Former British Columbia legislator Katrina Chen sits on a couch in her Burnaby home, reading aloud from the children\u2019s book she\u2019s co-written.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Maybe,\u2019 Mommy tells me, \u2018It\u2019s time for a stronger house. We leave everything behind. And we go.’\u201d<\/p>\n
The mother and son in the story, \u201cA Stronger Home,\u201d co-written with Elaine Su, turn their backs on a scene of domestic turmoil: a broken vase, furniture overturned, sofa cushions in disarray.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wrote this book as a survivor of gender-based violence with personal experiences about how violence has touched and impacted my whole life,\u201d said Chen, B.C.\u2019s former minister of state for child care.<\/p>\n
She considers the scene by artist Delphie Cot\u00e9-Lacroix, showing the mother and son\u2019s exit, to be among the most powerful in the book \u2014 having the courage and strength to leave a violent situation is not easy, she said.<\/p>\n
Chen, who also has a young son, sees the problem as an urgent one, pointing to a recent spate of alleged intimate partner violence in B.C.<\/p>\n
This month alone, there has been the killing of an 80-year-old Abbotsford woman and the death of her husband in what police consider a murder-suicide; the killing in a Richmond apartment of a 51-year-old woman whose partner has been charged with second-degree murder; and the death of Bailey McCourt, allegedly beaten to death in a Kelowna parking lot by her estranged husband, James Plover, also charged with second-degree murder.<\/p>\n
Chen said it was \u201ctotally heartbreaking and unacceptable\u201d to hear of such tragedies, and society needed to see the violence as an emergency. She and other advocates want changes to the legal and social justice systems to prevent it from continuing.<\/p>\n
\u201cGender-based violence is a form of violence that\u2019s the most pervasive and most persistent,\u201d said Chen. \u201cIt\u2019s the longest human rights violation throughout human history.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chen, who represented the riding of Burnaby-Lougheed until last year, was best known in B.C. as an advocate for the NDP government\u2019s $10-a-day childcare program, as well as co-chairing Premier David Eby\u2019s campaign to lead the party.<\/p>\n
But in 2022, Chen announced she was taking herself out of contention for a new ministerial position, revealing she wanted \u201ctime and space to heal\u201d from the trauma of gender-based violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have long-term trauma that has yet to be fully unpacked,\u201d she said at the time.<\/p>\n
Chen said in a recent interview that she was a victim of gender-based violence during her childhood, but she never talked about the trauma until she was hurt again in her late 30s.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started realizing that the impact of violence can really impact a whole person\u2019s career, your life choices,\u201d said Chen.<\/p>\n
She said it was important to break the cycle of violence from generation to generation. But opening up isn\u2019t easy \u2014 revealing emotional scars came with misunderstanding, judgment, and stigma, said Chen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was very little when I was first touched by gender-based violence, and as I was growing up and realizing what was happening to me, I questioned myself, I judged myself,\u201d said Chen.<\/p>\n
\u2018A SAFER WAY TO LIVE\u2019<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a feeling that Sarah Sherman has struggled with, too.<\/p>\n
In 2004, her husband, Jeff Bethell, attacked her in her Nanaimo, B.C., home, tied her up, and tried to kill her.<\/p>\n
She freed herself and alerted police, but when Bethell saw a police car, he crashed his own vehicle, killing himself and a four-year-old boy in a car he struck.<\/p>\n
Sherman said she lived with \u201cshame and guilt for many years,\u201d relocating to New Brunswick to escape the past and be \u201cinvisible\u201d again.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people were critically injured. They lost their child. How do I ever make up for that?\u201d said a tearful Sherman, \u201cI can\u2019t, I can\u2019t, and that is the most heartbreaking part.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sherman is the founder of charity We\u2019re Here for You, which provides comfort kits to survivors of intimate partner violence.<\/p>\n
She believes sharing can empower other victims.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we share truthfully and authentically, we give other people hope, possibly inspire them to find a better way or a safer way to live.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the legal front, there has been some progress.<\/p>\n
Last year, B.C. Attorney General Niki Sharma appointed lawyer Kim Stanton to conduct an independent review of the B.C. legal system\u2019s treatment of intimate partner violence and sexual violence.<\/p>\n
Stanton said she found numerous barriers to action and made nine recommendations to help survivors, including an increased focus on prevention, reform in the courts, and legal aid funding for family law services.<\/p>\n
Chen called it a good start.<\/p>\n
She also said the reform process could not involve a better person than Sharma, who supported her personally while she was struggling with violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we need actions,\u201d said Chen. She would like to see all the proposals in Stanton\u2019s report enacted, she said.<\/p>\n
Sharma said \u201cthe work is underway,\u201d and a team within ministries, including hers, was looking at how to implement the recommendations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen that there are gaps in the justice system that we need to change,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Sharma said she pressed for changes to the Criminal Code to improve risk assessments when she attended last month\u2019s first minister\u2019s meeting in place of Eby, who was overseas.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn particular, what I\u2019m asking to see changed is changing it so after the person\u2019s convicted, the bail conditions are looked at so they are held based on the risk that they pose, instead of them being released until sentencing,\u201d said Sharma, adding that this period is usually \u201cthe riskiest time\u201d for the victim.<\/p>\n
The killing of McCourt in Kelowna had occurred a few hours after Plover was convicted of a separate assault; there was no discussion of keeping him in custody, a recording of the hearing revealed.<\/p>\n
Eby said last week that he had delivered a letter from McCourt\u2019s family to Prime Minister Mark Carney, who had committed to bail reform \u201con multiple occasions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sharma said she plans to meet with Justice Minister Sean Fraser soon to continue such conversations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that anybody who has known somebody who\u2019s been the victim of intimate partner violence, or anybody who\u2019s been a victim themselves, understands that the system doesn\u2019t take the crime as seriously as it should,\u201d said Sharma.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that makes me angry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chen, who is now president of An Xin Community Savings Credit Union in Richmond, said her recovery journey isn\u2019t easy, but she is grateful for community support.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt took me a while to understand how important it is to find my own sense of self and reflect on what I truly want in life \u2014 rather than simply reacting to what has happened to me, like constantly feel angry, hurt or sad.\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the support of family, friends, counselling and coaching \u2014 and knowing I am not alone \u2014 I began to focus on my own well-being.\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 29, 2025.<\/p>\n
SEE ALSO:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former British Columbia legislator Katrina Chen sits on a couch in her Burnaby home, reading aloud from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[353,49,48,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-33250","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}