Mom stops bully and pays the price
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TORONTO - Vanessa Disbrowe did exactly what we’re all told to do.
She stood up to a young bully picking on an even younger child in a park near her Toronto home. But that act, and the assault that followed, has changed her life.
“Because I knew the youth I wanted to do something,” said the 27-year-old mother of four. “But I don’t know if I was put in the situation again now, after what has happened, with the lack of action, if I would do it again.”
The trouble started for Disbrowe when she and her children were at Driftwood Park close to their Tobermory Dr. home in the Jane-Finch area in March. Disbrowe and a friend noticed a nine-year-old neighbourhood girl being picked on by a larger girl who she believes was older. She estimates the girl stood about 5-foot-5 and weighed about 220 pounds.
“We told her, you shouldn’t be bullying her ... We were just trying to get through to her. She wasn’t hearing it. She started swearing at us and cussing us off.”
Disbrowe started to disengage from the conversation when she said her friend told the girl, “Just because you live in Jane and Finch doesn’t mean you have to be a statistic.”
“(The girl) paused for about five seconds,” Disbrowe said. “Then she picked up a handful of sand and threw it at me. She knocked me to the ground and started punching me.”
Disbrowe, who had her 10-month-old daughter in her arms, managed to hand her off to a neighbour who came to her aid. Then she wrapped her arms around the girl’s legs and said she yelled for bystanders to call the police.
Disbrowe said the girl bit her left arm, breaking the skin and drawing blood.
When she heard people calling 911, she let go of the girl who subsequently walked away with her friends. The police arrived moments later as Disbrowe pursued the girl, not wanting her to get away.
“While the story was being told (to police) she was sitting there, mocking us with her friends,” she said. “The police said there was nothing they could really do. Our stories sounded the same until the assault happens and that’s when it gets different.”
They told Disbrowe she could press charges if police didn’t. The officers then said they were going to drive the girl home and talk to her parents. Disbrowe was taken to the hospital to treat the cuts above her eye, split lip and the bite wound on her arm.
She sported a swollen black eye for a week after the incident.
But since that day Disbrowe said the investigation hasn’t moved an inch and her efforts to press charges have been bogged down because the girl is a young offender.
Several months passed and Disbrowe’s husband Sam was talking to a Toronto police officer on paid duty at a construction site he was working at. He explained their problem and asked for the officer’s advice.
“He just looked at me and said ‘You should move’,” Sam said. “I looked at the guy and said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding. Your answer to someone assaulting my wife and my child is that we should move because you guys can’t do anything about it?’”
Sam said the officer told him 31 Division is swamped with higher priority investigations and with the girl being a young offender it would be hard to press charges.
But Disbrowe’s anxiety over the attack continued.
“It got to the point I couldn’t go outside,” she said. “I’d see the girl on the street. Nothing was happening to her. She still seemed happy riding her bike and doing her thing.”
Tormented by memories of the attack, Disbrowe applied for a late transfer from her criminology studies at York University and was accepted by the University of Western Ontario in London. She and Sam picked up their family and moved. Sam is now out of work and they are struggling financially.
“It’s screwed up a lot of things. We’ve gone through all of our savings. But it’s the inaction that really bugs me. I’ve called so many times.”
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