In January 2025, Premier David Eby formally recognized gender-based violence (GBV) as a national epidemic. In his mandate letter to Minister of Finance Brenda Bailey, the Premier directed her to:

“Work with partners to address the national epidemic of gender-based violence as it relates to our province, and work with stakeholders to ensure that government programs and initiatives reflect the interests and concerns of people with lived experience.

 

Work with the Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs and the Attorney General to ensure that we are meeting our targets on delivering accessible transition housing for women fleeing violence, and that the justice system is responsive to the needs of survivors of gender-based violence.”

This recognition was overdue—but critical. It acknowledged what survivors, advocates, and frontline workers have been saying for decades: GBV and violence against women are not private tragedies. They are public safety emergencies—structural, enduring, and woven into the very systems meant to protect.

But a declaration is not implementation. And symbolism is not safety.

Last week, Dr. Kim Stanton released her final report following an independent review of
BC’s justice system response to intimate partner and sexual violence. Her findings are as clear as they are
damning: survivors are routinely disbelieved, retraumatized, and failed. These are not isolated
missteps—they are systemic patterns.

Her report outlines four overarching barriers that prevent meaningful justice and safety:

• Silos between and within institutions prevent coordinated, survivor-informed responses.
• Lack of accountability means government actors face few consequences when failing to follow law or policy.
• Failure to understand the costs of inaction, including the human and financial toll of systemic neglect.
• Lack of intersectional analysis, which ignores how race, Indigeneity, gender identity, immigration status, and poverty shape experiences of violence and access to justice.

These systemic failures mirror what BWSS documented in our Colour of Violence report and our analysis Justice: Or Just a Piece of Paper? —the devastating impact of institutional neglect and the ways survivors are pushed out of systems designed without them in mind.

Dr. Stanton also highlighted the lived consequences of these failures. Survivors often face:

• Profound lack of confidence in the legal system
• Fear of criminalization or reprisal
• Inadequate access to legal, health, and housing supports
• Ongoing social and economic vulnerability
• Shame, stigma, and self-blame
• The impacts of systemic racism and colonialism
• Fear of child apprehension

These are not hypothetical risks. They are the real and persistent conditions under which survivors are forced to navigate for safety—and survival.

Dr. Stanton’s report includes nine concrete recommendations that chart a way forward:

1. The declaration of GBV as an epidemic must be operationalized. It must inform policy, resourcing,
   and public communication across ministries.
2. Internal government accountability mechanisms must be established to ensure every ministry
   fulfills its obligations.
3. A Gender-Based Violence Commissioner must be appointed to provide independent oversight and
   drive cross-sector implementation.
4. Prevention must be prioritized through education, housing supports, and standardized risk
   assessments in criminal and family law.
5. Community-based supports must be strengthened with long-term investment in frontline, trauma-
   informed services.
6. Cross-sector collaboration must deepen, including regional hubs that integrate legal, housing,
   health, and culturally safe services.
7. A standing GBV Death Review Committee must be created to ensure systemic learning from every
   femicide.
8. A collaborative GBV data strategy must be developed to capture disaggregated data and track
   outcomes.
9. The Violence Against Women in Relationships (VAWIR) policy must be updated and transformed
   into enforceable legislation.

At BWSS, these recommendations reflect the direction we are already moving. Through our
#DesignedWithSurvivors initiative, we are advancing a public safety agenda built on five core strategies:

• Legal and justice reform, including prosecutorial transparency and standardized risk assessment
• Public and youth education to prevent violence before it starts
• Expanded community-based supports, housing, and trauma and violence-informed services
• Cross-sector accountability from police, Crown counsel, and courts
• Whole-of-government implementation that is transparent, coordinated, and measurable

We are also actively:

• Calling for independent oversight of Crown counsel and public reporting on charge approval rates
• Conducting a critical analysis of restorative justice programs that fall short in IPV and sexual
  violence cases
• Meeting with municipal leaders and provincial partners to co-create local safety strategies rooted in
  lived experience

This is the work ahead. It’s not flashy. It’s not symbolic. It’s difficult, detailed, and urgent. It requires moving
from words to systems, from recognition to transformation.

Dr. Stanton’s report is not the beginning. It is confirmation. It validates what survivors have told us for
years—and what frontline organizations like BWSS have long made visible.

The declaration is done. The roadmap is here. Now, the work begins. Survivors have waited long enough.
Let’s ensure this moment becomes the turning point—not just another talking point.

The recent June 2025 disappearance of a 12-year-old Indigenous girl has once again exposed the deep and ongoing failures of police institutions to uphold their responsibilities to children—especially Indigenous girls—who are made vulnerable by systemic neglect and racism.

Despite decades of public inquiries, commissions, and commitments to do better, police continue to use harmful and dehumanizing language that shifts blame onto children rather than recognizing their right to protection and care. Describing a missing 12-year-old as engaging in a “high-risk lifestyle” is not only factually incorrect—it is an act of institutional violence. This framing diminishes urgency, emboldens predators, and signals to the public that some lives matter less.

We are particularly alarmed that this failure occurred under the leadership of individuals who were directly involved in the Vancouver Police Department during the era of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry. There is no excuse. The lessons were clear. The calls for justice were loud. And yet, the patterns persist.

At BWSS, we have worked iwith police agencies across the province for over 40 years, providing training, consultation, and crisis response rooted in feminist, decolonial, and trauma-informed practice. We have also been unwavering in our accountability demands when these institutions fail to act in the best interests of survivors.

We are calling for:

1. A full public retraction of the harmful language used in this case.
2. Immediate reforms to communication protocols to reflect trauma- and violence-informed, child-centred standards.
3. A formal public apology to the child, her family, and Indigenous communities.
4. A meeting between police leadership and community organizations—including Indigenous- anti-violence, women’s and youth-led groups—to address systemic failures in how missing Indigenous girls are treated.

We also lift up and thank our colleagues at Justice for Girls for their leadership in calling for an Amber Alert in this case, and we express deep appreciation to the broader coalition of organizations who are mobilizing to demand accountability.

The institutions responsible for public safety must stop retraumatizing communities already burdened by grief, erasure, and injustice. The failure to act with urgency and respect in the disappearance of an Indigenous child is not a public relations mistake—it is a moral failure with life-and-death consequences.

We will continue to fight for a system where Indigenous girls are seen, protected, and valued—not criminalized, dismissed, or forgotten.

`Statement from Battered Women’s Support Services on the Identification of Nicole Bell and Ongoing Calls for Justice

The identification of Nicole Crystal Bell—seven years after she was reported missing from Sicamous at the age of 31—brings painful confirmation to her family and loved ones, and reignites longstanding calls for justice for the women who have disappeared or been murdered in the North Okanagan.

Nicole Bell was one of five women who went missing in the region between 2016 and 2017. She was a mother of three. The RCMP now confirms that she was a victim of foul play and that the person responsible for her death is also the primary suspect in the death of 18-year-old Traci Genereaux, whose remains were discovered on a 24-acre farm owned by the family of Curtis Wayne Sagmoen.

Sagmoen is a known violent offender with convictions for assault and weapons-related charges. Despite multiple red flags—including a rare RCMP warning to sex workers in the region—Sagmoen was acquitted in 2020 of threatening a woman with a firearm. The systemic failure to meaningfully intervene earlier allowed violence against women to continue unchecked. Sagmoen’s name has never been publicly tied to the murders by law enforcement, despite the overwhelming evidence of a pattern.

Other women connected to this tragic cluster include:

• Deanna Wertz, 46, last seen July 19, 2016, in the Enderby area. She remains missing.
• Caitlin Potts, 27, last seen February 2016 in Enderby. She also remains missing.
• Ashley Marie Simpson, 32, went missing in April 2016. Her remains were later found, and her boyfriend, Derek Lee Matthew Favell, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
• Traci Genereaux, 18, was reported missing in June 2017; her remains were found during the RCMP’s search of the Sagmoen family farm in October 2017.

Despite RCMP claims that the women’s disappearances are not all linked to a single serial actor, the public deserves transparency and accountability. The failure to connect these cases sooner—and the failure to issue meaningful public alerts—reflects whose lives are treated as expendable. These women, many of whom were Indigenous, poor, or involved in criminalized economies, were met not with protection, but with invisibility.

We renew our call for justice in the case of Deanna Wertz, who is still missing, and echo the demand for a full investigation into the broader patterns of violence connected to this region and to Curtis Sagmoen. We also reiterate that additional parties to these offences have not been ruled out, and this must be urgently pursued.

We offer our deep gratitude to Jody Leon of the Splatsin First Nation for her tireless leadership and years of advocacy on these cases. Her unwavering commitment to the truth and to honouring the lives of missing and murdered women in the Okanagan has been a beacon in the face of institutional silence.

Violence against women in this province is not random—it is systemic, it is targeted, and it is preventable. It is time for British Columbia to reckon with how little has changed since the early warnings about Sagmoen, and how many more women might be harmed if the same patterns of inaction continue.

This case is a tragic reminder of why public safety must be designed with survivors in mind. We need survivor-centred legal systems, real accountability for violence, and public policy that addresses the root causes of harm. Anything less is complicity.

Our Analysis

The Barrett decision is not an isolated anomaly—it’s part of a long-standing and deeply embedded pattern in the criminal legal system that enables male violence through a range of escape routes. Automatism is just one of the latest tools in a legal toolbox that makes conviction for sexual assault and domestic violence a statistical rarity, not the norm.

While the public may assume that being charged with sexual assault leads to legal consequences, the reality is far bleaker. At every stage—from police reporting to Crown decision-making to trial—survivors are systematically disbelieved, retraumatized, and abandoned. Add to that defences like “rough sex”, R v Jordan, and now automatism, and the message becomes clear: unless a perpetrator confesses, is caught on camera, or voluntarily pleads guilty, conviction is unlikely.

The standard isn’t justice. It’s exceptionalism.

The defence of automatism rests on the notion that a man can consume drugs, engage in violent sexual acts, and be found not responsible because he was too intoxicated to form intent. But this logic creates a dangerous precedent: the more disconnected from reality a man claims to be, the more likely he is to be absolved of accountability. The legal system asks not what happened to the victim, but what was going on in the mind of the perpetrator.

This framework benefits those who use violence. Survivors must recall events with perfect clarity, show no signs of trauma, and be deemed credible under aggressive cross-examination. Meanwhile, perpetrators can claim they were too drunk, too traumatized, or too delusional to be held responsible. The burden of proof remains impossibly high for survivors—and vanishingly low for those who harm them.

Media Must Reframe the Story

It is time for the news media to flip the narrative.

Instead of reporting every time a man is charged with assault or sexual violence—while knowing that charges are often dropped, stayed, or acquitted—reporters should start treating conviction as newsworthy precisely because it is so rare. The question isn’t why survivors don’t report. The question is: What happens when they do? And far too often, the answer is nothing.

Imagine if every headline read:

“Man Actually Convicted of Sexual Assault: A Rare Exception in Canada’s Failing Legal System.”

This framing would tell the truth about how uncommon it is for survivors to see any form of justice. It would shift public understanding away from individual cases and toward the systemic failure that allows gender-based violence to flourish.

The Broader Cost of Legal Excuses

Automatism is part of a broader set of legal, cultural, and institutional justifications for male violence—whether it’s intoxication, childhood trauma, mental illness, or stress. While these may be real factors in a person’s life, they should never be used to erase harm. Women live with trauma, poverty, and illness every day—and they don’t commit acts of sexual violence.

We are witnessing a legal system that is increasingly designed to protect the “morally innocent” perpetrator while gaslighting the survivor. If a woman is assaulted in the night, in public, by a stranger who strips off his clothes and pushes her down stairs, and the court says “yes, but he was too high to be responsible”—what exactly does a conviction look like anymore?

This case reinforces the urgent need to redefine public safety from the perspective of survivors. At BWSS, our #DesignedWithSurvivors campaign challenges governments, institutions and the general public to recognize violence against women and gender-based violence as a public safety crisis—not a private matter or unfortunate anomaly.

We are calling for legal systems that prioritize survivor safety, public policy that addresses the structural conditions fueling violence, and accountability measures that make prevention—not just punishment—a core function of public safety. 

Because when the law excuses violence, and systems dismiss survivors, public safety doesn’t exist—it’s an illusion.

The defence of automatism didn’t begin with Barrett, and it won’t end there. Until we confront the fact that our legal system is not built to deliver justice for survivors, and until we demand media coverage that reflects this systemic failure, the cycle of violence and impunity will continue.

Conviction for sexual assault should not be the exception. But in Canada’s current system—it is. And that should be the story.