A rural Canadian community has made a series of transformative recommendations during a coroner’s inquest that – if accepted – could position the country’s most populous province as a leader in preventing murders of women, particularly those committed by intimate partner.
A jury in Renfrew County, Ontario, just west of Canada’s capital, returned 86 verdicts this week in a unanimous verdict in the deaths of three local women who were killed by the same man on the same morning nearly seven years ago.
The boldest move was for the Ontario government to “officially declare intimate partner violence an epidemic” that requires “significant financial investment” and deep systemic change to correct.
Since the triple homicide on Sept. 22, 2015, 111 women in Ontario have been killed by their current or former partners, the coroner said. Every six days in Canada, a woman is killed by her intimate partner, according to Statistics Canada.
The jury also recommended that the word “femicide” be given official prominence — that it be listed as a manner of death by the province’s coroners and added to Canada’s criminal code to highlight the misogyny behind the killing of women and girls because of their gender
“Many of the recommendations are groundbreaking,” said Pamela Cross, a lawyer and expert on intimate partner violence in Ontario, who testified at the inquiry.
The inquest, which heard nearly 30 witnesses over three weeks, aimed to examine the systems that broke down in the weeks, months and years leading up to the day Basil Borutski got into a borrowed car, drove to the villa of Carol Culton and strangled her with a coaxial cable, then moved to Anastasia Kuzik’s house, where he shot her to death, and then to Natalie Warmerdam’s farm, where he also shot her.
All three women had previously been intimate with Borucki. He was in and out of prison for attacking Kuzik and Warmerdam and was on probation at the time of the murders and subject to a weapons ban.
Borucki had been flagged as “high risk” two years before the triple murder, the inquest found, and displayed 30 of the 41 risk factors identified by the Ontario Domestic Violence Death Review Board – including a deep sense of victimhood and the ability to persuade new partners he was innocent and unfairly targeted by the police in his previous convictions.
Police witnesses told jurors that Borucki was very good at “manipulation” and consistently ignored court orders, including never showing up for a mandated partner assault response program.
The jury heard from family members, including Valerie Warmerdam, Natalie’s daughter, who painted a nuanced and empathetic picture of Borucki as a troubled stepfather. He heard from a frontline worker who described Warmerdam and Kuzyk’s constant terror that Borucki would kill them or hurt their family.
The inquest panel asked decision-makers to make a “significant financial investment” to end the violence, get police to use the same records management system and create clear guidelines for flagging high-risk abusers. He called for research into disclosure protocols such as Clare’s Law, which is used in the UK and parts of Canada to allow an interested party to check whether their partner has a police record for intimate partner violence.
Valerie Warmerdam welcomed the verdict but stressed the need for action by governments who will receive these recommendations after the inquiry. “I want a change,” she said. “These recommendations are a good start if implemented. That’s a big if.”
Kirsten Mercer, counsel for End Violence Against Women Renfrew County (EVA), noted that the jury itself added the epidemic recommendation among 13 others, including creating a high-risk offender registry similar to the sex offender registry and examining electronic surveillance of those charged with or convicted of an IPV-related crime.
“The jury asked us to tell the truth about intimate partner violence,” Mercer told the media after the verdict. “The jury asked us to put our money where our mouth is.”
The idea to add femicide to the coroner’s list of manners of death and to the Criminal Code of Canada came from the joint submission. Countries in Latin America have already added it as a criminal offense, she said, and it should be seen as a model for how to do it here.
Accountability was a priority for this jury, Mercer said. The judgment calls for the creation of an accountability body similar to the UK’s Domestic Violence Commissioner and a special commission to ensure that this judgment does not simply sit in the inboxes of decision-makers.
“We’re not going to wait forever anymore.”
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