For 19 years, Lisa Banfield lived with a man described as a controlling, abusive psychopath who repeatedly beat her. This long-term pattern of gender-based violence is detailed in a document released Wednesday by the inquest into why Gabriel Wortman fatally shot 22 people in Nova Scotia on April 18-19, 2020 — the worst mass killing in modern Canadian history. Part of the inquiry’s mandate is to examine the role of intimate partner violence as it makes recommendations aimed at preventing this type of tragedy from happening again. In her own words, Banfield told investigators about the physical abuse she suffered as the killer’s common-law wife. “The things Gabriel would do to me included: sexually grabbing me (and) physically pushing me (off the street, onto the bed or onto the ground/floor),” she said in a written statement given to the inquest in June. 22. “(He was pulling me by the hair to get me off the ground until my scalp felt like it was going to tear — punching me (body, face, neck) and kicking me. Although I remember only raping once. I felt that I was his wife and what could I do?’ In addition to the physical abuse, there was also plenty of psychological damage, the statement said. “He pulled a gun on me and chased me a few times, saying we were done. And I don’t even know how I talked to him,” she said. “He would even beat me in front of his friends. They would watch and do nothing about it. I knew no one could help me. Everyone was afraid of him too.” Banfield, now 53, is expected to testify at a public hearing on Friday. In a series of interviews this year, she told investigators she first met Wortman at a Halifax bar in May 2001. Both had left previous marriages. Three months later, they moved in together. At first, they lived in an apartment above his dental clinic in Dartmouth, NS Within a year, he forced her to sign a document intended to protect his ownership of real estate and other assets. In previously released interviews with the RCMP, Banfield had said the first two and a half years of their relationship had been positive and described her husband as “loving, kind and generous.” However, he told investigators that his violent behavior began much earlier. Specifically, she described an assault she suffered in 2001 or 2002 outside a cottage near Sutherland Lake, north of their Portapique cottage, NS Banfield said Wortman punched her when she got into their Jeep and insisted on leaving. “I jumped out and ran into the woods,” he said. “And then he grabbed me. I was covered in blood and he was dragging me back to the jeep.” There were witnesses to the attack. The police were called, but no action was taken. When she returned home, she found Wortman removing the wheels from her car in an attempt to prevent her from leaving. “Ms Banfield told the panel that throughout her relationship with the offender, she had to focus on what was in front of her at the time rather than what happened in the past as a means of coping,” the 100-page summary says the data. “It was only when Ms Banfield went back and read some of the diaries she had kept during their relationship that she recognized the frequency of the violence and how early the abuse started.” The latest investigative report goes on to describe Wortman’s frequent infidelity, his chronic alcoholism, and his persistent attempts to control Banfield through manipulation, intimidation, threats, and financial coercion. “Ms. Banfield stated that the offender always made her feel that she would be taken care of and that she had nothing to worry about,” the document states, while also clarifying that she kept her name off any property documents. For years she worked as his assistant in the dental clinic, which provided her only source of income. Her family worried that she was becoming too dependent on him. “I’m close to my brothers and I talk to them every day, but he didn’t like that,” Banfield told the RCMP. “He wanted my full attention and if I didn’t give it to him, he was like a little boy who needed constant building up somehow…. .” She initially told RCMP that she could recall about 10 times she was abused at the hands of her partner. But she later told investigators the number was higher, based on what she had written in her diaries. Sometime in 2003 or 2004, a neighbor confronted Wortman at his Portapique home and demanded he allow Banfield to pack her things and leave, the document says. “No one comes to this house,” he allegedly replied. “And just letting you know, I have guns in here.” Banfield confirmed she never told police about her dangerous living situation, despite encouragement from some of her siblings. At one point, they took pictures of her injuries, but those pictures have since disappeared. “Where will I go even if I left,” he told investigators. “He knows where everyone (my relatives) lives and I didn’t know what he was going to do.” Banfield said she eventually stopped talking to her siblings about the violence, but they knew his controlling, abusive behavior hadn’t stopped. “He’s a psychopath or a sociopath, he’s a narcissist,” Banfield’s sister Janice told the inquest, adding he was a “ticking time bomb”. The document concludes with a detailed description of the couple’s last days together in April 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was forcing shutdowns and social isolation around the world. “She loved Trump,” Banfield said in her written statement, referring to the former US president. “He was constantly on the internet listening to Trump and watching the news cycle about COVID… He was telling me he wasn’t afraid to die… But this time he told me he knew when he was going to die…. He was talking crazy, and it scared me, so I just changed the subject.” This report by The Canadian Press was first published on July 13, 2022.
