Karen Kulla holds a portrait of her late daughter Savannah in Brampton on Nov. 29. Savannah was fatally shot by her former partner.EDUARDO LIMA/The Globe and Mail
Even when she is watching her 18-month-old granddaughter playing happily, Karen Kulla feels a pang of sadness about a conversation she knows will one day come.
Eventually the little girl is going to grow up and she is going to ask about her parents. But how, and when, do you explain to a child that her mother is dead – and that her father did it?
It’s one of the first questions Ms. Kulla asked a social worker visiting the family in their Brampton, Ont., home in late October, after her daughter Savannah Kulla-Davies was murdered by her ex-boyfriend.
There’s no right answer, the worker told Ms. Kulla. There will be no right time.
Less than two weeks later, in Toronto, Sapphira Charles sought similar guidance as she prepared to break the news to her niece and nephew that their mother – her sister Sacha Charles – was dead.
She’d been hurt, she told the kids, gently but clearly, as the social worker had advised. Their dad was in jail. At just three years old, the little girl didn’t seem to fully understand. But the boy, 8, was shattered.
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Across Canada, a woman is killed by an intimate partner roughly every week. In 2024 alone, according to the Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability, cases of alleged intimate partner violence left at least 154 children without a mother. Ten children were also killed alongside their mothers last year.
Dec. 6 marks the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada; a commemoration of the 1989 mass shooting at École Polytechnique at the University of Montreal, which left 14 women dead.
Thirty-six years later, the biggest threats to women in Canada, statistically, are the men closest to them. They are most at risk in their own homes.
Sapphira Charles wants to raise awareness after what happened to her sister.EDUARDO LIMA/The Globe and Mail
The urgency of this crisis was brought to the fore during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when lockdowns exacerbated the risks for many victims stuck at home with their abusers. In the years since, there have been considerable strides to combat violence against women, including a national action plan rolled out in 2023. However, advocates say some of that momentum has since stalled under the new Prime Minister.
When Mark Carney unveiled his inaugural cabinet in March, those in the anti-violence sector were offended to see that the long-standing minister of women and gender equality role had been eliminated.
In May, Mr. Carney revived the post and appointed Streetsville-Mississauga MP Rechie Valdez. But in July, the Carney government once again drew ire with a proposed 80-per-cent cut to the ministry’s budget. More than 100 anti-violence organizations co-signed an open letter to the Prime Minister before the cuts were ultimately walked back.
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To Maureen Levangie, executive director of the Domestic Violence Association of New Brunswick, it was an “alarming” signal that this was not going to be at the top of his priority list.
“I think in times of financial precarity, violence increases. And if anything, now is the time that we need to have more support for survivors and more efforts put into prevention. And it certainly doesn’t seem like the federal government is going to be doing that work, which is quite frustrating,” Ms. Levangie said.
In an interview Thursday, Minister Valdez said her government is committed to providing stable funding to the sector. If organizations don’t feel that’s there right now, she said she wanted to assure them “it is coming.”
She disagreed that any momentum has been lost, and stressed that the issue of intimate partner violence is top of mind for the Prime Minister – and her personally.
“The first time I ever experienced it was when I lost a family member, and then saw the impacts of my family having to go through the trauma of it … and the process of going through the case itself,” she said. (She declined to share further details about the case to protect her family’s privacy.)
“I’ve been very much exposed to it prior to coming into the role,” she said.
Karen Kulla sits in her living room as she watches her granddaughter, the child of her late daughter Savannah.EDUARDO LIMA/The Globe and Mail
As soon as police officers arrived on Ms. Kulla’s doorstep on Oct. 21, her heart sank.
“Was it Anthony?” she asked them, though she already knew the answer.
Ms. Kulla had not liked Anthony Deschepper. When he and her daughter first started dating, he’d seemed handsome and charming. She was happy for her daughter, who at 26 years old had been feeling discouraged about the prospect of dating, as a single mother of three young boys from a previous relationship.
Mr. Deschepper “love bombed” her, Ms. Kulla said, taking her out on expensive dates and flooding her with compliments. He rode a motorcycle. But quickly, his passion turned to jealousy. He became paranoid and controlling. He was charged with IPV-related gun offences, court documents show.
The two were on and off. In the summer, when it seemed Ms. Kulla-Davies had finally broken it off with him for good, her mother was relieved. But Ms. Kulla-Davies wanted their baby to have a relationship with her dad.
On Oct. 21, she met up with him in a parking lot at a Brampton strip mall, baby in tow.
There, he shot Ms. Kulla-Davies multiple times. He then fled with the baby in the backseat of his SUV.
It was hours before the family learned the baby had been found safe.
After a roughly 12-hour hunt, Mr. Deschepper was shot and killed by police at a Niagara Falls gas station. The baby, who had been dropped off at a nearby home, was found unharmed.
A family photo of Sapphira Charles with her late sister Sacha.EDUARDO LIMA/Courtesy of Sapphira Charles
Sacha Charles and her common-law partner Antonio Chimienti were declared missing by Barrie Police on Oct. 30.
A few days earlier, Mr. Chimienti had dropped the kids off with the nanny, who panicked after she became unable to reach them, Sapphira Charles said.
On Nov. 6, police informed Ms. Charles’s family that her body had been found. Mr. Chimienti had been charged with second-degree murder.
In a video posted to YouTube updating the public on the case, Barrie Police Chief Rich Johnston spoke about the pervasiveness of femicide and the importance of using that term.
“Using that word matters,” the chief said. “It acknowledges that these tragedies are not isolated incidents. They are part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence that affects families and communities across the country. Naming it for what it is allows us to confront it honestly. It reminds us that prevention is not just a policing issue. It is a community responsibility.”
The chief’s words were heartening to anti-violence advocates, who have long asked police to contextualize these cases, which are so often dismissed as one-offs or private incidents.
Pamela Cross, a lawyer and member of Ontario’s Domestic Violence Death Review Committee, which examines all cases of intimate partner violence-related deaths to make recommendations to prevent future tragedies, described the statement as “fantastic.”
“It’s really important and helpful when police use the language of IPV and femicide − and the chief in this statement goes even farther to talk about what it is and how prevention requires everyone’s involvement. It’s really encouraging to see this.”
As an architect, artist and activist, Sapphira Charles – who has been at the forefront of anti-racism work in her local community – is fired up with rage about what happened to her sister. She is already thinking about what she can do; how to raise awareness.
But her mind is also spinning with the logistics of the road ahead for her family. The legal case. The financial toll. Her aging mother, now caring for two young kids in her late 70s.
In the weeks since his mother’s death, Ms. Charles’s son has not said much about it. On the afternoon of her funeral, he asked to call his mom. He dialled the number and then hung up. He knew she wouldn’t pick up.