For immediate release: Thursday, September 19, 2024

Vancouver, BC – Many questions emerge as Battered Women’s Support Services (BWSS) joins members of Afro-Latino community in Metro Vancouver, Canada and in Buenaventura, Columbia in condemning the Surrey RCMP killing of a young Afro-Latina mother.

The Independent Investigations office of BC (IIO BC) has been called in following an incident where one woman died after being shot by a police officer. The Surrey RCMP says it responded to reports of a disturbance at a home shortly after 4:30 a.m. Thursday. When officers arrived, they found a woman had barricaded herself in a room with a young child while holding what police believe was a weapon.

The woman has been identified on social media and according to family, friends and community members who knew her they are shocked and recall her personality as calm, kind, caring. Many commented on her as a mother describing her as a wonderful mother who would never harm her one-and-half year old. Most of the commentary has been to question the actions of the RCMP.

BWSS has learned that the young mother was accessing support services while working hard to create a new life in Canada. According to BWSS sources, the woman had been expressing concerns about her intimate relationship and was seeking interventions to help change the situation. It has been disclosed that the woman had been inquiring about accessing BC Housing to live independently of her intimate partner.

There are many questions – for instance as a newcomer, we know the woman spoke Spanish:

• Did the RCMP provide an interpreter or were their commands to her in a language she was not proficient in?
• Did the woman even know they were police and what they were doing there?
• Was there a history of intimate partner violence?
• Was the woman barricaded as a safety measure to protect her from other people in the house?
• Was this young mother protecting her child?
• Who called 911?
• Did the woman think that the police were there to harm her or her child such as removing her one-and-half year old from her care?
• Why were the paramedics onsite prior to the killing?
• Were police cameras deployed and if so, will the police bodycam footage be made available?
• Can the IIO be trusted, and will their investigation be transparent?

It is unacceptable that the RCMP would use lethal violence with a young mother barricaded with her child when they are trained to use the least lethal option when dealing with difficult situations.

All too often, we have witnessed police escalate situations to the point where they believe they must use lethal violence and then lethal violence is justified. Today in 2024, many in the community expect that policing agencies would use skills in de-escalation and would seek to use those skills to prevent lethal violence especially with a young mother with her child.

The community workers who supported her, her family, her friends, the town she came from are in pain and devastated. Over the next days and weeks there is much to do in the search for answers.

Source: Facebook

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/video/c2997040-woman-shot-dead-by-rcmp-in-surrey

For Immediate Release

Justice or “Just” a piece of paper?

Let’s talk about protection orders in British Columbia. 

April 3, 2023. (xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil Waututh)/Vancouver, B.C) – Over 24 women in BC were victims of femicide in 2022 alone. This is almost double from an average of 12 women per year between 2010 and 2015.

This increase in violence constitutes a ‘shadow pandemic’, a public health and safety concern with dire implications.

Everyday victims of intimate partner violence are at risk so an anti-violence organization in British Columbia is asking for help to understand victims’ and frontline workers’ experiences of protection orders and peace bonds.

Battered Women’s Support Services (BWSS) is conducting two surveys to better understand the challenges and barriers that survivors’ and front-line workers’ experience with obtaining and seeking enforcement of family law protection orders and peace bonds in British Columbia.

Since 2013, family law protection orders under BC’s Family Law Act have been available to survivors of intimate partner violence who are fleeing to safety. Along with Criminal Code peace bonds, these mechanisms are intended to act as legal remedies to protect women by preventing escalating and lethal forms of violence.

“We know from our experience on the frontlines that women face numerous challenges and barriers to obtaining family law protection orders and peace bonds.” Says Summer-Rain Legal Advocate and Indigenous Justice Lead, Justice Centre at BWSS, “These surveys come at a critical time of rising rates of intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and femicide in BC.”

“Family law protection orders and peace bonds are important legal tools in ending intimate partner violence and gender-based violence, but we know that the legal system can be complex and retraumatizing for survivors.” Said Angela Marie MacDougall, executive director at Battered Women’s Support Services. “Survivors often require assistance to navigate these intimidating processes. On top of that, victims and advocates must fight to have the protection order enforced by police if it is breached by an abusive partner. Police enforcement of protection orders plays a crucial role in holding an abusive partner accountable, yet police are often unwilling to enforce a breach of a protection order.”

This examination of protection orders in BC comes after the death of Stephanie Forster, a Coquitlam, BC, woman who had a protection order against her former partner at the time it is believed she was killed by her ex-husband. Stephanie’s ex-husband Gianluigi Derossi had a long history of predatory actions, some of which he was charged and convicted for, while in other cases charges were not made.

The results of this study will inform broader law reform and systemic change including legal, policy and police reform, public education and awareness campaigns, and training programs for survivors and the anti-violence workers who support them.

For media inquiries, please contact

Angela Marie MacDougall, BWSS Executive Director

Phone: 604-808-0507

Email: director@bwss.org.

Wednesday March 1, 2023 – (xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil Waututh)/Vancouver, B.C) – A BC-based anti-violence organization providing frontline advocacy and support services to assist survivors of gender-based violence, Battered Women’s Support Services, is reacting to the BC Budget 2023 announcement.

According to Angela Marie MacDougall, Executive Director of Battered Women’s Support Services: “We join many others in celebrating some crucial wins for women, gender diverse people, children, and working families: free universal prescription contraception, the expansion of school food programs, the renter’s mean-tested tax credit, funding for healthcare including mental health supports, and increases in shelter rates for those accessing social assistance and disability. However, it is incredibility disappointing and discouraging that gender-based violence is not mentioned even once in the budget. For a budget that claims to integrate a GBA+ analysis, this is an obvious and unacceptable omission.”

“For five consecutive years, rates of reported family violence and intimate partner violence have been increasing across Canada, with 8 in 10 victims of IPV being women and girls. But the BC Budget makes no mention of this crisis, and zero funding is allocated to anti-violence services. Anti-violence services already face growing wait lists, with survivors waiting years to access safety measures and crisis support counseling. Anti-violence services and transition houses are an essential healthcare service, an essential safety service, an essential justice service, and an essential housing service. But they have been completely ignored in the latest budget,” states Rosa Elena Arteaga, BWSS’s Director of Clinical Practice.

Says Summer Rain, Manager of Indigenous Women’s Programs at BWSS, “In the last year alone, Indigenous women and girls including Tatyanna Harrison, Noelle O’Soup, Carmelita Abraham, and Chelsea Poorman have all been murdered or died under suspicious circumstances in B.C. In Prince George, the RCMP has failed to properly investigate abuse and harassment of Indigenous girls. Yet, shamefully, the BC Budget makes zero mention of Indigenous womens’ or girls’ safety, and there are no justice measures for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two spirit people in the budget. Instead, the budget allocates millions of additional dollars to the failed institution of the RCMP.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 16, 2022

Women are not acceptable casualties in the response to housing crisis

xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil Waututh) territory / Vancouver, B.C. –  Last week, a police operation violently dismantled the encampment along East Hastings in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. We firmly condemn those acts of violence, as well as the continued lack of strategy to address the homelessness crisis.

We also condemn the absence of any consideration for women’s safety despite our organizations’ perpetual warnings about the escalation of gender-based violence in “tent cities.” We are calling for a concerted, nuanced action that prioritizes women’s safety.

Tent cities occur because of multiple, overlapping crises: the housing crisis, opioid crisis and deadly drug supply, lack of appropriate mental health care, and deteriorating access to general health services. For many women, especially Indigenous women and women who are racialized, these hardships intersect with centuries of sexist and racist colonial policies. And like everywhere, gender-based violence goes often unchallenged, unreported and unnoticed.

“With every tent city, we see a dramatic increase in gender-based violence. Women are threatened, harassed, beaten, and raped. Their access to our sites is made difficult if not impossible. Our officials need to do more than a mere acknowledgement of the situation”

– Alice Kendall, Executive Director of the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre.

“We have watched thirty years of planning and policy decisions encompassing addiction, law enforcement, mental health, business improvement, real estate development and housing grind down to the present day. While at the same time, no sustained effort has been made to address the systemic, institutional conditions that give rise to the extreme levels of intimate partner, domestic, and sexualized violence experienced by women in the community. Considering all this violence the last thing we need now is the Vancouver Police Department coming to the neighbourhood to bust heads of impoverished and unhoused people.”

– Angela Marie MacDougall, Executive Director of Battered Women’s Support Services.

“We cannot settle for tent cities that re-emerge and grow each year, instead of immediate and concrete action to house people. Women are among those at greatest risk in encampments. The existence and realities of women in this community continue to be ignored. Consistent failure to meaningfully acknowledge and address the violence women face continues to risk their lives and safety. Given the fact that women make up over 40% of the DTES population, the solutions, priorities, and commitment must at least reflect these proportions. Women’s safety cannot wait. Women deserve to be and feel safe in their communities and in public spaces, and women deserve to be safely and appropriately housed.”

– Mebrat Beyene, Executive Director of WISH Drop-In Centre Society.

“Women must have appropriate, safe, independent and where requested, supportive housing. They must have access to homes where they can see their children, friends and families, and that create opportunities for them to keep themselves and the people they care about safe. Encampments only ensure that we will still be struggling, in another generation, with the same challenges we are struggling with today. We can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different outcomes; and we must not sacrifice women’s health, wellness and safety now, to make this point.”

-Janice Abbott, CEO, Atira Women’s Resources Society

Indigenous women are particularly vulnerable to these acts of violence and while we keep seeing new cases of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Youth, the VPD and RCMP’s response to this reality remains inappropriate, or non-existent.

Women-serving organizations are, yet again, calling for a structured, concerted, anti-sexist, trauma-informed response that draws on the many existing recommendations such as those contained in the Calls for Justice and Red Women Rising. We cannot accept the violence perpetrated against women being minimized or overlooked.

In numbers:

• 2,095 residents identified as homeless in 2020 in Metro Vancouver;
• Women represent over 40% of the Downtown Eastside population;
• Indigenous people are overrepresented in the people experiencing homelessness: they make up to 34% of the general homeless population and 45% of the women homeless population;
• In the last month alone, DEWC has responded to 40 women who access the drop-in who had experience sexual assault;
• Over 22,000 homes are empty in Vancouver.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre
Elody Croullebois, Fundraising and Communications Coordinator
778-686-5608
elody.croullebois@dewc.ca

Battered Women’s Support Services
Angela Marie MacDougall, Executive Director
604-808-0507

WISH Drop-In Centre Society
Estefania Duran, Director of Communications
Communications@wishdropincentre.org
604-669-9474 (Ext. 124)

Atira Women’s Resource Society
Janice Abbott, CEO
604-813-0851

A PDF of this press release is available for download here.