Cumpson: Femicide deserves the highest punishment possible

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On Sunday, Aug. 25, 2024, I lost “my person.”

Jenn Edmonds (Zabarylo) was my best friend for more than 30 years. She and I were inseparable. We saw each other at every opportunity. Not a day went by when we didn’t talk, ending each conversation with “I love you.”

Her family was mine and mine hers. She was an aunt to my kids, and I to hers, her brother is mine, my sister hers. Our lives were intertwined.

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To say our family is grief-stricken and infuriated over her violent death one month ago is an understatement. There are no words to describe our shock, our anger and our disbelief.

When I read the articles that characterized Jenn’s killing as a femicide, it angered me — and many others. This was the first time in Canada that a police service has officially used this term. I read the published definition and I thought that it was wrong. Jenn wasn’t killed because she was a woman. I couldn’t allow Jenn’s death to be used to advance an agenda or to be labelled like this.

When I took a step back and started looking into the true meaning of femicide, I soon realized how it applied to Jenn’s death and why it was so important.

Like so many others, I had misunderstood this new term. It’s easy to do so when the definition varies from one reference to the next. What I learned was that fundamentally, femicide is the murder of a woman or girl by a man. That definition, I am OK with. Labelling it for what it is. We label suicide, matricide, genocide. Why not this?

In Canada, 18 per cent of homicides occur among intimate partners, most of whom are women. So, why not give a name, a label, to women killed by their male partners?

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It needs a title so that it can be treated within our Criminal Code for the horror that it is. When a husband kills his wife, it needs to be considered and treated as a more aggravated form of murder.

In Canada, the killing of a police officer or prison guard is considered first-degree murder. Shouldn’t killing your wife or girlfriend reflect the same degree of seriousness? In Canada, a woman reportedly is killed by her partner, on average, once a week.

Femicide needs to be met with the highest punishment possible, for all of the women who have been killed by their husbands and boyfriends.

Jenn was the very best mom, a great daughter and sister, the most incredible friend. Jenn had the best sense of humour; she was always smiling, full of joy and she had the warmest heart.

According to the charges police have laid, Jenn was killed by the man she married and had children with. He is charged with second-degree murder. She was stolen from her kids, her family, her friends and from so many of us who cherished her.

I can only hope and pray that the use of the term femicide will shed some light on this issue and that femicide in general will be treated as more of an aggravated form of murder. That Jenn’s tragic ending will, in some way, make a difference to others. That is all that is keeping me going right now.

Melissa Cumpson was the best friend of Jenn Edmonds (Zabarylo). A GoFundMe has been set up to help Jenn’s children: Support for Jenn Edmonds’ children (gofundme.com)

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