothering him or his children, sorry, property.
I know that when I met up with my mother in August of 1990 since having not seen her since back around 1982 ,she had moved on with her life. If I had to guess, Scott and I were nothing more than constipated bowel movements that she had to shit out all those years previous.
With all of these agencies and organizations looking at “spousal abuse” and “wife abuse”, how come no one dared look at child abuse?
When my father would go on one of his drunken rampages, it wasn’t my mother that had to endure his bullshit.
When my father brought his alcoholic mother into the PMQ to raise my brother and I, it wasn’t my mother that had to endure grandma’s violence, grandma’s cruelty, and grandma’s alcoholism.
The more I look back on my life as a military dependent the more I realize that there were really a lot of fucked up kids living on the bases. Kids with alcoholic fathers. Kids with perpetually angry fathers. Kids with neglectful parents.
And due to our lives being on base in military communities we were often isolated from civilian social service agencies and instead were dealt with by military social workers who were more intent on containment than the protection of us.
Even though the walls of the PMQs were paper thin, nobody heard a thing.
Even though our bruises and welts were on full display, as was our tendency to flinch and avoid direct eye contact, nobody saw anything or asked anything.
It was like society had this warped idea that children were never sexually abused on base, they were never physically abused on base, and they were never mentally abused on base, and there was no such thing as child neglect on base.