The vandalism is likely over the centre's decision to deny services to transgender women

Content warning: This story includes images with words that may be offensive or disturbing to some readers.

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — A shelter offering support services for battered women and rape victims has been vandalized twice in about two weeks, and a policy that denies services to transgender women is likely the reason why.

Hilla Kerner with the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter says about two weeks ago, a dead rat was found nailed to the door. Tuesday morning, staff found threats and angry messages scrawled on windows.

Graffiti on the building’s windows include messages like “Kill TERFS” and “TERFS go home you are not welcome.” TERF is an acronym for “trans-exclusionary radical feminism.”

A follow up to the dead rat that was nailed to our door recently… this morning we found this writing scrawled across the windows of our storefront space that we use for support and training groups #Misogyny pic.twitter.com/vm6Gv8jWcj — VancouverRapeRelief (@VanRapeRelief) August 27, 2019

The centre has been criticized for excluding transgender women from its services, including peer-to-peer counselling and shelters.

Kerner says her organization is being targeted for that policy, saying those services are only for women who were born female.

“It’s a very controversial position in Vancouver and it’s totally okay for people to disagree and not to support our position, but to make those kinds of threats is appalling,” she says.

“Often our members will be targeted. People are expressing their disapproval of us, but we haven’t faced such unacceptable threats until now.”

The centre has filed a report with Vancouver police, and officers have suggested putting up cameras to deter vandalism.

Earlier this year, the City of Vancouver stripped the shelter of its funding because of policies that have been widely condemned by transgender advocates as discriminatory.