TORONTO

The three deaths sent shockwaves through the Ottawa Valley.

Anastasia Kuzyk, 36, of Wilno was found dead in a residence near that village. Shortly after, police found the body of Nathalie Warmerdam, 48, in her nearby home.

Then Carol Culleton, 66, was found dead near Barry’s Bay.

The initial shock gave way to angry questions: Why?

The man accused of the murder, Basil Borutski, was sentenced to 30 days for assaulting Warmerdan in 2012, threatening to hurt one of her family members and kill a family pet.

Borutski was sentenced to 19 months in jail in September 2014 for choking Kuzyk in a Dec. 13, 2013 incident. He was released on Dec. 27, 2014, after receiving credit for time served prior to his sentencing.

According to court records, he refused to sign a probation order to stay away from and not communicate with Kuzyk.

In the legislature Thursday, Opposition Tory critic Laurie Scott demanded to know why he was released without signing that order.

In January 2014, Kuzyk went to the OPP because Borutski violated his probation order, Scott told the legislature. He broke into Kuzyk’s home and violently beat her.

“Mrs. Kuzyk said that she thought he was going to kill her. His violent past should have raised every conceivable red flag. Just nine months after Mr. Borutski was released on probation, Anastasia Kuzyk, Nathalie Warmerdam and Carol Culleton are dead, allegedly at his hands,” Scott said.

Scott wanted to know why these women were ignored.

The response from Premier Kathleen Wynne was typical of the usual hand-wringing you hear from politicians when they don’t have answers.

“My heart absolutely goes out to all of the families, and quite frankly, to all of the communities. It was just a terrible tragedy,” Wynne said.

It goes without saying that we’re all saddened. But we don’t elect governments to tut-tut over the brutal murders of three women. We elect them to put in place measures to protect them. And they failed.

Public Safety Minister Yasir Naqvi told the House police services are required to have policies and procedures in place for managing domestic violence investigations. None of that helped those three vulnerable women — despite all the warning signs.

Naqvi couldn’t tell me how many people get out of jail without signing their probation order.

“I don’t have that information,” he told me, but said a probation order is valid even if it’s unsigned.

“Their enforceability is not impacted whatsoever, whether the probation order is signed or not,” he said.

That’s not good enough, says Scott. Renfrew County, where the murders occurred, has only one probation officer who can visit only once a week.

“Their service is overwhelmed,” she said. “The fact that he didn’t sign a probation order is the biggest red flag you could ever have that he has no intention of staying away from these women that he allegedly murdered.”

The murders happened in the Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke riding of MPP John Yakabuski. The area is still grieving, he said. He and his wife went to a vigil for the victims across the road from the Wilno Tavern where Kuzyk worked. Yakabuski told me he’s considering introducing a private member’s bill that would prohibit those who don’t sign their probation order from being released, or require them to undergo electronic monitoring.

“There’s nobody in the riding who isn’t talking about it, because they’re concerned about how this happened, how it could have been prevented — and the more we learn about it the more concerns people have about it,” he told me.

It’s all very well for the government to pay lip service to helping victims. These three women lived in fear — and the system failed them.

How many warning signs does it take before someone listens to victims of domestic violence — before it happens?

Instead they wring their hands and utter empty platitudes after three women die brutal, unnecessary deaths.