Homicide victim's mom wants registry of abusers

12-18-2011 Canada:

Domestic violence

The mother of Winnipeg's 38th homicide victim said she's glad a charge has been laid, but she wants a registry set up to notify the public when domestic abusers are released from jail.

"They should really do something about these men who hurt women," Adeline Nippi said. Her daughter Dominique McCann, 19, died Dec. 2 of extensive internal injuries suffered in what police said was a domestic beating.

McCann's bruised body was found in a home in the 400 block of Selkirk Avenue on Dec. 2.

Family members said McCann was a student at Children of the Earth School at the time of her death.

Police said McCann and a man she knew were walking together when an assault occurred on Dec. 1 at 9 p.m.

She was later found in the nearby home of someone she knew.

Hours later, despite the efforts of paramedics who rushed her to hospital, McCann died of her injuries.

On Friday at 8:30 a.m., Winnipeg police arrested a 25-year-old man and charged him with the slaying.

Donald Jacob Girard, of Winnipeg, is charged with second-degree murder.

"We are treating this as a domestic-related homicide," Winnipeg police spokeswoman Const. Natalie Aitken said on Saturday. The two knew each other and the man was known to police, Aitken said.

"I didn't really know him, but I've seen his face around," McCann's mom said of Girard, who is presumed innocent until proven guilty. "I'm glad he got arrested."

She said her daughter hadn't spent much time with her family since she entered the relationship.

"Ever since she met that guy we couldn't talk to her. She had to stay her distance from the ones who loved her the most," said Nippi, who was worried her daughter was in an abusive relationship but could do nothing about it.

If another man talked to McCann in front of her boyfriend, she would later pay the price, her mom alleged.

She hopes one day there will be a domestic-abuse registry similar to the sex-offender registry.

The public -- specifically women -- should be warned when men who beat women get out jail, for instance, she said.

"I don't want (any) woman going through what my daughter went through," Nippi said.

"And there should be no woman who has to go through what I am going though as a mother." ..Source.. by Carol Sanders and Kevin Rollason