When we think of femicide, the first image that often comes to mind is that of women partners, wives, mothers killed at the hands of men they knew and trusted. But new data out of Ontario is forcing us to confront an even more devastating truth: children are increasingly among the victims.
According to the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses (OAITH), nearly one in five femicide victims reported in the last eight months were minors. That’s not a footnote. That’s not a rare tragedy. That’s a shocking shift and one we should all be deeply disturbed by.
Between late November and the end of July, OAITH recorded 42 femicides in Ontario. Of those, 21 percent were children or youth under 18. By comparison, in the same stretch last year, there were 38 femicides and only five involved minors. This isn’t a blip in the numbers. It’s a growing pattern.
What’s perhaps most striking is OAITH’s inclusive definition of femicide. They define it as the gender-based killing of a woman, child, trans woman, two-spirit, or gender non-conforming person where a man has been charged. That also means boys who are killed in the context of intimate partner violence are counted reminding us that the ripple effects of misogynistic violence don’t stop at women’s lives. Children both girls and boys are collateral damage in systems of abuse rooted in control, power, and gendered violence.
As Marlene Ham, OAITH’s executive director, notes, “It’s a shift from what we have seen in prior years.” And that shift should terrify us. Children should never become statistics in this way. Their deaths reveal not only the brutality of femicide but also its reach into entire families.
We need to stop treating femicide as isolated tragedies. They are preventable, predictable acts of violence in a society that still fails to protect women and children. Every statistic represents a life taken too soon and a system that didn’t intervene soon enough.
If the numbers are rising, the message is clear: awareness alone isn’t enough. Ontario needs stronger protections, earlier interventions, and a serious commitment to ending the culture of gender-based violence. Anything less means more children will pay the price with their lives.
