Calling it femicide?

Three months after her daughter was found shot dead, Linda Davidson has a long list of questions with no easy route to the answers.

On Sept. 7 Davidson’s daughter, Tiffany Gates, 30, was found dead in her boyfriend’s apartment on Proudfoot Lane. The body of a man was also found there. Police told her Davidson that it was a “murder suicide”. Sharing this information would be helpful because it would confirm that her daughter’s death was a result of intimate-partner violence.

Aline Vlasceanu heads the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime. She also leads a support group for friends and family members of homicide victims.

She said the way killings of women are reported now often leads to a muddy picture of the wider problem.

“When we actually compile the list [of killings of women by men] it’s really hard for us to figure out what femicides happened because police are refusing to name it,” she said.

Meanwhile Davidson is considering ways to honour the memory of her daughter. In the spring she plans to add a memorial plaque on a park bench in Niagara Falls, Ont., where Tiffany Gates was raised.

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