Calgary woman raising alarm after abusive ex disappears from halfway house

CTV National News: Assault victim speaks out A Calgary woman is speaking out after her ex-boyfriend who viciously beat her failed to return to a halfway house. Janet Dirks has more.

WARNING: This story contains content that may be disturbing to some readers

A Calgary woman viciously assaulted by a former boyfriend is raising the alarm and hoping authorities can track him down after he did not return to his halfway house.

Dianne Denovan, whose ex-boyfriend Michael Richard Cole was released from prison at the end of November, said the parole board told her last week that Cole has disappeared from his halfway house and is now wanted on a Canada-wide warrant.

“The only thing I asked is that he not be allowed in Calgary and here he is loose in Calgary now,” Denovan told CTV Calgary.

Cole, who met Denovan online, was convicted of aggravated assault and sentenced to two years in prison after a nearly four hour-long attack that ended only after Denovan managed to break free and run to a neighbour’s home for help. The assault left her with broken bones, cuts to her face and a lacerated eye.

Denovan said that Cole had never been violent during the seven months that she dated him until that night.

According to Statistics Canada, the rates of intimate partner violence that are reported to police are highest in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

In November, Saskatchewan became the first province to introduce legislation that allows police to disclose a person’s violent or abusive past to a partner who could be at risk. The legislation is modelled after Clare’s law in the U.K., which was named after a British woman who was murdered by an ex-boyfriend.

She was unaware of the man’s violent past just as Denovan was unaware that Cole had a long history of assault dating back to 1987.

Denovan and her daughter, Nikole, said that type of legislation should be introduced worldwide.

“People are required to have background checks for everything so why not have it for dating?” Nikole said.

Denovan said that news of Cole’s disappearance has re-traumatized her.

“I just wanted things to be normal,” she said, “but this has really opened up everything.”