A jury in Renfrew County, Ontario, just west of the Canadian capital, issued 86 recommendations this week in a unanimous verdict on the deaths of three local women who were killed by the same man just one morning nearly seven years ago. The boldest was to ask the Ontario government to “formally declare violence by close comrades an epidemic” that requires “significant financial investment” and profound systemic change to address it. Since the triple homicide on September 22, 2015, 111 women in Ontario have been murdered by their current or ex-partner, according to the investigation. Every six days in Canada, a woman is murdered by her partner, according to Statistics Canada. The jury also recommended that the word “female homicide” be formally emphasized – recorded as a way of death by medical examiners in the province and added to the Canadian Penal Code to emphasize homosexuality under the murder of women and girls because of their gender. “Many of the recommendations are groundbreaking,” said Pamela Cross, a lawyer and expert on Ontario partner violence who testified in the study. The investigation, which was heard by nearly 30 witnesses over a three-week period, aimed to look at systems that collapsed in the weeks, months and years before Basil Borutski got into a borrowed car and went to Carol’s cottage. Culleton and strangled her. with a coaxial cable, then went to Anastasia Kuzyk’s house where he shot her to death and then to Nathalie Warmerdam’s farm where she also shot her. All three women have had a close relationship with Borutsky in the past. He was in and out of prison for attacking Kuzyk and Warmerdam and was suspended at the time of the killings and subject to a weapons ban. Borutsky was identified as “high-risk” two years before the triple homicide, the investigation heard and identified 30 of the 41 risk factors identified by the Ontario Domestic Violence Death Control Committee – including a deep sense of victimhood and Convincing young comrades was an innocent and unjust target of the police in his previous convictions. Police witnesses told jurors that Borutsky was very good at “manipulating” and consistently defied court orders, including never appearing in an authorized partner assault program. The jury heard members of the family, including Valerie Warmerdam, Nathalie’s daughter, who painted a subtle and compassionate picture of Borutski as a troubled father. It was heard from a front-line worker who described the constant terror of Warmerdam and Kuzyk that Borutski would kill them or harm their family. The trial court asked decision-makers to make “significant financial investments” to end the violence, ask police to use the same file management system and establish clear guidelines for identifying high-risk abusers. He urged the study of disclosure protocols, such as Clare’s Act, used in the UK and parts of Canada to allow an interested person to check if their partner has a history of police violence by comrades. Valerie Warmerdam welcomed the verdict, but stressed the need for action on the part of governments that will receive these recommendations in the wake of the investigation. “I want change,” he said. “These recommendations are a good start, if implemented. That’s a big deal though. “ Kirsten Mercer, an adviser to End Violence Against Women Renfrew County (EVA), noted that it was the jury itself that added the recommendation for the epidemic to 13 others, including the creation of a high-risk sex offenders and sex offenders registry. electronic surveillance of those accused or convicted of an IPV-related offense. “The jury asked us to tell the truth about the violence from the comrades,” Mercer told the media after the verdict. “The jury asked us to put our money where our mouth is.” The idea to add homicide to the medical examiner’s death list and to Canada’s Penal Code came from a joint submission. Latin American countries have already added it as a criminal offense, he said, and it should be considered as a model for how to do it here. Accountability was a priority for this jury, Mercer said. The verdict called for the creation of an accountability body similar to the UK Commission on Domestic Abuse and a special committee to ensure that this verdict does not only wither in the inputs of decision makers. “We will not wait forever.”
