Wilno deaths: I’ve lost trust in the system

Enormity of murders hurts us all, says Holly Campbell.

The verdict came in. And it was too little, too late.

For Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk and Nathalie Warmerdam, it was much too late.

And for anyone who loved them, what comes next will forever be too little.

A reporter asked me about my time at the trial, and what I thought about him. Truth is, I didn’t think about him at all. I have wasted far too many hours of my life trying to understand the motivations, feelings and actions of someone like him.

My time in that courtroom was spent doing something more meaningful.

You see, every time I’m in one of these courtrooms, I pray.

I pray that the judge is a good judge who doesn’t perpetuate rape culture. I pray the police were diligent and there have been no errors during investigation.

I pray the Crown has a solid case and has not tried to barter it away with a tasty plea deal to clear the desk.

I pray the defence attorney who makes a comfortable living “whacking the witness” one day realizes the significant harm this does to all victims of violence, including children, and the knock-on effects in our society. Why turn to the power of prayer, you ask? Because I’ve lost trust in the system. I have been let down by police, probation officers, Crowns, judges, family court, counsellors and domestic violence programs for abusers. Others are let down by the CAS, shelters and witness-relocation programs.

For most of us there comes this moment where it dawns on us: The cavalry isn’t coming.

That awesome burden of being solely responsible for our safety, and that of our loved ones, weighs heavy.

Unless you have lived it, I’m not sure you can truly understand.

People ask what the system can do to prevent the next Wilno tragedy. I’m not sure we need new laws so much as using the powers the system already has, but with less bias toward giving the violent every possible break.

A Crown once said to me, “We’d rather 1,000 guilty men on the street than one innocent man behind bars.”

I understand this speaks to the fear the legal system has after the wrongful conviction of David Milgaard.

But when a police officer in a different region repeated that saying verbatim (in the context of pursuing possible probation breaches), I realized that this is the lens through which violent people are managed in the legal system.

With all the women who have been predictably killed, it seems strange to me that the system’s worst-case scenario doesn’t seem to be more dead women.

While I have lost trust in this system, I do believe in us.

We are starting to broadly recognize the markers of misogyny and rape culture.

We are learning to be better bystanders and allies. People are teaching their kids about consent and boundaries and “listening to their gut.”

We must support those who push against flooding our news with salacious details and judgments about victims in high-profile trials.

With the lack of a formal defence in this trial, it was mostly absent. Good riddance. We must donate our money and time to organizations doing front-line work to support victims and those engaging men to have healthier interactions.

The public must demand accountability of the legal machine.

Victims and advocacy groups have been screaming and citing recommendations from inquests and death panel reviews for decades.

It’s time for others to take some of the load — please.

The enormity of this tragedy should hurt us all.

On some level, we have all probably done something that made it harder for victims. Did society’s collective indifference permit a dangerous person to abuse, manipulate and intimidate an entire community for more than three decades?

I think we owe the families of Carol, Anastasia and Nathalie an apology.

Then we must promise them, and ourselves, that we will fix what’s broken.