Dismissed

I first met my ex, whom we’ll call Carl, on November 21, 2020. It was the night before another round of Covid lockdowns. A girlfriend and I went out for dinner at Kasa Moto, in Yorkville, as a last supper before everything closed again. At the restaurant, we ran into a mutual friend who invited us to his friend Carl’s house afterward.

I was introduced to Carl when we arrived, but we didn’t talk much. I spent most of the evening playing with his mini goldendoodle. A week later, Carl texted me, saying he’d gotten my number from a friend. We messaged back and forth over the next few weeks. He would send me pictures of his dog and ask when he could see me again, but I was busy with the holidays. It wasn’t until mid-January that we met up.

He invited me over to his house, where he was hosting another couple for dinner. Carl picked me up in his car, which I thought was very gentlemanly. We had a great time that night. The next day, I had to leave town. I’m an actor, and at the time, I was shooting a film in Quebec.

While I was away, we continued to text back and forth, slowly getting to know each other. Carl was in his early 40s when we met, and he seemed stable and financially secure. He was well-established in his career. He owned a beautiful house in Leaside, with five bedrooms and a pool out back. My career was just taking off. During the pandemic, I got parts in a Hallmark movie, a Lifetime movie and on the Amazon series The Boys. I’d also received an inheritance from my grandmother, who died in 2020, so I was feeling financially stable myself.

I told Carl all about my work, my family and my love of all-dressed chips, and he told me about his 10-year-old son—I’ll call him Nicholas—from a previous relationship. When I had a break in filming and flew back to Toronto, he picked me up from the airport and greeted me with my favourite chips. I was impressed. I had to go back to Quebec a few days later to finish filming, and Carl wanted to come, so he offered to drive. Along the way, we stopped in Ottawa, where he’d gone to university, and he introduced me to some of his friends.

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When we got back to Toronto a week later, we made our relationship official. For the next few months, I spent nearly all of my time at Carl’s place. I met Nicholas, who split time between his mom and dad. I got along with Nicholas so well. We’d play rounds of Uno together. We hid eggs for him at Easter. At the time, I was learning to play polo at a ranch in King Township, and I brought Nicholas with me so he could learn too. He became my little buddy. We did everything together. He called me his second mommy, and I loved it. Carl would buy me flowers and tell me we were going to be a family. After so much pandemic isolation, having all these human connections and emotions was idyllic. I felt so cared for by Carl. I stepped into the traditional female roles, making meals for the three of us, taking care of the house, putting art up on the walls and designing the garden. We’d sit down for dinner together every night, and afterward we’d watch Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy!

We often went on hikes in the woods, and about a month into our relationship, Carl started talking about getting healthy, maybe turning one of the basement bedrooms into a gym. He also suggested we stop drinking alcohol for a while, which I thought was a great idea considering how much everyone was drinking during Covid, so we decided to stop together. He said I was the woman of the house now, which I liked hearing, and he gave me a credit card to use for household expenses.

My family liked Carl immediately. My parents would come over and see him being a great father to Nicholas and taking good care of me. I have two brothers, one of whom lives in Toronto, and he started coming over all the time with his girlfriend to hang out with us. Carl would send my other brother, in BC, little care packages of weed, which was thoughtful.

Four months in, I gave up the lease on my apartment and moved the rest of my stuff into Carl’s place. It was all moving so fast, accelerated by the ongoing lockdowns, which meant we spent an inordinate amount of time together. That wasn’t a bad thing. We were in love and already talking about getting married. I was excited about my new life. I felt charmed. And I was convinced the good times would never end.

In May of 2021, I turned 30. I decided to host a small dinner on a Saturday night for some friends. We brought in a private chef. We’d been sober since February, so Carl asked if I wanted to drink. Since it was my birthday, I made an exception, and we did a shot of tequila together.

In the midst of the festivities, a stranger walked into the house. Carl introduced him as his personal trainer, but it soon became clear that he was a drug dealer. Carl said, in front of everyone, that we needed coke. I was floored. I don’t do drugs and didn’t ask for them. When I called Carl on it, he said it was his house. I felt like I had no choice but to accept the situation. We stayed up until 2 a.m., and then everyone went home.

I hoped it would be a one-time thing, but it wasn’t. A few days later, Carl left in the afternoon to take the dog for a walk, and when he came back, he started going on about how he needed coke. He called up the same drug dealer friend, who brought more over. Carl did a few lines and then told me he wanted to have sex. He said if I didn’t do coke with him, it meant that I didn’t love him, and if I didn’t put out, he’d find another woman who would. I didn’t know how to react. I was so confused seeing this new side of him, but I just wanted to please my partner. I thought we were in love, and I wanted to make him happy. But I was also scared.

As the summer approached, we started inviting people over for barbecues and pool parties. May 29, 2021, was the first time Carl became physically violent. We were having a small gathering with some friends and neighbours. People were partying and drinking. Some people, including Carl, did shrooms. I’m not sure if that’s what set him off, but out of nowhere, he became enraged and lost control. He threw one of our outdoor dining chairs over the fence, into the neighbour’s yard, then he kicked the dog and smashed a giant mason jar on the pool deck. Everyone was shocked. Some of the guests at the party were trying to stop him, but there wasn’t much they could do—Carl is six foot three and 230 pounds. He kept saying, “It’s my fucking house!” I started cleaning up the glass, and while I was bent over, he tried to kick me. Thankfully, I caught myself before I fell into the broken glass. That prompted the guys at the party to get into a fist fight with Carl. It was chaotic. I needed to get away, so I went over to a neighbour’s house and just started bawling, telling them I didn’t know what had provoked Carl’s actions. He’d gone from zero to ballistic without warning. By the time I got home, a few hours later, Carl was fuming. He said, “Why don’t you go live with the neighbours? You’re not a real girlfriend.”

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Why didn’t I leave? I’m an educated woman with a supportive family. But something shattered in me that day

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The next day, when he sobered up, Carl told me he was sorry and couldn’t believe that he’d done all those things, but he also blamed me. He said I wasn’t doing a good enough job of keeping him together. He said we should go back to a sober lifestyle and suggested we go away for a weekend, just the two of us. Travel options were limited because of Covid, but I found a spa in Chelsea, Quebec, and booked a weekend for early June.

The first couple of nights were fine. We had a nice time at the spa. The night before we were supposed to drive back to Toronto, Carl made plans to visit his old frat house in Ottawa, which was 30 minutes away. He brought cases of beer, and I could tell he enjoyed feeling like the big hero. He told these young frat boys that he’d made millions and that, if they worked hard, they could be successful and have a woman like me.

By the time we were ready to go back to our hotel in Chelsea, Carl was wasted, so I had to drive. At first, he resisted giving me the keys until one of his buddies told him I was right. The entire drive back, Carl was emotionally abusive, calling me names, telling me I was a bitch and a slut. I told him he should stop drinking and that I wanted to enjoy the rest of our vacation. Talking back to him made him snap. By this point, we were stopped just outside of the hotel, on the side of the road. Carl grabbed a handful of my hair and smashed my head into the driver’s side window, full force. I’d never had anyone touch me like that. I was frozen in place. It felt like my blood stopped pumping. I thought, Okay, I’ll stop talking. Because, in that moment, I could see what Carl was capable of. I knew I needed to tread very carefully from then on.

Why didn’t I leave? I’m an educated woman with resources and a supportive family. I knew what he was doing was wrong. But, when you love someone, it changes things. You overlook the obvious. I don’t want to use Covid as an excuse, but the world was so insular at that point. It felt like Carl and Nicholas were all I had. Things had been so good before that. I thought maybe we could work through it, that we could figure things out.

We got back to the hotel, lay in bed and watched American Greed. I was in serious pain, but we never discussed it. Something shattered in me that day. Physically, I was no match for Carl, who was showing me that he was in control. I started dissociating from what was happening to me and concentrated on not stepping out of line again.

It was around this time that news reports started coming out about the effects of what’s known as the Jordan decision. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, but it was becoming a crisis in the courts. It dates back to 2016 and a case called R. v. Jordan. A young man from Surrey, BC, named Barrett Richard Jordan was facing criminal charges for drug dealing, but due to delays, his case took almost 50 months to be tried, during which time he was under a restrictive bail order. His lawyers took his case all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that the delays were unconstitutional, and he won. As a result, Canadian criminal cases that go straight to trial in provincial courts should be wrapped up within 18 months, and cases that require pretrial inquiry or are tried in superior courts should take no longer than 30 months—otherwise, the charges can be stayed. Jordan is meant to protect a defendant’s right to a speedy trial, but in an overburdened justice system, it also means that, no matter how compelling the evidence against them, criminals get to walk away without the courts ever ruling on their guilt.

In the first year after the Jordan decision, more than 200 cases in Canada were tossed due to delays. By 2019, nearly 800 had been stayed, including those for crimes like the sexual assault of children, murder and intimate partner violence. From 2020 onward, the majority of criminal cases in Ontario ended because charges were withdrawn, stayed, dismissed or discharged. During the seven years before that, the majority of cases had come to decisions, most being guilty verdicts.

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That summer, Carl was drinking regularly, mostly vodka. One day, he came home raging drunk at five in the afternoon. He ranted about how much time I was spending with Nicholas, how the two of us were always together. Then he picked up a dinner plate and threw it at Nicholas. Luckily, Nicholas ducked, and it smashed on the wall behind him. Carl then tried to leave. He bulldozed his way into the garage and opened up the driver’s side door to his car. I couldn’t let him get behind the wheel, knowing how many kids were out in our neighbourhood. So I got between him and the car. He grabbed me, then slammed the car door on me. It left a bruise along the left side of my body, from my shoulder to my hip, but at least I won that argument and he didn’t go out driving in his state.

Nicholas told me he didn’t feel safe when his dad was drinking and that he didn’t want to come over to the house if I wasn’t there. He could tell something was wrong between Carl and me. He said that if I left Carl, he would also leave. Ever since I’d started spending more time with Nicholas, his mom and I had been on great terms. She would often text saying how much Nicholas enjoyed our time together and how she was thankful that I was around. At one point, he told me, “My mom said if anything is ever too bad with my dad you can sleep at our house.”

Things continued to spiral. My health was deteriorating because I was in a constant state of anxiety. I’m five foot 10 and had lost 15 pounds, dropping to 110. I was barely sleeping. In mid-July, I was filming nights as a background actor in the movie Luckiest Girl Alive. Around 3 a.m., I got a notification from the house’s front-door camera and saw a couple of women I didn’t know going inside. I started to panic, assuming that Carl had brought them home to have sex with them, and I couldn’t stop shaking. I had a full-on panic attack. Someone on set called an ambulance, and I was sent to Toronto Western. My vitals were fine, but the doctor who saw me could tell something was wrong. He asked, “What’s going on at home?” I immediately burst into tears.

The doctor urged me to speak to a social worker, but I didn’t. I felt so ashamed. I desperately clung to my first impressions of Carl, and I wanted so badly to have the family he and Nicholas provided, to somehow make things go back to the way they were at the beginning. For the first few months, I’d felt so loved and safe. For that to flip so quickly—it’s almost like my brain didn’t have time to catch up. So I hid it from everyone: my friends, parents and brothers.

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The routine of uncertainty continued. I would come home from work and have no idea what state Carl would be in. The fear and turbulence were constant. I’d wonder, Is he drinking? Is he out? Where is he going? Then, in between, we tried our best to act like a normal family. We went go-karting, attended Nicholas’s Grade 5 graduation and planned a trip to Great Wolf Lodge. All the while, Carl would swing between being sweet and thoughtful or unpredictable and violent. Some days, he’d send me texts telling me how much he loved me. Other days, he’d taunt me by holding one of my expensive handbags up near the flame of the gas stove and threatening to burn it.

One day in July, we were arguing over something—I can’t even remember what. We were in the front hallway, and he slammed my face into the big wooden front door, splitting my forehead open. I left and went to my parents’ house. When they saw my injury, I lied and told them I’d tripped and hit my head. My parents could tell something was up. My mom told me that I should move out, but I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving Nicholas. I really loved that kid, and I still refused to believe that the perfect life we’d had before was gone.

That summer, I filmed a few overnights in Barrie. After one of them, I got home at about 8 a.m., and Carl was at the front door when I opened it. I could tell something was wrong. He had been up all night. He shoved a bag of coke into my hands and said, “I need you to take this from me. Flush it.” I felt frustrated. I was exhausted, and now I needed to baby­sit a grown man. So I flushed the coke and went to bed. I woke up around one in the afternoon, and Carl was still worked up. Maybe he’d bought more coke or found drugs that he’d hidden. I made him lunch. Then he said, “I need more alcohol. Where are my car keys?” I told him I had no idea and that driving probably wasn’t a good idea anyway.

He seemed to think I’d hidden his keys, which further enraged him. He grabbed my Chanel bag, lit up the stove and dangled the bag above the flame. He kept insisting that I’d hidden his car keys. Then I got angry. “I can’t fucking deal with this anymore,” I told him. “Stop your shit. I don’t know where your car keys are.”

I went upstairs into our bedroom to get some space and pack a bag, but he came after me. I had never seen him like that before. He grabbed me and started beating me. He slammed my head into one of the doorways and split it open—a perfect line down the right side. I screamed at him to stop. But I realized that fighting back was making it worse. There wasn’t anything I could do to defend myself against someone that size.

He started throwing me around like a rag doll, dragging me across the hardwood floor. The pressure from my spine on the floor caused parts of the skin on my back to peel off. He got on top of me, held me down and punched me. Then he got up and kicked me. His toenails dug into my skin, cutting into my ribcage. No part of my body was left untouched. My nose was split open. I was using my left arm instinctively as a shield, and it was completely covered in blood and bruises.

I don’t know how long that beating lasted. It was probably around half an hour. Carl left the room and went back downstairs. I couldn’t find my phone to call for help. I grabbed my MacBook, opened Photo Booth and took as many photos and videos as I could—of myself, the cuts and bruises, and the blood that was all over the room. I could hear him coming back upstairs, so I quickly sent a two-word WhatsApp message to the first contact on my list. It was a director friend named Jonathan. The message was a misspelled “plese help.” He didn’t have any context, but he responded, and I’m forever grateful. Jonathan tried calling me, but because my phone was nowhere to be found, I didn’t answer. So he contacted my agents, who started a search party among my friends and family.

Meanwhile, Carl came back into the room holding a wooden rolling pin. He started attacking me with it, hitting my back and arms while I tried to defend myself. He held me down, got on top of me again and tried to gouge my eyes out with his thumbs, his fingers pressing into the back of my skull. The whole time, he kept saying, “Where are my keys?” That’s what it was all about: he just couldn’t find his car keys.

After 20 or so minutes, Carl went downstairs again. So I grabbed my laptop and, as quietly as I could, started taking pictures of the room. The bed and floor were covered in blood. I honestly thought I was going to die. In case I didn’t make it out alive, I figured at least there would be evidence on my laptop of what happened. I was scared to go downstairs. For some reason, I thought, If I can clean myself up, maybe he’ll calm down. So I got into the shower. It was the most horrifying experience, seeing blood gushing from my body, mixing with the water and running across the marble shower floor. I could feel the open wounds on my head and at the back of my ear. The blood in my hair wouldn’t wash out—there’s something about blood plasma and the porousness of hair. I just wanted to be clean. I remember being so frustrated and angry that I couldn’t be.

I got out of the shower and put on a pair of jeans and a pink housecoat. I thought Carl had to be done with hurting me, but he wasn’t. He came back into the bedroom and started all over again. I was in and out of consciousness. I don’t know how long the third beating lasted. But, at one point, he left to take the dog for a walk.

When my agents couldn’t track me down by phone for more than three hours, they ended up calling the cops. Later that evening, the police showed up at our front door. Although Carl wasn’t there, he could see via the Ring camera that the police were outside. By this point, I’d found my phone, and I saw a text from Carl saying, “Rat.” He then called to berate me and threatened to kill my family.

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This wasn’t a “he said, she said” case. There was clear photo and video evidence of what he’d done

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I was traumatized and terrified. I was worried about how angry Carl would be if I let the police inside. I was worried about him going after my family. So I didn’t open the front door. Meanwhile, the police thought that Carl was still in the house, so they ended up calling a tactical unit.

Finally, they showed up at the side door of the house, where the camera didn’t have a microphone. There, we negotiated for what felt like hours, with them trying to convince me to open the door. I was so scared about the idea of Carl coming after everyone. Eventually, one of the police officers said, “Can you just open the door a little bit?” I slowly turned the handle, and the officer stuck his boot in the door. I started screaming at the top of my lungs, “He’s going to hurt us! He’s going to kill us! Leave! I’ll be okay!” I was obviously not okay.

That was when the tactical team—comprising only male ­officers—burst through the door as if they were on a manhunt. They searched the house from top to bottom for Carl. They brought a ladder in and went up into the attic. I didn’t even know the house had an attic. I appreciate them for doing what they did, but there was no tact or consideration for my situation. They sent a male paramedic in to check on me. I was covered in blood and screaming and in no place to let a man near me, so I refused medical attention. The paramedic insisted that I go to the hospital, but I still refused. Looking back, I really wish they had sent in a woman.

The entire police interaction lasted for three or four hours. They put out a warrant for Carl on three charges: assault causing bodily harm, assault with a weapon and uttering death threats. The police said they’d park a cruiser outside overnight for a few days. They also issued a restraining order, which meant Carl couldn’t go back to his house since it was my primary residence. But I couldn’t stay there. I needed someplace to go. I lied to everyone and said that I was going over to a girlfriend’s house. But I didn’t. I texted Carl and asked where he was. He texted me the address of a house party. My thinking was that if I had him in my eyesight, I would be safer—I could see what he was up to. If there were friends around, he probably wouldn’t beat me. I put on as many layers as I could to cover up the bruises and markings and went to meet up with him. He didn’t apologize. He acted like things were normal. People at the party looked at me. They saw my black eyes. They knew, but no one said anything.

After we left, Carl went into hiding. Meanwhile, I headed back to our house. I finally had a minute to myself. By the morning after the attack, the adrenalin from the whole experience had finally worn off. I went into the guest bedroom and lay there, my head pounding. I remember feeling my nose, feeling the cuts all over my body, feeling my head. I was bleeding everywhere. What the fuck am I doing? I thought. Every single part of my body was injured. I got up and drove myself to Sunnybrook.

When I arrived at the hospital and told the staff that my boyfriend had beaten me up, they put me in a private room and summoned a police officer. They did a full-body CAT scan. By some sort of miracle, I didn’t have any broken bones. But I had a concussion and swelling in my brain. The officer asked where Carl was. I lied and said I didn’t know. He had threatened to kill my family, and he was still on the run. I didn’t want to make him even more angry. In those moments, I was on autopilot. I was under the effects of abuse and coercive control. I was still in a state of shock and not making rational decisions.

When I got out of the hospital later that night, I went back to the house to pick up some clothing, but I wasn’t ready to tell people about the abuse yet. I still needed to process. So I checked into a hotel. While I was there, my dad texted me and asked if Carl was hurting me. I lied and said he wasn’t, that I just needed a break. After four days on the run, Carl finally turned himself in to the police. He was in jail overnight and then out on $500 bail.

I honestly can’t tell you why I was still drawn to going back home. I was worried about the dog and about Nicholas. All my belongings were there. I still had an attachment to the place. I was so tired at this point, and I still wasn’t making lucid decisions. In a way, it still felt like Carl owned me. So, on Tuesday morning, when Carl got out of jail, I checked out of the hotel and asked him to pick me up. I noticed that he had a black eye, and I couldn’t make sense of it at the time. I didn’t remember hitting him. I later found out that, while he was on the run, he got one of his friends to punch him to make it look like he’d hit me in self-defence, but the police didn’t buy it.

I felt like an empty body wandering around. I was in agonizing pain on Wednesday night, yet Carl still tried to have sex with me. He said he needed it. I told him I was not physically capable of having sex with him. My whole body was battered. His response to me turning him down was to go on his phone and show me a series of women on Instagram. He swiped through their profiles, saying, “She’s hotter than you. She’s hotter than you.” He told me he’d find sex from someone else if I couldn’t provide it.

That was the breaking point for me. That was the moment I realized that I was going to die if I stayed with Carl. All the turbulence and chaos of the past few months had finally landed. I tried to go to sleep, but I couldn’t. I was in too much pain.

I knew I needed to tell my family, but I was so scared. The next day, while Carl was gone, I picked up a case of vodka sodas, went down to the basement theatre room, chugged three of them and finally started crying. First, I called one of my brothers and told him I was in trouble. Then I went to a friend’s house for the night. The next morning, my brother asked for permission to tell my parents, who immediately came and got me. I was hysterical. I just had my purse and my passport and had left everything else behind. We drove to my parents’ house, 90 minutes away. I was screaming and crying so hard that my head wounds, which had started to scab over, opened up again, and I ended up back in the hospital.

With my parents’ help, I filed a formal statement with the police, which led to two more charges being filed against Carl: intimidation by threat of violence and attempting to obstruct justice by dissuading a witness. My parents’ house was undergoing a renovation, and the place was gutted. Everything was in chaos. I knew I couldn’t stay with them. We were worried about me staying at my brother’s place because his girlfriend lives with him and Carl knew the address. So, after a few days with my parents, I went to a good friend’s house in Mississauga.

One afternoon in late August, I was back in the city having lunch with a friend in Yorkville when I saw Carl slowly drive by. It felt like he was tracking me. I knew I needed to get out of Toronto. The most difficult part was leaving Nicholas. I never got to say goodbye to him. For a week or two after the attack, he sent me texts, saying, “I love you” and “Good night.” I haven’t been in touch with him since mid-August of 2021, and it breaks my heart every day.

I spent some time in Alberta, then headed to BC to see my brother. I also went down to California to visit some friends, and I finally felt safe there. That’s when I decided to start the paperwork to move to LA. I finally got my visa in November of 2021. Between flights, visas, a deposit on an apartment, getting a new car and relocating my stuff, it cost me $60,000 to move. I recognize that I was privileged to be able to afford that. Most survivors can’t.

With the help of my parents, I filed a civil lawsuit for $2 million. I deserve to be compensated for what he did to me. I’m suing for personal injury, loss of income and work, pain and suffering, damages, and psychological trauma. In his statement of defence, Carl denied that he attacked me and alleged that my injuries were self-inflicted.

Meanwhile, I waited for a criminal trial date to be set for Carl. This wasn’t a “he said, she said” case—there was clear photo and video evidence of what he’d done. I figured he’d get convicted, then go to jail. There was no way it could go any other way. But I knew that Covid was causing delays in the court system, resulting in more charges being stayed. My mother and my former neighbour both forwarded me articles they’d read about the Jordan ruling and its ongoing effects. I was worried that it would come into play if Carl’s trial didn’t get scheduled soon enough. But it was out of my hands. All I could do was wait.

In February of 2022, the police officer in charge of the criminal case emailed to inform me that the trial was scheduled for February of 2023. That timing would violate the Jordan ceiling by about a month. I replied, citing R v. Jordan and telling them that they needed to reschedule. Later, on the phone, the officer said that the courts would never stay charges like his. It was an open-and-shut case. There was no possibility of that.

A few months later, I stumbled upon some old voice notes I had recorded of myself speaking about Carl being abusive toward me. I had photos of bruising as well, so I took all of this to the officer in charge as further evidence of what Carl had done. For the historical abuse, the Crown was able to file three additional charges on the federal level for assault causing bodily harm.

On Friday, December 16, 2022, I was filming a project in LA when I got a call from Victim Witness Assistance Program telling me that all the provincial charges had been stayed. I would no longer have a trial. I should try to put everything behind me, they said. I felt like I’d had the life knocked out of me. They had assured me that this wasn’t going to happen, but it did. They said that Covid was causing delays. I wouldn’t accept that. I told them to reschedule the trial, but they said there was nothing they could do. After five days of making phone calls to the police department and the Victim Witness Assistance Program, I finally got a hold of the prosecutor. He wasn’t able to answer a single question about my case. It was as if he’d never opened the file. He told me he had more than 200 cases to handle. He said he’d file for an appeal, which he did—but it was denied.

My only sliver of hope was that Carl would get convicted on the federal charges. A new prosecutor was assigned to the federal case, and in late May of 2023, she assured me that she would see the case through to trial. I also hired a criminal attorney to help. But, on January 12, 2024, the federal prosecutor told me she didn’t have time for a criminal trial. She said my case was not a priority compared with a murder, so she would proceed with a peace bond instead, which would act as a restraining order that lasts for a year at a time. I had been respectful up to that point, but hearing that made me livid. I told the prosecutor that she was on the wrong side of history and that, when Carl killed someone, the blood would be on her hands.

The peace bond hearing was scheduled for March 26, 2024. I paid for my own flights and missed days of work to come back to Toronto, where I read a five-page statement detailing everything Carl had done to me. He was present in the courtroom, and my heart was beating so fast I almost couldn’t get the first words out. But, looking over at my family in the gallery and the 30 friends who had come to support me, I found the strength. The peace bond was granted, but I would have to return every year, on my own dime, to have it renewed.

I couldn’t accept that the Canadian justice system could look at this story and all this evidence and, in the end, do absolutely nothing about it. I started emailing politicians to share my story with them. Speaker of the House Ted Arnott has been a family friend since I was a baby. He offered his support. Kristyn Wong-Tam, the MPP for Toronto Centre, has been another amazing source of support. Along with three other NDP MPPs, Wong-Tam had introduced Bill 173 to the legislature, which would declare intimate partner violence an epidemic in Ontario, acknowledging the suffering of survivors and allowing the government to act urgently in addressing the crisis. Wong-Tam invited me to join a press conference about it while I was in Toronto for the peace bond hearing. It went well. Within two weeks of that media announcement, we had the province’s unanimous support to move the bill to a second reading, but it would need to pass three votes in provincial parliament to become law, and, disappointingly, MPPs voted not to move it to third reading. We’re also trying to change laws to protect survivors, like Section 278 of the Criminal Code, which allows abusers to have access to a victim’s medical records. And we’re working in support of Bill 392, which proposes that prosecutors can argue for exceptions to R. v. Jordan and would have allowed Carl’s case to go to court.

Since I went public with my story, I’ve had thousands of survivors reach out to me on social media and privately to share their experiences. I’ve heard the same story over and over: survivors of intimate partner violence who had no resources or support, who didn’t know whom to call and didn’t have anyone to guide them through the journey to recovery and justice. That motivated me to start EVE: End Violence Everywhere. It’s an organization based on what I would have wanted when I faced abuse, an end-to-end service that trains advocates to help survivors navigate the legal system, connect with lawyers and seek therapy. It’s like a one-stop shop to access all the services that survivors need. In the US, everyone who faces intimate partner violence gets a non-­government advocate to assist them, but we don’t have a program like that here. Victim Witness Assistance Program staff in Canada are government-­appointed, poorly trained and overworked. The turnover is high because of large caseloads. At EVE, we make sure advocates can deliver the informed, compassionate support victims desperately need. So far, we’re helping more than 20 people through EVE’s services, and I’m hoping to grow the team of advocates so we can help even more people.

I’ve done what I can to turn my trauma and frustration into action. Last October, I spoke at the Canadian Arts and Fashion Awards to share our advocacy work with industry leaders. I also led a rally outside Queen’s Park as part of Voices Against Violence, a national coalition of non-profit organizations committed to eradicating violence in Canada, particularly against women and children. It was one of 12 rallies outside of provincial legislature buildings across the country that day to raise awareness about intimate partner violence.

Meanwhile, femicide continues to rise in Canada. Between 2018 and 2022, 850 women were killed, which represents one death every 48 hours. And between 2019 and 2022, there was a 27 per cent increase in homicides of women and girls by male suspects. So our work continues. And so does my healing. It’s taken many, many hours of therapy, treatment for PTSD, journalling and internal processing to get to the point where I can talk about my case and my abuser so openly.

I’m still based in LA. I believe that’s the reason I’m still alive, and I never feel safe when I come back to Toronto. I’m convinced that, as long as Carl is free, there will be more victims. In 2022, a woman reached out to me on Instagram. She said she’d been seeing Carl for about seven months, and she wanted to help with my case against him. But, shortly afterward, she disappeared from Instagram, and I haven’t been able to contact her since.

I’ll keep coming back to Toronto, at least once a year, to renew my peace bond and continue my advocacy work. Canada used to be my home, but now it’s the place where I almost died and the place where my abuser remains free. I miss my friends and family in Toronto deeply, but being back is very difficult for me. Because of my PTSD, I’m hypervigilant when I’m here. And the only way that’s going to change is if Carl is imprisoned for what he did to me and the justice system is reformed so that other survivors of violence don’t have to go through what I faced.