Most of this women were former youth in care, under the supposed care of Batshaw. Many of the women and children met the Cabot Square Serial Predator when they were minors and were supposed to be protected by the Directior of Youth Protection (DYP)/Batshaw. Many of the victims reported experiences of sexualized violence, abuse, racism, intentional destabilization through repeated moves to different foster families, and cultural destruction while under Batshaw care. Batshaw received a number of calls about this situation yet failed to address these systemic issues and protect these vulnerable children and youth, most of whom were Indigenous. Many of the older women are in Cabot Square because their children were taken by DYP. These women gave up hope after trying to get their kids back, only to be faced by racist practices by DYP. These women are trapped in a cycle of hopelessness. DYP failed to adapt their practices to these women to give them and their children a semblance of hope. DYP has an office minutes from Cabot Square. If they wanted to adapt their practices, they would have already.

The Montreal police were aware of the violence occurring in and around Cabot Square for years. Instead of appropriately intervening, the police chose to criminalize people in and around Cabot Square, many of whom were victims. The women were repeatedly ticketed for practices related to being unhoused (i.e drinking in public, loitering, self-defence in response to violence, etc). Victims and survivors were afraid of going to police in fear that they may have an outstanding warrant due to unpaid tickets. The victims of this serial predator were disproportionately sex workers, Indigenous, and drug users. Police failed to adapt their practices to these highly vulnerable communities, particularly considering the historic mistrust between police and these communities. Police have also failed to investigate the deaths of 6 Inuit women, and one disappearance, in downtown Montreal, despite the similar pattern, demographic, and involvement with the sex trade of all of these women. This is despite an omission from the Cabot Square Serial Predator to the media that “The best way to dispose of an Inuit is to make it look like suicide.”

Coroner’s in these situations were quick to rule the deaths of many of these women a suicide, while failing to look at the broader context of their lives and consider what other possibilities might exist. Each of these women were in known situations of violence, and this could have easily factored into their deaths, as it has in the deaths of countless other Indigenous women across so-called Canada. Each Coroner’s Report of the women is approximately one and a half pages long. How can this possibly reflect the nuance of each of these women’s situations? From a clinical perspective, the differences in presentation of suicide by hanging versus a homicide later covered up as suicide by hanging are extremely subtle, and in prematurely classifying these deaths as suicides, a critical opportunity to gather forensic evidence was missed. Even if each of these deaths were a suicide, the fact that so many young Inuit women are dying by suicide in one specific part of Montreal should be cause for concern.

The Montreal Sexual Assault Centre is mere minutes from Cabot Square yet failed to adapt their practices to the vulnerable women and children in Cabot Square. Very few of the victims of this serial predator reported going to the MSAC to seek post-assault care. The lack of availability of a low barrier Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) program in Montreal, considered a best practice in sexual assault response and care, greatly impacted these vulnerable individuals. SOS Violence Conjugale, the domestic violence helpline in Quebec, refused to assist these women when calls were made for help, because these women were considered to be “homeless first” and not primarily victims of violence. Despite the high concentration of Indigenous women, trans women, and sex workers, and the well-documented knowledge that these women are the most likely to experience violence, existing anti-violence organizations failed to provide adequate outreach and support to these vulnerable victims of violence. The Crime Victims Assistance Centre (CAVAC) also failed to adequately support these women. CAVAC is unable to meet with victims directly on the street and relies on partnerships with community organizations. However, given the failure of community organizations to support these women, their services were essentially inaccessible. CAVAC may call Chez Doris to reach a victim, for example, however, if this woman is barred from Chez Doris, she would have no way of receiving this vital message. CAVAC failed to consider the unique vulnerabilities of these victims, particularly the high likelihood of intimidation and retaliation facing them due to their involvement with various street economies. These victims required extensive support in safety planning, and potentially even, coordinated relocation (if desired). Yet victim services organizations failed to offer these necessary protections that potentially could have saved lives. These organizations are also failing men, especially young boys, who are victims and survivors of violence. Supporting and intervening with men and boys who have experienced violence is a vital way to ensure that they also receive healing and do not go on to become perpetrators of violence.

To this day, no women and gender-diverse only space that uses a harm reduction philosophy exists in the Cabot Square area. These spaces are necessary, considering the way in which vulnerable women who use substances were and still are still being targeted. Many of the survivors of the Cabot Square Serial Predator currently face “life time” service restrictions from nearby community organizations, particularly by Chez Doris. Sex workers report inaccessible services and barriers to services, such as unreliable access to showers, lack of condoms and safer sex materials, and curfews at shelters that directly impeded their ability to safely work and earn an income. During the summer of 2022 when the Cabot Square Serial Predator was active, Chez Doris closed for the summer due to their abusive treatment of staff and inability to retain workers, with no consideration for the safety of these women. How many women were raped because of this decision? Native Women’s Shelter does not work with women who are intoxicated, and while they hosted vigils for two of the women after they died, it begs the question of what was done to stop these women from dying in the first place? Very few of the victims of this serial predator reported going to the Native Women’s Shelter and being meaningfully supported. The Iskweu Project responded to these deaths by creating “welcome toolkits” for newly arrived Indigenous people to Montreal. These toolkits contained toiletries, a gift card, and a paper with access to resources in Montreal. However, Annita Hetoevėhotohke'e Lucchessi points out in her article “Mapping Geographies of Canadian Colonial Occupation: Pathway Analysis of Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls” that these “welcome toolkits” place the responsibility to not experience violence on individual people, which can uphold a narrative of victim blaming and absolve systems from taking responsibility for creating the conditions that allow violence in Cabot Square to flourish:

These welcome packets are a compelling example of the reality for Inuit women in Montreal—they have been made targets for violence, before they ever make any personal choices of their own. A victim-blaming narrative would focus on Siasi and Sharon’s choices to use drugs, to engage in sex work, or to even migrate to Montreal in the first place. However, a more accurate narrative would also hold the City of Montreal accountable for allowing for hotbeds of widespread intergenerational racial violence like Cabot Square to be maintained, and for not providing adequate supports for its large Inuit community. Similarly, it would also hold Montreal police accountable for allowing known human traffickers to roam free in their juris diction, for not adequately responding to distress calls from indigenous women, and for refusing to give dead indigenous women proper investigations by continually prematurely classifying them as suicides. Perhaps we may also decide to hold federal and provincial governments accountable— why continue to place Inuit at the YMCA when they know that it puts them in danger? Why not invest in healthcare and education options closer to Inuit communities? And what of the failure to consult or respect Inuit communities in their struggles to maintain their way of life in the face of climate change—would Sharon still be alive if she had not been visiting her mother at the YMCA due to the polar bear attack? Would Siasi and her sister be safe at home if authorities had responded quicker in supporting their request for help in going home, or if police had arrested the man who led them to sex work when social workers repeatedly alerted them to his involvement in sex trafficking?

The issue of “cohabitation” has long been a source of contention in Cabot Square. Years ago, when the city made the decision to build luxury condos across from Cabot Square, this only furthered the inequality division. Most people living in Cabot Square are living in the extremes of poverty with a total lack of support from surrounding community organizations and institutions. The City of Montreal made promises to build social housing where luxury condos now sit. Where the city could have invested in housing, poverty reduction, and violence prevention, they instead chose the interests of a rich few over the needs of some of the most vulnerable in this city. The City of Montreal has made efforts in recent years to “clean up the park” by offering social programming like concerts and other activities in Cabot Square. People in Cabot Square don’t care about seeing a concert on Friday night. They want to know that they can go out at night safely, that someone will believe them and support them if they are raped. For some people, Cabot Square is all they have known, and now they are being pushed out. Judgemental and violent language about people who use drugs, complaints from neighbours about “not in my backyard” (NIMBYism) and wanting to disperse unhoused people from Cabot Square, and a framing of sex workers as being dirty and immoral has led to a view by many Montrealers that Cabot Square is the scum of the city. Every day people in Montreal who know nothing of the lives of people in Cabot Square cast judgement and hold animosity about this part of the city. Residents who are safe in their luxury condos complain about feeling “unsafe”, and these discourses have been allowed to dominate and obscure the reality of the lives in people who live in Cabot Square. No one was asking about the safety of Indigenous women and girls, about the safety of sex workers while they were being targeted en masse for years. Calls by people who are uninformed about the reality of Cabot Square ask for more police, and police only serve to criminalize homelessness, pushing them to places that are more hidden and therefore more dangerous. Once again, this contributes to the narrative that people in Cabot Square are disposable. That their lives do not matter. So when a serial predator targets the most most vulnerable members of Cabot Square, no one thinks twice because we have already written them off.