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There are names that should be as recognizable in Canada as that of Jack the Ripper, and one of those is Helen Betty Osborne. For one thing, she belonged to this land, as opposed to that murderer, who was from a country some 6000 km away. Also, her story marked Canadian life and is only 45 years old as opposed to the Ripper’s 135 years. Furthermore, viciously killing at least five women should not be a claim to fame. Osborne, on the other hand, should be remembered. She was one of us, and she was stolen from us in what was one of Canada’s darkest hours. What happened to her marked Canadian history. The 19-year-old from Manitoba was abducted off the street by four men who forced her into a car on Nov. 13, 1971. Then she was sexually assaulted and stabbed with a screwdriver more than 50 times, before being left in the bush outside The Pas, Manitoba. Months later the RCMP concluded that four men, Dwayne Archie Johnston, James Robert Paul Houghton, Lee Scott Colgan and Norman Bernard Manger, were involved in Helen Betty Osborne’s death. Yet it was not until December 1987 that Dwayne Johnston was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released after serving 10 years of that sentence. James Houghton was acquitted. Lee Colgan received immunity from prosecution in return for testifying against Houghton and Johnston. He was never punished. Norman Manger was never charged.[1]
[1] Manitoba Government, The Death of Helen Betty Osborne, The Aboriginal Justice Implementation Commission, viewed Sept. 26, 2016 © 2016 Alline Cormier
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Far too often the courts, Crown prosecutors and police show a lack of regard for the safety of women which results in tragedy. For instance, in the case of the 2015 murders of 36-year-old Anastasia Kuzyk, 48-year-old Nathalie Warmerdam and 66-year-old Carol Culleton by the same 57-year-old man in separate incidents on the same morning. This is considered by some to be the biggest multiple-partner domestic homicide in Canadian history. On September 22, 2015, Basil Borutski strangled Carol Culleton, then shot Anastasia Kuzyk and Nathalie Warmerdam. Prior to these murders in Renfrew County, 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 and related to driving under the influence. 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] In 2015 Borutski did handyman jobs on Carol Culleton’s lakeside cottage, which she was readying to sell. It was at that cottage, where she went to meet a real estate agent, that he killed her before taking her car to drive to the locations where he killed Kuzyk and Warmerdam. At the time of this writing Borutski is waiting to stand trial on three counts of first-degree murder. 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. Although Basil Borutski is ultimately and without a doubt responsible for the deaths of these three women he was enabled by our ineffective justice system. 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. [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 © 2016 Alline Cormier (This excerpt focuses on the escape of "Ms. Anderson" from Robert Pickton in 1997--five years before he was finally imprisoned for life--and the 2012 report Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry.)
Between 1989 and 2006 nine young women went missing or were found murdered along highway 16 in British Columbia. This highway, known as the Highway of Tears, runs between Prince George and Prince Rupert. All of these victims, save one, were Indigenous women.[1] In 2007 the RCMP expanded the number of women in its investigation to 18.[2] In late 2012 Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry was released. Sixty-three recommendations concerning British Columbia’s missing women were made by inquiry commissioner Wally T. Oppal, who stated that the police showed a systemic bias that was, in his opinion, unintentional. He also noted, “As a system, they failed because of the bias. These women were vulnerable; they were treated as throwaways — unstable, unreliable.”[3] The fact that Canadian police officers considered women as throwaways points to something worse than sexism—it smacks of misogyny. This 2012 report named 67 murdered women from the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Serial killer and pig farmer Robert Pickton was responsible for a significant number of these murders, and he was arrested in 2002. When the police took heavy equipement and archeologists to excavate his properties they found enough remains of women to charge him (in 2005) with the first-degree murder of 27 women. In 2004 “B.C.’s health officer says he cannot rule out [the] possibility that human remains were in hamburger meat processed at the Pickton farm.”[4] As chilling and revolting as these facts are, Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, recounts several other facts concerning Pickton that are also disturbing, namely: in late March 1997 he picked up a woman who was hitchhiking, offered her financial compensation for oral sex and drove her to his farm in Port Coquitlam where he handcuffed and stabbed her. Miraculously, the courageous “Ms. Anderson” managed to fight back and escape; “As far as is known, Ms. Anderson provides the only first-hand account from a target prey of Robert Pickton”[5]; on April 1, 1997, Pickton was arrested and charged with attempted murder, assault with a weapon, forcible confinement and aggravated assault[6]; on April 8 bail was granted to him[7] (he was released from police custody); on January 26, 1998, all four charges against Pickton were stayed[8] (essentially dropped); and the Crown prosecutor’s file on “Ms. Anderson”’s assault “had been inadvertently destroyed in 2001.”[9] Between 1998 and 2002 Pickton was free to rape and murder more women. These are the facts. They present common points with Peter Sutcliffe’s story and his murdering of 13 women in England in the 1970s. [1] Highway of Tears website [2] Highway of Tears website [3] CBC news story, Pickton inquiry slams ‘blatant failures’ by police, Dec. 17, 2012 [4] Globe and Mail, Key dates in the Pickton case, Dec. 17, 2012 [5] British Columbia, Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, Wally T. Oppal, Commissioner, Nov. 19, 2012, p. 40 [6] British Columbia, Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, Wally T. Oppal, Commissioner, Nov. 19, 2012, p. 31 [7] British Columbia, Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, Wally T. Oppal, Commissioner, Nov. 19, 2012, p. 31 [8] British Columbia, Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, Wally T. Oppal, Commissioner, Nov. 19, 2012, p. 31 [9] British Columbia, Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, Wally T. Oppal, Commissioner, Nov. 19, 2012, p. 31 © 2016 Alline Cormier From a section of my book on the sexualization of women in media that discusses Canadian legislation9/13/2016 The Canadian government often makes amendments to the Criminal Code, and from time to time Revised Statutes of Canada (RSC) are published. These are not annual volumes. The earliest versions of the Criminal Code make for interesting reading (especially for women). For instance, in the first version (1892) punishment for the indecent assault of a male was seven years’ imprisonment (under sect. 260), which was amended the following year to ten years’ imprisonment.[1] The punishment for the indecent assault of a female was two years’ imprisonment (sect. 259).[2] No amendments were made to this section until 1906—and the penalty remained two years. In the 1970 version of the Criminal Code the indecent assault of a male was still punishable by ten years’ imprisonment. For indecent assaults on females the penalty inched up to five years in 1953. This is but one example of the higher value placed on males—and therefore their greater protection—enshrined in Canadian law.
[1] The criminal code, 1892, 55-56 Victoria, Ottawa, Government of Canada, p. 100-101 [2] The criminal code, 1892, 55-56 Victoria, Ottawa, Government of Canada, p. 100 © 2016 Alline Cormier I wrote this book because there has been a dramatic and profoundly disturbing escalation of the sexualization, devaluation and pornographization of women and girls in the mainstream media in recent years and although a few authors have already sounded the alarm on this terrible situation the issue has been insufficiently examined, discussed and addressed. It is my hope that this book will help raise the collective consciousness by sharing crucial information and bring about change and a better, safer world for us all. It has often been said that knowledge is power, and girls and women need to be better equipped with information in order to protect themselves. Therefore, this book aims to improve the media literacy of girls and women especially, as well as provide an insightful look at the way in which parliaments, governments, justice systems, police services and the military endanger women and girls and fail to protect them. Furthermore, an entire chapter is dedicated to the consequences of devaluing women.
The way women are portrayed and treated in society is sickening, saddening and totally unacceptable. The overwhelming majority of images of women in public spaces are sexualized, and the cult of sexiness has gotten completely out of hand. Even little girls are regularly sexualized, which has had and continues to have devastating effects. There was a time when viewing pornography was an activity you could choose to engage in—and more importantly, not engage in—however, that choice no longer exists because pornography is everywhere nowadays. Girls and women can’t escape it. This is damaging and demoralizing. Boys and men can’t escape it. This has terrible repercussions for girls and women, as well as for boys and men. It also diminishes everyone’s quality of life. The devaluing, denigrating, sexualized images of women in the media and our treatment in all areas of society are related, whether it be unequal political representation, unequal pay for equal work, widespread sexual abuse and harassment, systemic sexism and discrimination, unfair treatment, pressure to maim and poison our bodies to conform to a beauty ideal, gynocide, etc. The reason behind this connection is that the media is the biggest force shaping our perceptions and influencing behaviours. There is perhaps no greater urgency today than addressing the problem of the portrayal of women and girls in the media for it is at the root of so many of our problems, including the destruction of this planet. If the media portrayed women in a realistic and unsexualized manner, if pornography were not everywhere we look there would be many positive outcomes, including a significant decline in the incidents of violence against women and girls, better self-esteem among women and girls, greater representation of women in politics, a significant decline in the numbers of women who choose to undergo surgery that is not at all ‘cosmetic’ or ‘plastic’, a much better chance of achieving equality and pay equity in our lifetime and a greater chance of survival for the inhabitants of this spaceship Earth. © 2016 Alline Cormier |
AuthorThe film analyst who puts women first. Author of an upcoming film guide for women. 
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