Friday June 16, 2023
Fartumo Kusow holds a picture of her daughter, Sahra Bulle, surrounded by inscriptions honouring her daughter's memory. Bulle was found dead earlier this month and her estranged husband charged in connection with her death. (Jacob Barker/CBC)
Mornings are the hardest time for Fartumo Kusow since the death of her daughter Sahra Bulle. Each morning she's forced to remember her nightmare is real.
Kusow said her family is struggling in the wake of Sahra's death — but she is hoping to reach other women who might be facing intimate partner violence.
"It's still not really real," Kusow said. "I'm still waiting to wake up from this nightmare."
Bulle repeatedly tried to leave relationship, stayed at local shelterSahra's body was located on June 6. It came a day after Windsor police announced a first-degree murder charge against her estranged husband, Brian Aaron Marbury. Sahra had been missing since May 26.
The allegations against Marbury has not yet been tested before the courts.
Kusow said her daughter was with Marbury since she was 18 — the couple had even lived with Kusow for a time. Her daughter was once again attempting to leave, she said, and was staying at Windsor's Hiatus House when she went missing.
Kusow said she last spoke with her daughter on Friday, May 26, while Sahra was on her way home from work.
"She seemed really to be turning a corner and happy," Kusow said.
As the mother of an adult, Kusow said she wasn't allowed to communicate with doctors and other advocates to share with them what she knew. If she had, Kusow said she believes her daughter would be alive today.
"I think my daughter has never received a full risk assessment, somebody in authority to tell her, 'this is the risk you're facing,'" Kusow said. "I was the only one saying (it) and and you know … you always think (your) mother is exaggerating.
"I could never really get anybody outside of the family to sit with her because she wasn't giving a full account of what has been happening, at least as far as I could tell."
Kusow said she feels the system isn't set up to work for women who are trying to leave unhealthy relationships. Sahra was smart, her mother said. But she was also "loyal to a fault," something that hindered her efforts to leave.
"If she saw another woman that (this) happened to, she'd be the first to stand up," Kusow said. "It was so hard for her to see it in herself and to see that she was also a victim ... I don't think she appreciated the magnitude of the danger she faced."
Bulle a 'smart, bubbly' woman nearly finished her University of Windsor degree
Sahra was incredibly smart, her mother said, a natural caregiver who nurtured her younger siblings. She called her youngest sister "sweet angel." She loved Russian literature.
The family came to Canada when Sahra was seven, leaving civil war in Somalia.
"It would almost be better if … some stranger had to do with her death, because this is the man she loved and committed all her adult life (to), Kusow said. "I still don't know why it had to be like this."