Six years ago, I was combing through my Facebook and I saw post from my cousin Julie Major. Her brother and his wife were frantically looking for their daughter Ashley who just days before had Facetimed her mom saying she was planning to return to her home in Niagara.
Ashley never made it home. She was murdered in cold blood in her home in Salmon Arm then buried in a nearby field. It would be five and a half years before her body was located, and her boyfriend was charged with second degree murder.
Today, Ashley's urn has a sacred spot in her parents' home, and Derek Favell is in jail awaiting trial by judge and jury. The trial is expected to go into next year sometime.
This has been an agonizing journey for Ashley's friends and family. The pain has never stopped, and the wounds are broken open every time the family has to sit through a series of pre-trial proceedings. Fortunately, this ordeal will end but the pain will never wane for the people, including me, who have been touched by her case.
That same pain is being felt by many families in Canada who continue to look for their loved ones, all who vanished without a trace. Katrina Blagdon, Nicole Bell, Deanna Wertz, Amber Ellis, Jaclyn Smith, Pamela Jones, Caitlin Potts -- these are just a few of the women who are missing. Many are indigenous, but many are not -- despite what the media will tell you.
What the women who go missing have in common is that they are mothers, sisters and daughters. They are the women who help you in a restaurant or a bank, or they serve their country with distinction. There are doctors, lawyers and other professionals on the list, too. Some are hard working immigrant mothers and daughters who left their countries only experience violence in their adopted country.
Oh yes, and they are the victims of domestic abuse. They are harmed by the men they trust and love. They are raped, and hit by hands and plates and cars. Their bank accounts are drained. Their possessions are taken from them. Their children are terrorized.
Many of these women are known to police who visit their houses even though they are law abiding citizens.
Their only crime is trusting men. And that is an ungodly disgrace.
If they are lucky and brave, they are able to leave their abusive relationships. If they stay, they risk dying at the hands of their partners; their bodies are hidden from view then discarded with a shrug -- and there isn't much law enforcement can do. No body, no charges.
Nearly six years it took the RCMP to find Ashley and charge her partner.
Six years!
How long will it take to find all the others? That is the most heartbreaking question of all.
Today, on the day Ashley was taken from her family, I have an announcement.
I am writing a book. It's called Gypsy: The Life and Death of Ashley Simpson. It will be published hopefully in 2023, after Favell's trial has concluded. Much of it has been written already. All I need is an ending.
Gypsy will explore Ashley's life and death in the context of a continuing epidemic of domestic violence and murder in this country. I wish I could say I had answers. But I do have hard questions.
Here's what I know.
Our women are crying.
Our women are bleeding.
Our women are dying.
And the men just walk around free.
This is not a book I wanted to write, but it's a book that I feel compelled to write for the family, and for Ashley who sits like a dragonfly on my shoulder as I type this. She is with me always, whispering in my ear, her words keeping me up at night.
Don't let them forget me.
My life mattered.
Don't let me die in vain.
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