Basil Borutski: How the Canadian justice system enables violence against women

Today Basil Borutski was finally sentenced for murdering Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk and Nathalie Warmerdam on September 22, 2015. He will not be eligible for parole for roughly 70 years, which means he will die behind bars given that he was 57 years old when he committed these crimes.

Although many are pleased with this sentence and relieved Borutski will never again be a free man I think it is important to examine the role the Canadian justice system and police played in his being able to steal these women's lives in the first place. The reason for this is that because of the justice system's ineffectiveness more crimes like these are in store for Canadian society.

These murders were not Borutski's first crimes. Prior to these murders in Ontario Borutski had a long history of violence that included numerous assault charges. At the time of the murders “Borutski had been identified by at least four women as being violent towards them, according to court records,”[1] and he was generally known in the county to be a violent man who was feared even by men.
 
Borutski’s first conviction was for assault causing bodily harm and dated back to 1977.[2] Subsequent charges included uttering threats. Four times he was charged for assaulting his ex-wife but was never convicted. The first time he was acquitted and the second and third times the case never made it to trial. The fourth time the charge was dropped.[3] He was simply made to sign a peace bond. Then in 2010 he was charged with criminal harassment involving another woman. Once again the charges were dropped.[4] In 2012 he was charged for assault against Warmerdam and uttering threats against her son, among other things. He was sentenced to 150 days in jail for uttering threats. “He was also found guilty of damaging a mirror and violating a peace bond — a promise to keep the peace and be on good behaviour. However, charges of assault against Warmerdam, threats to kill his ex-wife and a pair of breaches of court-ordered conditions were stayed at the request of the prosecutor.”[5] He only served 33 days of this sentence.[6] Upon his early release from prison he was not mandated to wear any kind of tracking device, but the police gave Warmerdam “a panic button to press should Borutski come within 500 metres of her”[7] (a device including GPS enabling her to page the police). In 2014 he was convicted for an incident in which he beat and choked Kuzyk and sentenced to 17 months in jail. He only served five months of that sentence.
 
“According to the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, Borutski was released from jail on Dec. 27, 2014.”[8] Kuzyk was not informed of his early release. He refused to sign his probation order, according to which he could have no contact with Kuzyk, but this did not prevent his release from police custody. He was ordered to attend anger management therapy and allowed to attend a centre in the same township where Warmerdam lived and worked. “Yet there is no record he ever attended the program, according to the counsellor.”[9] The treatment centre informed his probation officer that he did not attend as ordered, but never received a reply. “If there was follow-up there is no record that Borutski was ever sanctioned for that probation violation, nor for many of his others.”[10] Warmerdam filed a complaint about Borutski’s presence in the same town where she worked, but her fears were dismissed. She was told that Borutski’s probation officer had agreed to let him enter that town to attend the treatment centre.[11]
 
Far too often the courts, Crown prosecutors and police show a lack of regard for the safety of women which results in tragedy. Due to the way our justice system is designed, each time Borutski was sentenced the judge could not take into account all the former charges for which there had been no convictions. Furthermore, on many occasions Borutski openly violated court orders, and yet, he was rarely sanctioned for this. The Crown prosecutors who dropped charges against him, the judges who were too lenient and the various law enforcement agents, including probation officers, who were remiss in their duties all endangered the lives of women through their lack of regard for their safety. We would like to believe that crimes like the ones Basil Borutski committed will never happen again but unless there is a radical shift in the system they will continue to occur, as they have since the dawn of the Canadian justice system.
 

[1] CBC News, Basil Borutski, charged with 3 Wilno, Ont., murders, blames police harassment, Jan. 15, 2016, Lisa Mayor and Andrew Culbert

[2] CBC News, Why Didn’t We Know, The Fifth Estate, Season 41, Jan. 15, 2016, Gillian Findlay

[3] CBC News, Why Didn’t We Know, The Fifth Estate, Season 41, Jan. 15, 2016, Gillian Findlay

[4] CBC News, Why Didn’t We Know, The Fifth Estate, Season 41, Jan. 15, 2016, Gillian Findlay

[5] Ottawa Citizen, Wilno triple homicide accused had dark history of vicious attacks on women, Sept. 24, 2015, last updated Sept. 21, 2016

[6] CBC News, Why Didn’t We Know, The Fifth Estate, Season 41, Jan. 15, 2016, Gillian Findlay

[7] CBC News, 1 year after triple murder, grief weighs heavily on Wilno victims’ friends, family, Sept. 22, 2016, Judy Trinh

[8] Ottawa Citizen, Wilno triple homicide accused had dark history of vicious attacks on women, Sept. 24, 2015, last updated Sept. 21, 2016

[9] CBC News, Basil Borutski, charged with 3 Wilno, Ont., murders, blames police harassment, Jan. 15, 2016, Lisa Mayor and Andrew Culbert

[10] CBC News, Why Didn’t We Know, The Fifth Estate, Season 41, Jan. 15, 2016, Gillian Findlay

[11] CBC News, Why Didn’t We Know, The Fifth Estate, Season 41, Jan. 15, 2016, Gillian Findlay


© 2017 Alline Cormier