Legal Director, Pamela Cross, featured on CBC Front Burner
On June 9, 2022, Luke’s Place Legal Director, Pamela Cross, was interviewed as a key witness into the inquest into the 2015 triple femicide in Renfrew County for an episode of CBC’s Front Burner. The episode, entitled The reality of intimate-partner violence in rural Canada also featured CBC Ottawa reporter, Guy Quinneville, speaking to his experiences from inside the hearings.
Episode descripion
On Sept. 22, 2015 in Ontario’s Renfrew County, Nathalie Warmerdam, Anastasia Kuzik, and Carol Culleton were all killed by the same man — Basil Borutski. All three women knew Borutski or were intimately involved with him for a period. Their murders became one of the worst cases of intimate-partner violence in Canada’s history.
Even though Borutski sits behind bars — with likely no chance of getting out — a coroner’s inquest into the murders is finally taking place. A panel of experts, community members and advocates are examining what went wrong and trying to come up with ways to keep it from happening again.
Renfrew County is a microcosm of a problem often faced by women experiencing intimate partner violence in rural communities. CBC News found one in four cases of intimate partner homicide was in a rural, remote or northern area of the country.
Today on Front Burner, we talk to CBC Ottawa reporter Guy Quinneville from inside the hearings and Pam Cross, a lawyer and key witness in the inquest, about the bigger problem of domestic violence in rural communities.
