Front Burner - The reality of intimate-partner violence in rural Canada

Episode Date: June 9, 2022

On Sept. 22, 2015 in Ontario's Renfrew County, Nathalie Warmerdam, Anastasia Kuzik, and Carol Culleton were all killed by the same man — Basil Borutski. All three women knew Borutski or were intimately involved with him for a period. Their murders became one of the worst cases of intimate-partner violence in Canada's history. Even though Borutski sits behind bars — with likely no chance of getting out — a coroner's inquest into the murders is finally taking place. A panel of experts, community members and advocates are examining what went wrong and trying to come up with ways to keep it from happening again. Renfrew County is a microcosm of a problem often faced by women experiencing intimate partner violence in rural communities. CBC News found one in four cases of intimate partner homicide was in a rural, remote or northern area of the country. Today on Front Burner, we talk to CBC Ottawa reporter Guy Quinneville from inside the hearings and Pam Cross, a lawyer and key witness in the inquest, about the bigger problem of domestic violence in rural communities.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem, brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. And before we begin, this episode deals with intimate partner violence. So please take care while listening. This is a man I lived with for two years. I considered him family. He's the only person who I've ever called stepdad. That's Valerie Warmerdam talking about the man who killed her mother after he was sentenced to life in prison.

Convicted triple murderer Basil Borutsky will spend the rest of his life behind bars. He's been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 70 years for the deaths of three Ottawa Valley women back in September 2015. Natalie Warmerdam, Anastasia Kuzik and Carol Culleton were all killed by the same man, Basil Borutski, on September 22nd, 2015 in Renfrew County. Ontario Provincial Police, where's your emergency? He came in the house with a gun! My sister's screaming and she's lying on the ground!

Ontario Provincial Police responded to a call of a gunshot fired at this country home shortly after 9 a.m. Inside, they found the body of Anastasia Kuzik, a former waitress turned real estate agent. 57-year-old male is presently in custody. We do believe the three deaths are connected. It's still very fresh and raw here. All three women were known to Borutsky, or intimately involved with him, for a period, and their murders became one of the worst cases of intimate partner violence in Canada's history. Even though Borutsky sits behind bars with no chance of getting out, a coroner's inquest into the Renfrew County murders is finally taking place,

examining what went wrong and trying to come up with ways to keep it from happening again. Today, we're talking to Ottawa reporter Guy Kenville from Inside the Hearings, and later we'll be talking to Pam Cross, a lawyer and a key witness in the inquest, about the bigger problem of domestic violence in the rural context. Hi, Guy. Thank you very much for joining us. I know we caught you on your lunch break, so we're very appreciative. Hey, Jamie, of course. So Basil Borutsky was convicted, of course, right?

He's serving life in prison with no chance of parole. So then beyond the case itself and his responsibility in all of this, what is this inquest looking at exactly? Yeah, there was a moment early in the inquest that really highlighted that. One of the inquest officials said that they're making a deliberate choice not to say Basil Borutsky's name as much as possible because the focus of this inquest is on the victims and the lead up to their murders. Because the trial of Borutsky underlined a number of alarming warning signals and concerning

patterns on his part and some perhaps systemic failings, part of the systems that were meant to protect these women and other survivors of abuse. At the time that Borutsky murdered these three women, he was on probation for having assaulted and attempted to choke one of them. He was also on a lifetime weapons ban, which is notable because two of his fatal victims that day were shot to death. And he also declined to take part in domestic partner support programs as part of his probation. So, you know, the five inquestors that are tasked with hearing from over 30 witnesses over the next two and a half weeks still, they're being asked not

only to establish the facts of these murders, but also to make concrete recommendations on how future victims of intimate partner violence can be better protected so that they don't suffer the same fate as Kuzik, Warmerdam, and Culleton. Tell me about Renfrew County. What's it like? Yeah, I mean, the county is very sprawling. It's the largest county in Ontario, but very sparsely populated. Pamela Cross, who you'd be talking to during day three, put it really well. She said that if you include some of the larger communities in Renfrew County, like Petawawa or Pembroke, there's only 14 people per square kilometre. You know, you compare that to Toronto, where it's over 9,000 people per square kilometre. So there are vast distances between people's homes in this county. And so

the inquest has heard about concerns about police response times, also about lack of affordable housing, because survivors of intimate partner violence need places to stay in order to, you know, to be safe from the abusers. And that's difficult when the housing stock is just not there, right? And another thing that the inquest has heard about is that, look, these are small communities and there are privacy issues. You know, I wonder if we could talk a little bit more about what these women came up against in this really tragic case because it has come to symbolize so many of

these systemic issues. And so could you tell me a little bit about these women and a little bit more about their interactions and history with Borutsky? Natalie Warmerdam was, she was a nurse and a single mother of two. She operated a small hobby farm. Her daughter, Valerie Wormergam, who has testified during the inquest, said people referred to her as the chicken lady. She loved the colours in the fall. She loved that it was a gorgeous house. Hard to maintain, but beautiful.

So yes, this was her dream property. She had been recently separated and got into a relationship with Borutsky from 2010 to 2012. So, you know, three years before the time of the murders. And as Valerie, her daughter, testified, Borutsky lived with the family for two years. But over that time, the relationship between Borutsky and Warmerdam grew fraught as he grew increasingly unstable and violent and his drinking worsened. And he'd keep her up late at night screaming at her about how he wanted half of her stuff because they were common law partners in theory. She went and talked to a neighbor and the neighbor basically told her, you know, this is an abusive relationship

and that you need to get you and especially the kids out of this situation. And the threat that he posed to the family grew to the extent that Natalie Warmerdan began to keep a shotgun under her bed and had a panic alarm. She ultimately charged Borutsky with assault and he was convicted of that and did spend a small period of time in jail for that assault. But it wouldn't be the only time that he went to jail for assaulting one of the three women that he ultimately killed in 2015. Anastasia Kuzik was the second woman that he became intimately involved with for only a very brief time. I never got used to calling her Anastasia. She was always my baby sister. You know, Anastasia was creative and talented, you know, but at the same time, just as more importantly, she was kind and caring.

just as more importantly, she was kind and caring. In late 2013 and early 2014, Kuzik was brutally assaulted by Borutsky to the point where, according to police, she told Borutsky, the next time you do this, you might kill me. After that incident, and she refused to sleep with him again, he became upset to the point where he

burned some of her precious childhood items. His abuse of her really reflects the broad spectrum of intimate partner violence that experts have been outlining here during the inquest, which is that it's not just physical, it's also sexual and psychological. She ultimately pressed charges against him as well. And he spent another period in jail, this time just over three months, until the end of 2014. Then he was released. And I also understand that he moved in with Anastasia while he was on probation for the crimes perpetrated against Natalie. And it was actually in a violation of his probation.

And yet he moved in with her anyhow. Right. All right, now let's talk about Carol Culleton, and what do we know about her and the relationship that she had with Borutsky? Carol Culleton was a retired government worker who owned a cottage in one part of the county. The evidence given by the OPP inspector heavily suggests that he was essentially stalking her. According to the OPP, Borutsky had a pattern of attaching himself to women when they were at vulnerable points in their lives, like when they were estranged or going through their own

separation, for example. And he tried to graft on to women who had a home of their own so that he could have a place to stay and he could take advantage of that setting. So Colleton owned the cottage and the inquest has heard that he essentially started doing work on her cottage without her solicitation, without her wanting him to. And it came to the point where he was communicating with her and she was sending him texts, making it very clear that she wanted him to stop. And so, you know, what were the other kind of red flags or serious issues that are being unearthed by this inquest is the recent former director of the Center for Research on Violence Against Women and Children, Dr. Peter Jaffe. And he was asked to create a report outlining the many warning signals about Borutsky before he went on his killing rampage. Borutsky was known as a violent person to people in the community. This expert's report outlines how by the spring of 2015, just a few months before the murders, there was agreement in reports from probation, police, and crown attorneys

that Borutsky was a serious risk to one of the victims that he ultimately murdered. The sister of one of his fatal victims told police that Borutsky had said that if his partner reported him to police, he would kill her once he got out of jail. The inquest has heard this too. Borutsky's neighbor warned that Borutsky had said the night before the murders, I could go tomorrow morning and kill and still go to heaven. According to this expert, a review of Borutsky's file shows that between 2010 and 2015, the year of the murders, there were over 100 intervention opportunities by families, friends, and professionals who were aware of his violence or threats of violence. Maybe no one could have

predicted that he would murder three people in one day, but each woman was clearly in grave danger, according to this expert's report. And he goes on to call Borutsky a domestic violence terrorist, one who, you know, as he continued to breach his conditions and inflict violence on women, should have been more strongly monitored. And just as importantly, his victims should have been offered better protection because they were essentially left to fend for themselves. And the other key point he raised is that, you know, Borowski's first conviction for intimate partner violence was in 1977, when he was 20. So it's very clear from his file that intervention to stop that really destructive trend of his was needed at a very early age. And that's the message that's also being underlined by other experts who are either testifying

or observing the inquest, that as much as we want to create change for the systems to help victims and survivors of domestic abuse, there also needs to be changes to help abusers at a very early stage before they become destructive to others. Guy, thank you very much for this.

Of course. Thank you for having me. Renfrew County is a microcosm of a wider problem, of what women experiencing domestic violence in rural communities often face. CBC found one in four cases of intimate partner homicide was in a rural, remote, or northern area of the country. So to get into this, I'm talking to Pam Cross. She's a lawyer and expert in violence against women. And for the inquest, she examines some of the driving forces behind this disparity.

Hi, Pam. Thank you very much for making the time. My pleasure. So Guy brought us up to speed and he told us the backstory and the multiple red flags in this tragic case. And unbelievably, in the lead up to the deaths of Natalie, Anastasia and Carol, an expert testified that authorities said that there were 100 points of possible intervention here. That was an astounding number to me. And I wonder, what was your reaction to that? It wasn't astounding to me, because that's what is the case in many situations of intimate partner homicide. Usually, although people may say,

oh, we had no idea, we thought everything was fine. In 70% of domestic homicides, in fact, there are a significant number of warning signs known to a significant number of people. intimate partner violence in a rural context. And Guy brought up some of the factors like isolation, access to guns, privacy. And I was just wondering if you could tell me a bit more about these hurdles and how they play into someone's experience with intimate partner violence in a rural setting. I have a long list of rural realities that contribute to both the experience of intimate partner violence and the responses to it. But I always start with the same one, and that's distance. Renfrew County, for example, is larger than Prince Edward Island. There's only 100,000 people spread out over this vast area.

There's no public transportation system. If people don't live in one of the four small urban centers in the county, they're living potentially significant distances even from their closest neighbor. If you think about that from the perspective of a woman whose partner is abusing her, she can't just step outside her door and turn right and get to a neighbor's house in a minute or two for help. She can't hop on a bus to get to a neighbor's house in a minute or two for help. She can't hop on a bus to get to the women's shelter or the police station or the hospital. Those distances serve to really isolate women. The abuser knows that and takes advantage of it.

Perhaps when he leaves the house, if he leaves a car in the driveway, he takes the keys to the car so she can't get anywhere. Distance underlies many of the other challenges and barriers for women who live in rural communities. For instance, it's difficult for her to access services because they're limited in number. This whole county has one women's shelter. That could be far enough from where the woman lives that if she wants to move in there for safety and take her children with her, she might not be able to get to her job because it's so far away from where she was living before, or the kids might not be able to get to their usual school. So you see how a culture of isolation can develop around this woman, leaving her in a position where she feels

that she doesn't have any support, there's no one she can reach out to. Maybe her cell service is erratic. Absolutely. I guess the question I have is like, it seems like such a difficult problem to address. Like, how do you try to make that better? It is a difficult problem to address. But even this conversation that we're having today is part of the solution, because your listeners maybe will learn something that they didn't know before. They'll perhaps become more aware about the issue of intimate partner violence, what it can look like, the fact that it can happen to anybody, not just to this group of people or that group of people. The inquest that's going on now is another really important part of the solution. We have five community members

sitting here as jurors who are listening to three weeks of evidence being presented by experts of various kinds. And they're going to present the team with a series of recommendations for changes that they think might help improve the situation. What are some of the specific recommendations that you're really hoping will come out of this, this inquest, which is going on for several more weeks? The areas that I'm interested in seeing recommendations speak to because of my background as a family law lawyer are recommendations that might talk about

the need for increased collaboration and communication between different systems that women might be accessing, increased and more stable funding for community-based services, better communication when an offender is released from jail so that victims have an opportunity to know that he's back in the area and can take steps to protect themselves. We've seen some new gun control legislation introduced, I think just a week ago or 10 days ago at the federal level. We're introducing legislation to implement a national freeze on handgun ownership.

As a further part of this new legislation, we're also fighting gun smuggling and trafficking by increasing maximum criminal penalties and providing more tools for law enforcement to investigate firearm crimes. That's an important part, an aspect. It's not the whole solution, but it's part of the solution. Those are some of the things I'm hoping to see

come out of this inquest. One question I wanted to ask you that Guy brought up was, he brought up how access to guns is an issue in the rural setting. And I wonder if you could explain that to me and how it's perhaps different than other places in the country. People in the city really rarely, if ever, have a legitimate need for a gun. In the country, people use guns to kill varmints on the farm, to hunt for meat that their family will eat, that kind of thing. But once that gun is in the house, it can become weaponized, not just because the abuser picks it up and shoots his partner, although that happens. And domestic homicides in rural settings

are the result of the use of guns 29% of the time compared to 12% of the time in urban settings. But the gun is used in many other ways. It can be used as a threat. You know, there's an argument underway and suddenly the abuser pulls out the gun and starts to clean it. Or he carries it around the house and cocks it and uncocks it every time he's trying to make a point to his partner or to his children. Guns are part of rural culture. They can't be eradicated from that culture. And I would argue they shouldn't be eradicated from that culture. But they do create a serious safety risk for women. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem.

Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people, and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo.

50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. You have been looking at this issue for a long time and these tragic murders, they took place in 2015. And I still feel like I'm always hearing stories about women being murdered by their intimate partners. And I guess one question I'm wondering about is like, do you feel like we're really making progress here?

Because it's not clear to me. It feels like we aren't. That's a fair question. I do think that we're making progress. I can tell you I wouldn't still be doing this work if I didn't think that. It's slow. And because so much of the progress we make is dependent on the political will of whatever party is in power at any given time, we can move ahead and then start to retreat again. But the last year, year and a half, I feel like we've seen some very hopeful signs.

I mentioned gun control legislation a few minutes ago. Just over a year ago, the federal government made significant changes to the Divorce Act, which of course is how decisions about what happens with kids are made. And those changes included the inclusion of an expansive definition of family violence, along with a requirement that courts consider the presence

of family violence when they're making any decisions related to children. This is a huge move and a very positive one. The federal government has also recently released a toolkit to help lawyers screen when they have a new client to find out whether family violence is a factor for whoever the client is. Last week, Bill 233, which is known as Kira's Law, passed third reading in the House of Commons, that bill would lead to the implementation of education for judges on intimate partner violence. So they would be better informed when they handle a case where that's one of the factors. The other thing that I think is reason to give us hope is that frontline workers across this country, they come to work every day, they support women, they empower women. Those women are moving on. They're leaving the abuse behind. They're finding new lives for themselves and their children that are free from the violence that has on their own, those two things are enough to give all of the rest of us hope

and encourage us to do our part of the job as well. Pam, thank you very much for this and for all the work that you do. Thank you. You're very welcome. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.