3 London women among 62 femicides in Ontario over last year: report

Three London, Ont. women were among 62 victims of femicide in Ontario over the past year, something a local abused women's shelter said is further evidence that gender-based violence needs to be treated as the epidemic that it is.

The list, released by the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses (OAITH) and the University of Guelph, includes women, children, and gender-diverse individuals who were the victims of a gender-related killing by a man.

The victims ranged in age from six to 90. Nineteen were the victim of intimate partner femicides, 15 femicides were perpetrated by family, and 12 by men known to the victim, according to OAITH.

Most of the victims were from the Greater Toronto Area. Three of the victims were from London, their deaths all at the hands of men in their lives:

One London victim was recorded in OAITH's 2021-22 femicide list, and five in 2020-21, including three members of the Afzaal family. OAITH says it's aware of more than 1,020 femicide victims since 1990.

The deaths are devastating, tragic, and preventable, said Jessie Rodger, the executive director of Anova, which provides shelter and supports to abused women and their children.

"It's 100 per cent getting worse. And it's not a secret… It just feels like there's been a lot of talk, but there hasn't been a whole lot of action," Rodger said.

"How many women is it going to take for us to take this seriously and to put our money where our mouth is?"

Anova provided figures to CBC News showing it helped 342 people obtain shelter and safe spaces between April 1 2022 and March 31, 2023, but had to turn away people nearly 2,400 times because of a lack of beds. Anova's 24/7 crisis and support line also saw nearly 8,200 calls.

"We have been perpetually full at both of our emergency shelters for five years," Rodger said.

"Every shelter in the province is full… We need more space, we need more resources. We need to be addressing what's going on. We also need to be able to address what's going on in terms of prevention."

Jennifer Dunn, the executive director of the London Abused Women's Centre (LAWC), described the situation around femicide and gender-based violence as "worse than we've ever seen it before in previous years, since the pandemic," when victims were stuck at home with abusive partners.

"Some of the trauma and the impacts of violence coming out of the pandemic are very, very significant, and the issue with that is that we're not seeing that go away," Dunn said.

London city councillors declared intimate-partner violence and femicide an epidemic this past summer.