TORONTO -- The murder of Sarah Everard in London, U.K., has led to an outcry from women around the world who are calling for government intervention to stop violence against women and for male allies to step up to keep them safe.
“The case highlights that women are still not safe,” Jasmine Ramze Rezaee, director of advocacy at YWCA Toronto, told CTV’s Your Morning on Tuesday.
Ramze Rezaee said that Everard’s murder shows that even if women take the right steps to be safe, particularly at night, they can still become a victim. Everard, 33, disappeared while walking home one night and her body was found days later.
“I think it's a scary thought that many women have contemplated when they're out alone walking home at night,” Rezaee said. “I think it's indicative of a larger social issue that violence against women still continues to be very real in our society, unfortunately.”
A police officer has been charged with the murder of Everard, which Ramze Rezaee says could make it even more difficult for survivors of violence to feel safe coming forward.
“We know that survivors of sexual assault or other forms of violence are generally hesitant to approach the courts or the police to get justice,” she said.
Cases involving sexual assault and domestic violence don’t always result in conviction, and there continues to be a lot of stigma involved in the cases, she added.
“When you have these really high profile cases of police misconduct, essentially, it doesn't inspire any kind of real confidence,” said Ramze Rezaee, “I think it really impedes women's ability to, or desire to, want to seek justice in certain cases or seek help from the police.”
In September 2020, another young woman, Blessing Olusegun, went missing in London. Her body was later found on a beach. She was 21 years old, and she was Black. Ramze Rezaee said that this is the main difference between the two cases, and why Olusegun’s name isn’t as well known as Everard’s.
“The major difference is that she was a young Black woman,” she said. “And I think when we think of the intersections of racism, it means that the lives of brown and Black women are kind of valued or treated differently, and are exposed to kind of a different level of harm and risk.”
In Canada, she said, we have proof of systemic issues involving missing women and girls.
“The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls here in Canada clearly indicates a systemic failure and negligence by all sorts of systems, including the police, to protect Indigenous women and prioritize investigations into the murders of Indigenous women and girls,” she said.
She said that this case emphasizes the differences in the ways missing white women are treated.
“I think it does highlight this intersection and sort of the intensification of why these problems are even worse for racialized communities.”
And the COVID-19 pandemic is worsening gendered violence.
“Here in Canada, rates of gender-based violence have increased somewhere between 20 to 30 per cent and the kinds of violence experienced by women has intensified,” she said.
She said that the solutions are out there, but that the government needs to get involved.
“The federal government is considering a national plan and is hosting consultations at the moment, but we're not really getting much traction at the provincial level, not with the province, at least, the Ontario province,” she added.
There’s a lot of work to do, like criminal reform, trauma-informed training and making mental health support more available to victims, she said, but we can start at home by teaching men and boys to respect women.
“We need to teach men and boys what respect for women really entails, and we need to change the cultural narrative around what women's safety looks like,” she said. “You could do everything right, but ultimately, we need to also create powerful allies and men and boys, and that requires education at home.”
