The victim of an alleged assault at an Ottawa transit station in August is asking why the incident was never made public despite being investigated by the hate and bias crime unit of the Ottawa Police Service (OPS).
The Aug. 25 attack at Blair station left Arfon Barow, a 64-year-old Muslim woman who wears a hijab, with injuries that she said are still healing nearly two months later.
“I want people to know my pain, to see what happened to me,” Barow said in Somali through interpreter Abdirizak Mohamud, director of the Suradway Parents’ Association of Ottawa.
“With all the evidence that they have and the pictures that they have, they could see that I’ve been injured badly in this incident, that people need to be warned [that] this kind of thing is happening.”
Neither police nor OC Transpo issued any public statement about the assault at the time.
Mohamud said reporting such incidents is especially important when they involve a community where trust in local authorities is already tenuous.
“We have heard many, many times that trust [in authorities] is an issue. I think transparency and having a consistent response to these incidents will build trust,” he said.
Ottawa police confirmed to CBC that on Aug. 25, special constables responded to a “complaint of an assault” in the 1200 block of Blair Road. The investigation was later handed over to the hate and bias crime unit and a 49-year-old woman was charged with assault causing bodily harm, police said.
Barow said a woman had been yelling at her and filming her aboard an OC Transpo bus. When Barow got off at Blair station to transfer buses, the woman followed.
“She got off the bus, came after me and started assaulting me without saying anything,” Barow said through the interpreter. “There were a lot of people, but nobody really intervened.”
Barow managed to get away from the woman, but not before being badly injured. The woman then boarded another bus.
“With my head uncovered, my clothes torn, my glasses broken and my face bloody, I got on the bus and told the driver not to move, and to call security,” Barow said.
Barow was taken to hospital for treatment, but almost two months later she’s unable to perform many day-to-day activities, according to Mohamud.
She has difficulty breathing and pain in her left arm. A dent in her forehead was still visible when a CBC reporter spoke with her in October.
During her recovery, Barow said she kept checking the news, expecting to see the assault reported.
“I know other incidents that happened were publicized and people were told that this kind of thing was happening,” she said. “But when it happened to me, total silence.”
She said she still doesn’t know why her attack was kept quiet when other hate-motivated incidents have been widely reported.
“Maybe they just didn’t want this to be public,” she said. “I think they’re hiding the incident.”
Ottawa police declined an interview request about this incident, but noted in a statement they don’t publicize every hate-related investigation they undertake.
They do routinely publicize their investigations into suspected hate-motivated incidents, including one last month in which a woman wearing a hijab was assaulted at a gas station, and again when a man was charged in that incident.
OPS said the decision is based on privacy considerations, the need to protect the investigation and whether public assistance is needed.
Mohamud said members of Ottawa’s Black and Muslim communities pick up on that inconsistency when it comes to how hate-motivated crimes are reported.
“When some incidents are immediately reported, condemned, and leadership, politicians, the police themselves really respond to it,” he noted. “[When] other incidents that impact Black women are completely absent from reporting, or minimally addressed … it tells the community that their safety is not as important as other people’s.”
Mohamud believes OPS should have issued a news release about the alleged attack on Barow.
“The alarm should have been raised right away,” he said.
Deciding how and when to publicly report hate-related incidents is “a catch-22” for police, said Aisha Sherazi, a local Muslim community leader who previously sat on a police advisory board.
“[Police] have to balance whether they want the public to be aware, but they also don’t want the public to feel afraid,” Sherazi explained. “But I think, as a member of the public who’s a visible Muslim, I would like to know what’s happening.”
Sherazi agreed that sharing such information can help build trust, and can also help prevent crime.
“It reminds us of our public responsibility towards safety, because it’s a shared responsibility,” she said.
Peter Scislowski, chief special constable at OC Transpo, told CBC the transit agency is collaborating with OPS on “new initiatives” to deal with hate-motivated incidents, but that it’s “too early to say” what that may look like.
