Triple homicide: Slaying victim cried out for help but fell through the cracks

Slain nurse Zahra Abdille, with her son, Faris, and husband, Yusuf. COURTESY SONIA BERRY

By Olivia Carville
Friday, November

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Last year Zahra Abdille cried out for help, fleeing her husband for a safe house and asking for an emergency court order to protect her young sons.

But she didn’t have enough evidence to prove her children were at risk. She couldn’t get the financial documents asked of her. She didn’t qualify for legal aid and because her husband controlled their bank account, she couldn’t afford a lawyer, according to her close friend.

After three weeks in an abused women’s shelter, Abdille returned to the violent East York home where she and her children, Faris, 13, and Zain, 8, were found dead on Saturday. Yusuf Abdille, her husband and the father of their children, died after plummeting off a nearby bridge the same day.

Police have not ruled out Yusuf Abdille as the perpetrator in the triple homicide.

A funeral for Zahra Abdille and her children takes place on Friday at the Khalid Bin Al-Walid Mosque in Etobicoke.

Some observers suggest the Toronto Public Health nurse fell through the cracks because she was not identified to court staff as a victim of domestic abuse. Others, however, say the legal system was difficult for her to navigate from day one.

“An ordinary person has a hard time with our system, but if you add all the layers of domestic violence — exclusion, fear and juggling children, it makes it that much harder. Just getting through the paperwork is daunting,” said Amanda Dale, executive director of Toronto’s Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic, which specializes in domestic violence cases.

Abdille’s relationship with her husband of 17 years had been volatile since the early 2000s, according to one of her closest friends, Sonia Berry. He would belittle Abdille in public and abuse her in private, Berry told the Star.

In a desperate attempt to protect her children, Abdille fled to a women’s shelter in July 2013 and went to court twice to try to file an ex parte motion to gain sole custody without her husband’s consent, according to Roz Roach, executive director of the shelter, Dr. Roz’s Healing Place.

An ex parte order, which would have allowed Abdille to impose a restraining order against her husband, is only granted in extreme cases to protect children in danger.

Slain nurse Zahra Abdille with one of her closest friends, Sonia Berry, and son, Faris, who was also found murdered in the family's East York apartment last Saturday. COURTESY SONIA BERRY

Abdille’s motion was denied because she did not have enough evidence to prove her children were at risk, Roach said.

Family lawyer Andrew Feldstein said applicants who file an ex parte motion have “a very, very heavy hurdle to get over to convince a judge to grant it.”

“You need to have as good evidence as possible,” he said. “With her lack of legal skills and assistance, it’s likely she wasn’t able to put together the materials to flesh out that evidence.”

A recent job posting for a public health nurse in Toronto suggests Abdille was likely earning around $60,000 to $67,000, meaning her income was above the $32,860 legal aid threshold for victims of domestic abuse with two children.

Yusuf Abdille also controlled all of Zahra Abdille’s money in the couple’s joint account, which meant she could not pay for a lawyer, according to Berry.

“She actually left him, but there were not enough resources for her out there,” she said.

“Zahra was a strong, educated person and she was stuck in this situation that she just couldn’t get out of.”

Penny Krowitz, executive director of the Act to End Violence Against Women, said it was possible Abdille did not pursue her application because she was intimidated by the legal system and “overwhelmed with fear.”

“If you do not have representation or solid legal advice, very often you are not successful,” she said.

The tragic death of Abdille and her children would hopefully lead to “systemic changes” in the system, Krowitz said.

“This story tells us that there is a great deal more education needed for lawyers, judges and the public about what domestic violence really is and how the system works,” she said.

Dale claimed services do exist to help women like Abdille. For some reason, however, she was not identified as a victim of violence.

Staff at the courthouse might not have been screening for domestic violence, or Abdille could have masked her problems, she said.

“Women in her situation do have options, but clearly they didn’t work in her case and we don’t know exactly why that is. Clearly this is very tragic and everyone is looking at their own protocols now,” Dale said.

In a parliamentary committee for the Status of Women Thursday, NDP critic Niki Ashton filed a motion for a national action plan to address domestic violence “so that women like Zahra no longer slip through the cracks in our systems.”

The Conservative-majority committee called for the motion to be discussed “in camera,” or behind closed doors, where it was then denied.

“The federal government is failing to take leadership on preventing violence against women,” Ashton told the Star after her motion was denied. “It’s clear that we need comprehensive action and sadly the government is nowhere to be found on that front.”

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