Myrna Dawson received funding from the BC Office of Human Rights Commissioner to examine gender-based violence as a form of hate and hate crime. Last week, a young woman died as a result of severe burns after a man poured a flammable liquid on her and then set fire to her while she was on a bus in Toronto in June.
Given the victim was a woman, it has prompted many to ask: Why is violence against women not treated as a hate crime? This is the first such inquiry in Canada, and one of few globally, to include a focus on gender-based violence as a form of hate. Police-reported statistics from show that sex never comprises more than three per cent of reported hate crimes. One study focusing on compared police figures to self-reported data to show that sex-motivated hate crimes were significantly under-reported: under three per cent compared to 22 per cent.
(mh=S6uTceq9zpI5HvJ3)2.jpg "Woman Toronto")
It is likely many cases were motivated by the intersections of sex and characteristics like race and religion, but data are limited in the ability to capture these combinations β a significant gap which is increasingly acknowledged. But the presence of power and control as a motivation for male violence does not preclude the accompanying motivation of hate.
In fact, hate may be the primary motivation for efforts to exercise power and control over a woman. A large proportion of women and girls are also victimized by men with whom they shared more distant or no relationship, or simply said they did not want to have a relationship.
The Toronto woman who was burned alive did not know her killer. A mother and daughter who were killed last month, and a second daughter who was injured in Ottawa, did not share a relationship with the accused male perpetrator. Days before the attack, he had been released after being charged with stalking and sexual assault of unrelated women.
