Advocates working at a B.C. women’s shelter are calling on provincial officials to make changes immediately to the justice system in order to save women from being killed by male offenders.
Hilla Kerner, who works at Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter in Vancouver, penned an open letter on July 24 to B.C. Premier David Eby and Attorney General Niki Sharma on the heels of Tori Dunn’s murder.
"The heartbreaking and senseless violent death of Tori could, and should, have been prevented,” says Kerner.
Dunn was killed during an alleged random attack inside her Surrey house. The man arrested and charged with her murder has a criminal history dating back decades.
Kerner points out men who face charges of violent crimes against women are being released under conditions they are not keeping.
"Routinely, men that are deemed dangerous by Crown prosecutors and judges, as evidenced by the granting of protection orders and/or no-contact as a bail condition, are released into the community and as a result, fatally harm women,” she says.
Women who have dealt with their accusers in the court system tell her they feel helpless. But the province is not helpless, she says.
"British Columbia must do better to ensure women’s safety and to protect women’s lives,” she says.
The letter demands that men who have been charged with assault or threats of violence be held in custody until the completion of the proceedings; if they are released, they have strict monitoring and supervision.
“Too many times men have been arrested again after breaching conditions and it’s been too late because they already killed a woman,” she says.
Kerner explains how in just two years in B.C., six women have been killed by men who were previously arrested or charged with assault. One woman was killed by a man she had a protection order against.
Instead of calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to make federal changes, Kerner wants to see changes at the provincial level.
“If you release a violent man, that man is likely to reoffend and that’s why there are conditions in the first place,” she says.
She hopes there will only be real change if there is pressure from the public. In her 20 years working in the industry, only two men have ever been detained during the court proceedings.
“They were already in the hands of the system and the system let them be free to follow up on their threats without proper mechanism to protect women,” says Kerner.
Kerner also wants the BC Coroners Service to release the details of what happened to women killed by men to figure out how the system failed the women.
