CENTREVILLE, N.S. — A 22-year-old found dead inside a burning home in the Annapolis Valley over the weekend was the sixth woman in Nova Scotia to be killed by her male partner since October, police say.
RCMP have arrested and charged 28-year-old Justin Joseph Benjamin with murder, and arson with disregard for human life.
Around 3 a.m. Saturday, officers with help from the Kentville Volunteer Fire Department responded to a report of a house on fire on Anthony Avenue, and fire crews were able to extinguish the blaze.
The body of the 22-year-old woman — whom police have not named — was found inside the house, and her death was declared a homicide. Her fatal injuries were not associated with the fire, an RCMP spokesperson said without releasing details on the cause of death.
Before first responders arrived, six people had escaped the house fire without injuries.
Around noon Sunday, police arrested Benjamin in Lequille, N.S., who was scheduled to appear in Kentville provincial court Monday.
Since Oct. 18, police in Nova Scotia have reported the deaths of six women caused by intimate-partner violence. In five of those cases, women were killed by men who then took their own lives, including on New Year’s Eve in Halifax, when a woman and her father were shot dead in a car by the woman’s boyfriend.
Kristina Fifield, a social worker and trauma therapist who works with survivors of intimate-partner violence, says these recent deaths are devastating and represent a disturbing trend. While gender-based violence data is not collected by the province, Fifield says that based on what she's seeing in the field, cases are on the rise.
"We're seeing an increase in femicides and we're seeing an increase in intimate-partner violence in our province," she said in an interview Monday.
Nationally, between 2018 and 2023, police-reported family violence was up by 17 per cent and intimate partner violence was up by 13 per cent, according to data from Statistics Canada.
There's a number of possible reasons for that rise, Fifield said, including the high cost of housing, food and other necessities, and the barriers that exist in accessing support for gender-based violence.
"Individuals are experiencing financial crises, whether it's not being able to afford heat or their housing … these stressors that are being put on families and couples can further escalate existing violence," Fifield said.
Fifield added that many of the resources in Nova Scotia that aim to support women experiencing intimate-partner violence, including police forces and the justice system, may re-victimize women who reach out looking for help.
"We need to talk about system-induced trauma and institutional betrayal that survivors and victims in our province experience," she said, adding that this may stem from "what (survivors) are seeing with others who reach out for help, or maybe their own past experiences in reaching out for help. They feel betrayed and failed by the system."
It's also a problem that free trauma therapy services and counselling are reserved for survivors who have reported intimate-partner violence to police, Fifield said, because many people won't report domestic violence because they distrust the police.
"Another barrier is that when people do engage with this free trauma therapy … if child protection is in their life, if the justice system is involved in their life, or if they're on long-term or short-term disability, their therapy records can be weaponized against them. Those are systemic system-induced betrayals," she said.
Fifield said it's also critically important that the Nova Scotia government invests in resources aimed at providing support for the men who may be at risk of perpetuating violent against their partners and families.
"We also need to be specifically targeting services for males (who) use violence, and we have not seen enough of that," she said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 13, 2025.
— By Lyndsay Armstrong in Halifax
The Canadian Press
