Intimate Partner Criminal Harassment Through a Lens of Responsibilization

Feminist scholars have demonstrated the gendered nature of intimate violence and the tendency to put the responsibility on women to avoid both sexual and physical violence (“responsibilization”). This article applies these insights to the context of intimate partner criminal harassment, which is committed overwhelmingly by men against former female intimate partners. Using criminal harassment decisions over the past decade, this article argues that the elements of the offence—specifically the requirements that the accused cause the complainant to fear for her safety, that this fear be reasonable, and that he intend to harass her—feed into the tendency towards responsibilization. Women are disbelieved if they fail to report the harassment promptly to police, fail to obtain a no contact order, or fail to communicate to their harassers that the harassment is unwanted. The accused’s behaviour is never subjected to a standard of reasonableness. The article concludes that legislative reform is a necessary step towards providing an adequate criminal justice response to this serious problem.