Sue O’Neill
Graduate student Sue O'Neill is combining her passions for work and public education at Saint Mary’s, with research investigating the connections between gender-based violence and animal abuse. During her first year in the Women and Gender Studies program, O’Neill is working as a teaching assistant with the Sexual Violence Support Centre on campus while also focusing on her career as the Manager of Programs with HUMANE Canada's ACT (Awareness, Collaboration, Tools) Project.
Funded through Women and Gender Equality Canada, the project aims to address systemic barriers to health-seeking, safety planning and support services for survivors experiencing gender-based violence and their animals (companion, farm and service animals).
The project has launched the ACT To Keep Families Safe Online Learning Centre, a culmination of engagement with 42 partners and collaborators across the country, including the Transition House Association of Nova Scotia. The web hub provides free educational modules with certificates upon completion, which Saint Mary's students can add to their Experience Record through the university's Career360° platform. Topics cover such areas as service animals and disability rights; supporting GBV survivors in rural, remote and farming communities; and self-care and compassion fatigue. Other digital tools available are information sheets, awareness and advocacy resources, case studies, templates, survivor stories and a quarterly newsletter.
O’Neill is among the speakers participating in the Listen, Learn, Act panel event on Thursday, March 28—a conversation led by community activists, academics, government and students to discuss how we can prevent and respond to violence while working towards safer and more empowered communities for all.
Q&A with Sue O’Neill
How did the ACT Project come about?
Our vision at Humane Canada is to have a humane Canada—to make positive, progressive change to end animal cruelty. But as Humane Canada was doing this work, we realized to make things better for animals, we have to make things better for humans because our fates are really intertwined. Humane Canada has been focused on a one-welfare approach to reach our goals of improving animal welfare.
Can you discuss the link between violence against animals and violence against humans?
We know that in circumstances where a pet is in a home where domestic violence is happening, higher reports of animal abuse are also occurring. We also know that the aggressors often use those animals as a method of control, either threatening to harm or actually harming the animal in order to control the survivor’s actions. Survivors don’t want to leave their animals behind, or won’t leave them behind, or will return to a violent situation because of their animals.
Who can benefit from the online learning centre?
Some of the resources are for survivors, some are for professionals and we also have a lot of stuff for the general public. For students too, it’s a great way of informing people at the beginning of their careers, so they go into their careers with this knowledge.
What are you working on currently?
As we launched the ACT project, we realized that as much as we want to support survivors and animals in getting the help they need, we want to prevent the violence from happening. So, we’ve got a new 30-month project coming up, the Promising Practices Project. It’s going to highlight humane education and gender-based violence education programs that are specifically geared towards boys and men as allies in the prevention of violence.
How did you get involved in this area of work and research?
I’m a survivor of violence myself and it changed my career path. I always thought I would work in education but I ended up working as a children’s counsellor initially at a gender-based violence shelter. I ended up working in management at the shelter and that’s when I created an offsite animal safekeeping program for survivors of violence.
What is your master’s research about?
I’m not straying far from my work! What I’m focusing on in my thesis is looking at the relationship between survivors of GBV and their animals, specifically farm animals, working animals or larger companion animals. Through the ACT project, we realized there isn’t a lot of research for survivors who have horses or cows or llamas or 17 sled dogs, so it seemed like a huge gap. What do you do with 300 cows when you’re fleeing violence?
Why did you choose Saint Mary’s?
I was living in Vancouver finishing up my first master’s degree, my MEd, and I had done a little bit of research on Saint Mary’s. The campus looked breathtakingly beautiful. I connected with Michele Byers to find out more about the Women and Gender Studies program, and it sounded flexible yet supportive. She connected me with some other students and they just loved Saint Mary’s so much, so then I had to go. I really love it here…it’s got a community feel, which a lot of the bigger universities don’t have.
What is the best part of your work and your research?
I’m very grateful to get to do this work. Especially as a survivor, it just feels so meaningful to work on projects that can help other survivors.
Further reading
Visit the Sexual Violence Support Centre at SMU
Learn about our graduate program in Women and Gender Studies
Explore the Minor in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies