The violence began behind closed doors. It ended in Canada’s worst mass shooting

For years, Lisa Banfield stayed silent, her voice stifled by her partner of 19 years — a man who physically and psychologically abused her for the bulk of their relationship and then went on to kill 22 people across rural Nova Scotia over 13 hours in April 2020.

Though sharing her story six years later has been criticized by some of the victims' families, Banfield, as a longtime survivor of intimate partner violence, says she can no longer stay quiet. 

Her experiences, documented in a book released Tuesday, speak to a wider truth, she says: that the violence that begins behind closed doors can spill into society; that the epidemic of domestic violence that exists in Nova Scotia — in much of this country — is a public health issue, not a private matter. 

"I've had more people, stories of people saying [that] because I spoke up, it gave them strength and direction to be able to say, 'I need help too,'" she told The Current host Matt Galloway. 

"People are going to say whatever they want about me and judge me — but if I could help one person throughout all of this, I can take that."

The First Survivor: Life With Canada's Deadliest Mass Shooter details Banfield's common-law relationship with Gabriel Wortman in the years leading up to the events of April 18 and 19, 2020, when Wortman, disguised as a Mountie, killed 22 people across a 200-kilometre stretch of Nova Scotia before he was fatally shot by police.

But the book reveals how Banfield's early life was also shaped by violence. She was molested at 14 as a babysitter, a life-changing moment her father brushed off. He used "the belt" on her himself and his struggle with alcohol abuse seeped into his family life. 

These experiences in her rural home in Beaver Bank, N.S., in the 1970s created a tight connection among her and her eight siblings.

But they also very likely harmed her ability to form healthy relationships as an adult, says Kristina Fifield, a trauma therapist and registered social worker who was a participant in the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission, which examined the events of April 2020. 

"There's some really important pieces of Lisa's story that I think can help society better understand and respond to the epidemic of gender-based violence," Fifield said.

She notes, too, that Wortman had been abused as a child, with Banfield's book detailing how, as an adult, he attacked his father in response. 

What's important about these revelations, Fifield said, is that they highlight how critical it is to increase violence prevention and early intervention programs targeting high-risk boys and men. 

Boys who are physically abused are more likely to become abusive as men to a future partner or children, according to findings from the Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children in Ontario.

"That's why accountability and early intervention is so important in these situations," Fifield said. "The longer a person … has used violence, they continue using violence and it goes on unchecked."