Advocates count 48 femicides in rural Ontario in last 5 years. Here's why women in those areas are at risk

Advocates say domestic violence is increasing in rural Ontario but a lack of adequate transportation and a housing crisis is putting the lives of more women at risk.

Multiple rural shelters contacted by CBC News are operating at full capacity heading into 2025 and are turning women and children away.

"A lot of women in rural areas actually have no access to help. The isolation, the distance away from towns and police makes it very difficult for people to reach out," said Diane Harris, executive director of Domestic Abuse Services Oxford (DASO), east of London.

"We get a number of calls every day and we can't accommodate them here, so we're trying to do referrals out into the community, but the housing crisis also limits us. That's what scares me for women's lives." 

DASO is the only emergency crisis shelter in Oxford County, with one long-term transitional housing program and one part-time sexual violence counsellor. It serves a population of 128,000 in eight municipalities and several small towns, ranging from Tillsonburg to Stratford to Paris. 

"We are a very large geographic area and we don't have any buses to different municipalities," said Harris. "People have to rely on their own way of getting here. If we have an emergency we try to send out a cab but that doesn't always work, so people without cars can't make it here." 

As demand for crisis services continues to rise, not having enough resources puts a lot of pressure on rural shelters and can be a life or death matter for those trying to seek safety, said Harris. 

The Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses (OAITH) tracks monthly and annual femicides in the province reported by media. It gave CBC News a breakdown of femicides between 2018 and 2023, which showed that small and rural communities, with a population less than 30,000, made up almost 20 per cent of femicides over the past five years, or 48 deaths. 

OAITH breaks Ontario down into east, Toronto, central, north and west region, which includes Owen Sound, Windsor, Niagara, Hamilton and Cambridge. There have been 18 femicides in the west region since last year, said OAITH's head Marlene Ham, adding the numbers are likely an underestimation. 

"We need to understand the service levels that exist in rural communities and the complexities with where services are located and how they can be accessed. Living in one community while services are elsewhere and leaving it to go to another one might not be possible," said Ham. 

Ham said shelters were designed for emergencies but are now having to fill in the gaps of other services, calling it a "systemic bottleneck," worsened by a shortage of affordable housing.

The Women's National Housing and Homelessness Network says approximately 699 women and 236 accompanying children are turned away from domestic violence shelters across Canada every day.

"If we're experiencing harm in our home and it's on a rural route outside of town, no one is going to hear us scream," said Liz Brown of Valora Place shelter in Elgin County, south of London.

"You can drive around Elgin county and there are tons of pockets where there's no cell phone reception. The closest person to you can be a ten-minute walk or an hour, that's a very specific kind of geographic isolation."