On Air With HWP - The Learn to Love Podcast

Championing Change: Pamela Cross on Preventing Domestic Violence Deaths

• Jerusha Mack • Season 4 • Episode 1

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Can domestic violence deaths be prevented?

In this powerful episode of The Learn to Love Podcast, we are joined by Pamela Cross, a legal expert, advocate, and member of Ontario’s Domestic Violence Death Review Committee (DVDRC). Pamela provides deep insights into the barriers survivors face within the legal system and the ongoing work to prevent domestic violence fatalities. We also discuss the tragic case of Kiera Kagan, a four-year-old girl whose death, linked to domestic violence, underscores the urgent need for systemic change because domestic violence deaths are preventable. Join us as we dive into the vital work being done to prevent future tragedies and inspire change.

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Jennifer Kagan:

This girl had personality, she had hope, she had dreams, she had aspirations. She really deserved to be heard, and the court process completely obliterated her voice. And now she's gone. And so you know my role is I'm going to try to be her voice. And now she's gone. And so you know my role is I'm going to try to be her voice.

Jerusha Mack:

On February 7th 2020, Jennifer Kagan reluctantly sent her four-year-old daughter, Keira, off for her scheduled time with her father. Reluctantly because, after almost four years of fierce litigation, in which Jennifer had told the court repeatedly about the abuse she had been subjected to by her husband, as well as her serious concerns about Kira's safety when she was in his care, he continued to have frequent, lengthy and unsupervised time with her, as ordered by the family court. Her reluctance was well-founded. Two days later, on February 9th, Keira and her father were found dead at the bottom of a cliff in Rattlesnake Point Conservation Area near Milton, Ontario. As tireless as Jennifer was during Kira's life in her efforts to keep her safe, she has been even more so since her death, calling for accountability on the part of the systems that so clearly failed her and her daughter, and advocating for changes to the law and legal processes so other mothers and children can have happier endings to their stories.

Jennifer Kagan:

There were clear red flags in terms of the abuse, the pathological line, and that was all just completely ignored and deemed to be irrelevant to parenting, when in reality it is of the view that it is be irrelevant to parenting when in reality it is. I'm of the view that it is very relevant to parenting, that if someone has a history of abusive behavior towards one's spouse, what can happen is they can then use the child as a tool by which to harm their ex-partner, and that's exactly what happened in this case. Cura was a means by which to get at me, to get his claws into me, to harm me, to cause me, to cause me as much emotional strife as possible, and he knew very well how to do that.

Jerusha Mack:

The Domestic Violence Death Review Committee in Ontario identifies 41 factors that indicate a case is high risk for lethality. Where there are seven or more factors, the committee deems the death to be both predictable and preventable. The committee deems the death to be both predictable and preventable. In Kira's case, the DVDRC identified 22 risk factors A sobering reminder of the urgent need for systemic change to end domestic violence deaths. Welcome to the Season 4 premiere of the Learn to Love podcast. You are now on air with HWP. I'm your host, Jerusha Mack.

Jerusha Mack:

This podcast, presented by Halton Women's Place, is dedicated to conversations that educate, inspire and build a future free from violence. This new season brings you insightful discussions and powerful stories that highlight the realities of domestic violence, aiming to educate, shed light on the challenges and inspire change. In this episode, I'm joined by Pamela Cross, a feminist lawyer and member of the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee. Pamela is renowned for her work as a researcher, writer and educator with women's equality and violence prevention organizations across Canada. We talk about the important work that the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee does with women's equality and violence prevention organizations across Canada. We talk about the important work that the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee does and how we can prevent deaths like Keira Kagan, because domestic violence deaths are preventable.

Jerusha Mack:

Hi, Pam, thanks for joining me today. I'm really happy to be here, Jerusha. Yeah, I've been really looking forward to having this conversation with you. Yeah, I've been really looking forward to having this conversation with you. For people who may not be familiar, can you explain what the primary purpose and function of the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee is?

Pamela Cross:

I can and I want to take a couple of minutes to do that, just because the committee has recently well, a year ago been reconstituted with a bigger mandate and broader scope than it used to have. So I want to make sure that listeners understand that, at its essence, the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee is part of the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario, and its job is to assist the Chief Coroner in reviewing domestic violence-related deaths after there's been an initial police investigation. After all criminal proceedings, including appeals, are complete. So we look at a death sometimes many years after it's happened. Because the criminal system in this country moves very, very slowly. We would look at a case more quickly if the person who has caused the death has also killed themselves, because then of course there wouldn't be a trial. And what we're looking at is not the personal criminal or civil liability of the person who committed the murder or anybody affiliated with the story in any way, but rather we're looking at systemic issues that perhaps have some responsibility for leading to a situation where somebody's killed by their partner or their former partner, and our job is then to make recommendations about changes that could be made so that further deaths would be less likely to happen. So the DVDRC has been around since 2002. Two inquests that happened in the four years before that inquests into domestic violence, homicide made a recommendation for this kind of a body, because what those inquests saw was that, while certainly the person who killed the other person is ultimately responsible for their own actions, often there were many, many surrounding circumstances where system interventions might have led the story in a different direction. So that's the essence of what we do.

Pamela Cross:

The scope that we have is big Domestic violence related deaths. That's a big term. You know what does that mean. And what we're now looking at is a wide range of situations where and I'm going to use a quote from our actual description so we review any deaths where violence or abuse by a person's current or former intimate dating or sexual partner, or violence or abuse by someone who has has had or has expressed a sexual or romantic interest in the person likely contributed to the death of the person or an associated person. Okay, that's great. That's total gobbledygook. So let me explain it in a way that makes sense to normal people like all of us.

Pamela Cross:

So what do we mean by a current or former intimate partner, dating partner or sexual partner? That includes a broad range of relationships. Some of them are obvious People who are or were married, people who are or were living in a common law or dating relationship, even if that dating relationship was only casual. It's covered by this broad term of current or former partner. Our scope also extends to someone who had a consensual or non-consensual encounter with the victim at any time, and someone the victim may have dated online, even if they've never met in person. But it goes even farther than that.

Pamela Cross:

We also look at situations where the perpetrator of the homicide has currently, at the time of the homicide or before that, had or expressed a sexual or romantic interest in the victim. So I might not even know this person, but they've developed some kind of obsession with me and then they kill me. We're now including that in this scope of domestic violence-related deaths. A death is considered a domestic violence homicide if the perpetrator attempted or intended to establish an intimate relationship with the victim, even if their advances were rejected, if that person perceived there to be a relationship, even if that feeling was not mutual. So it could just be as simple as the perpetrator being infatuated with the victim.

Jerusha Mack:

Yeah, the work that the committee is doing is really important. I'm not sure if a lot of people even know about the important work that the committee has been doing, so thanks for explaining that. But it's so important because it's a huge part of prevention, because a lot of domestic violence deaths or intimate partner deaths are preventable. I remember hearing someone one time at one of our functions saying, or one of our events saying well, what can you do about it? Almost saying as if it's inevitable. But this isn't inevitable. And normally when you think about they're thinking oh well, you know that's happening behind closed doors, that's their issue over there. Like what do you mean? Systemic issues? But systems can actually prevent deaths and sometimes, like you're saying, there are a lot of systemic interventions that can help save lives.

Pamela Cross:

One of the things that I think is really important and this is a conclusion the committee reached long before I became a member of it is that the majority, the vast majority, of domestic violence homicides in Ontario are both predictable and preventable, and yet we always act so shocked when we hear about it.

Pamela Cross:

You know we see a story in the news, or even the police will say, or neighbors will say to the media I had no idea. Well, a lot of the time people have no idea because we're not paying enough attention. And I want to be really careful how I say this because I don't want people to listen to this and think, oh, now we have to be paying attention. You know, sticking our nose in to all of our neighbors, business and co workers and family members. No, that's not what I'm suggesting at all. And just because you overhear somebody having an argument with their partner doesn't mean that you have to think one of them is going to kill the other one. But I think that we've become very good at not seeing what's obviously in front of us, not seeing patterns of behavior that make it clear one person in the relationship has a lot more power than the other, not being open to hints that somebody might be dropping, say, a colleague at work. You know saying, oh, things are really difficult at home right now. A lot of us shy away from asking do you want to talk about that? And I understand that it's awkward, it's not our business in some ways. But most of these deaths are, first of all, predictable, meaning the signs are there, and second of all, preventable. Also in I think it's about seven out of 10 cases the presence of family violence or domestic violence.

Pamela Cross:

Ipv was known to multiple individuals outside the family. The woman may have said something to the family doctor, to a religious leader. Teachers may have observed or heard things from the children. There may have been one or two or 20 calls to the police, maybe none of them raising an issue to the level that a criminal charge resulted. Or maybe there have been criminal charges that have been resolved without ever going to trial and so it doesn't show up on the abuser's criminal record. Check that kind of thing. So we know what's going on, even if we don't know that. We know what's going on and if we know, we have to learn about what to look for. What's our duty as people just people, not because it's a family member or a friend. Just as people, because we would start to see the rate of violence, especially lethal violence.

Jerusha Mack:

Yeah, absolutely. Can you share what are some of the most significant findings or patterns the committee has identified over the years?

Pamela Cross:

The fact that in the majority of cases the death is both predictable and preventable, the fact that people know about the abuse where the break happens is that we don't know what to do with that information. And I want to say, because this is what I do, I guess I'm considered to be an expert, all my work is on this issue but I am as unsure as probably many other people about what to do in a situation where I'm confronted directly by a relationship where I can see that there's a significant power imbalance. You know, if I encountered two people on the sidewalk in front of my house later today, and I mean if one of them was hitting the other one, I know what I would do. I would dial 911 and try to observe what was happening to keep the victim safe and keep myself safe. But if I saw something that wasn't quite that physically obvious but that ticked a lot of my boxes of red flags in terms of coercively controlling behavior you know, abuse of power, that sort of thing where it seemed that one person was afraid of the other I don't know what I would do, because my fear would be that if I intervene, they're still probably going to go home together. And is it going to be worse for her than when they are, as you say, behind closed doors? Is he going to blame her for the fact that I stuck my nose into their business? I'm not suggesting I wouldn't do something, but I think it's important for people to understand it's not easy to know what to do. You're not a bad person if you can't figure out what to do.

Pamela Cross:

I think there's some great tools for people. I think Neighbors, friends and Families, for example, is a fantastic program. Lots of helpful resources to let people learn what are some common red flags. How do you have these very awkward conversations with people? Julie Lalonde has done some terrific work and does training for bystanders so that people know how to intervene in a way that's safe for everybody. But this is a lot of this work has come out of the work of the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee, in the sense that the committee has said hey, folks, we can predict these deaths and we all need to have a role to play, and I guess in some ways, that's what I think is. The most significant finding is that in the end, yes, we need to improve systems and I'd like to talk about that as well today but in the end, a lot of it comes back to us all of us being better informed and understanding that we have a role to play in making our communities safe, or safer places for everybody who lives in them.

Jerusha Mack:

Yeah, I agree, when you listen to stories, there's a lot of patterns in terms of, like, the lack of adequate intervention, whether it's by systems or just people that just don't know. Sometimes you're thinking, well, I don't want to get into their business or I don't want to like. You know that is, there's this thing that's from, since historically that it's been like domestic violence is like behind closed doors, that's their business, not of my business. But intervention is so important in prevention and that can happen from people that are whether it's your co-worker, like you're saying, or family member, who knows to recognize the signs and knows how to have those conversations, so that you're not sort of saying, oh, you need to leave them Are you stupid Like why wouldn't you leave?

Jerusha Mack:

and being that judgmental way. But it's really important for all of us to know how to do better, for sure.

Pamela Cross:

I think, if I compare it to another social problem whether that's drinking and driving or smoking cigarettes what happened has happened over the last 20 or 30 years is that we've developed a culture, a social culture in which people aren't afraid to talk about it. So a kid doesn't feel awkward saying to their grandparent you shouldn't be smoking cigarettes. Now, that might not necessarily stop the grandparent from smoking cigarettes, but would that kid say to their grandfather you shouldn't be smoking cigarettes? Now, that might not necessarily stop the grandparent from smoking cigarettes. But yeah, you know, would that kid say to their grandfather, you shouldn't hit grandma? Probably not, right. So we need to become as comfortable having conversations about this as we have about other issues. Or maybe a better example would be COVID. You know people didn't hesitate during the high crisis time of that pandemic to say where's your mask? You can't come in my house without a mask. How about you can't stay at my dining room table if you're going to keep making those sexist?

Pamela Cross:

or racist jokes right.

Jerusha Mack:

Yeah, our executive director, Laurie, often gives an example of with recycling, so amongst youth today, like if somebody taking a water bottle and just throwing it like people would be like, well, you're supposed to recycle, right? So, making it almost as that simple where it's just not acceptable that you're whether you're in school, that you're saying inappropriate comments or making jokes and displaying those unhealthy attitudes and behaviors that somebody feels comfortable enough to just call you out on it, yeah, and making it that simple for sure I agree and I mean you say making it that simple, but I think it's a.

Pamela Cross:

We have a big task to get to the place. Yeah, that's simple yeah and podcasts like this one, I hope, are part of just raising general awareness, making people feel more comfortable with the topic, making people think, oh, I don't have to be an expert to be able to be helpful, I just have to be a person who cares about my family members, my co-workers, my friends, my neighborhood.

Jerusha Mack:

Yeah, you mentioned before that you wanted to highlight what were some of the systemic changes. So, in your opinion, what are some of the systemic changes? So, in your opinion, what are some of the systemic changes needed to better prevent domestic violence?

Pamela Cross:

Can I go back a step before I talk about that? Just talk about some of the key risk factors that the DVDRC has identified, because I think that will flow into. Okay, here are the risk factors. What systemic changes do we need to make? I feel like it's a really great time to have joined the DVDRC because they've got 20 years of solid work behind the committee before the new ones of us have come along, and a big piece of that work was to develop a really helpful document that listeners can find.

Pamela Cross:

Just by googling risk factors for domestic violence, ontario can find. Just by googling risk factors for domestic violence, ontario and you'll you can get this chart that sets out 41 key risk factors. That was developed over those first 20 years as they looked at. Well, what are we seeing the most often when we look at these deaths? And there could be more. You know, maybe five years from now there'll be 47 risk factors, or maybe something that was a risk factor 10 years ago just isn't showing up as much. So all of that is to say this isn't a static list, and just because something's on the list does not mean that the woman is about to be killed by her partner. And just because something's not on the list doesn't mean you shouldn't be paying attention.

Pamela Cross:

Usually the risk factors are more than one. So, for example, in one of the deaths I recently reviewed, there were more than 30 risk factors present. I've also reviewed deaths where there have been one or two, so it's sort of all over the map. Obviously, the longer the relationship, the more isolated the family is, the more risk factors there will be, because it's less likely that there will have been any kind of outside intervention. So what are some of the most compelling risk factors? I went through that list of 41 before we talked and I picked not what I would call my favorite favorites that would be a weird way to do it but ones that might catch people by surprise.

Jerusha Mack:

Yeah.

Pamela Cross:

So the first one and maybe this isn't a surprise to lots of people is the second most common risk factor. The most common risk factor is the history of domestic violence, so we don't really need to talk about that. But the second most frequently found risk factor is a pending or recent separation. Well, this places a woman who has a partner who's abusing her in a really difficult situation, and you know from your work that women are often judged for not leaving sooner. You know why didn't she leave? Why did she stay for so long? Why did she go back? But in fact, leaving escalates the risk.

Jerusha Mack:

Yeah, that's the time they're most at risk for being killed. That's right, yeah, and not even the risk.

Pamela Cross:

Yeah, that's the time they're most at risk for being killed, that's right, yeah, and not even just when they leave, but when the abuser perceives that she's about to leave. So maybe she has a new sense of purpose. Maybe he's going through her phone and he notices that she has a lawyer's phone number there. You know, there could be a variety of ways where he would come to perceive that she's planning to leave. So once he thinks she's leaving, or as she leaves, very high risk factor. And I would just add, although this isn't set out explicitly in the risk factor chart, what we're seeing more and more often, many of us in our work is that couples stay living in the same house even after they separate, more frequently now than ever before, and so think about how much more that's elevating that risk. You've already got the risk factor of separation, but she doesn't have the safety of living in a different location. So that was the first I picked about 10 of the 41 that I thought I would share with folks. That was the first on my list. The more isolated the victim is, the more vulnerable she is to ongoing and lethal violence by her partner, and, of course, isolation could mean geographic isolation a woman living in a very small community or in the far north, somewhere where there's nobody around or there's a lack of services. But it doesn't just mean geographic isolation. She could be isolated culturally. She could be in a situation where leaving her partner means leaving her cultural community behind and there may be no services that are what she feels to be culturally safe for her to turn to. She could be linguistically isolated. So lots of different kinds of isolation and of course, some of that isolation may have been built in effect by the abuser. He may have moved them to an isolated location on purpose so that there wouldn't be neighbors around to snoop, in his mind, into their business. Or he may have made it difficult for her to attend english as a second language classes, or may have forbidden her from working, and so on. There are some kinds of physical abuse that are bigger risk factors for lethal violence, and strangulation is one of those.

Pamela Cross:

A partner who uses strangulation even once, but particularly on an ongoing basis, that is a situation that's at a higher risk of becoming lethal, where the abuser has attempted to kill himself or has frequently threatened self-harm or threatened to kill himself another risk factor. So it isn't just if he threatens to kill her that we should be paying attention. We need to pay attention if he's threatening to kill himself If you ever leave me, I'll kill myself that kind of thing. Obviously, if he has access to weapons, in particular firearms but firearms aren't the most commonly used weapon In rural settings. They are really access to any kind of weapons. If his behavior is becoming increasingly obsessive, if he's becoming more and more jealous so let's say these two people have been separated for a while and he's becoming more and more jealous so let's say these two people have been separated for a while and he's just found out she's dating somebody new that elevates the risk that he might become more abusive, up to and including lethally violent.

Pamela Cross:

If there are mental health issues that have been unidentified and or are untreated, lots of people with mental health issues even serious mental health issues are no more at risk of harming another person than you or I. But it's when that mental health issue has not been identified or even if it has been, the person isn't able to access services, that there may be a correlation with violence. Where there's a child custody dispute, we know that many abusive men who are fathers are extremely possessive about their children. They see them as part of themselves really, and they are not going to let the mother, even if she's always been the primary caregiver, play a significant role in the children's lives. So if there's a court case going on, especially if it's not going well in his opinion, that elevates the risk of a possible lethal violence.

Pamela Cross:

And the last thing I'm going to mention for now is this you and I, and many of the folks listening to this, know that we have to listen to survivors, that survivors know better than anyone else what's happening. Many tend to underestimate the risk of lethal violence. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he hits me, he beats me up, he controls me, but he'd never kill me. Yeah, he beats me up, he controls me, but he'd never kill me.

Pamela Cross:

When a victim has an intuitive sense of fear, every red flag should be waving in our heads at that point, because often victims try to underplay the seriousness. So if anybody has a friend or a family member or they're working with someone who's saying I'm terrified, I'm sure he's going to kill me, or they're working with someone who's saying I'm terrified, I'm sure he's going to kill me, we need to listen to that very, very carefully and make sure that we're doing safety planning with her that understands that her fear is rooted in something, even if it's nothing concrete that she can tell us about. So those are a few of the 41 risk factors. As I said at the beginning, it's not a definitive list. There's other things to pay attention to on the list of 41 that I haven't mentioned here.

Jerusha Mack:

And there are other factors beyond those as well. So at the beginning of the episode I mentioned Kira's case. I was sharing that story with the listeners and I know, with the DVDRC, where there are seven or more factors, the committee deems the death to be both predictable and preventable, and in Kira's case, the committee identified 22 risk factors. However, that being said, there still wasn't any heed being paid to Kira's mom's concerns for her daughter's safety. So I think that sort of leads us into what are some of the systemic changes that we need to prevent cases like this from happening.

Pamela Cross:

That's a really really good segue. And to build on that case specifically for a minute and then look more generally. And to build on that case specifically for a minute and then look more generally. One of the things I learned from getting to know quite a bit about that case and getting to know Akira's mom, jennifer, is that the biggest systemic change that was needed there was to have proper education for judges on the topic of intimate partner violence, have proper education for judges on the topic of intimate partner violence. And I have to say that, due to Jennifer's incredible efforts since her daughter's death, both the federal government and the Ontario government have passed legislation to create more likelihood that that education will be there for judges, and I think that's a huge, huge step.

Pamela Cross:

Many of us who are advocates in this area have been calling for that kind of legislative change for 20, 30, 40 years. We've been getting nowhere and Jennifer's work in, you know, just the past four years has really moved the bar really really far. On that I'm hopeful. There's a long way to go yet, but I'm hopeful that with that legislation, a door has opened. That is, a door to a huge systemic change that has the potential to be really helpful, not just in terms of the deaths of children or the deaths of their mothers, but in terms of how judges understand intimate partner violence generally when they're making decisions about how families should organize parenting responsibilities and so on. More generally, when I think about systemic change, I start by thinking about the importance of seeing this as an all-of-society issue. It's not a women's issue. It's not a legal issue. It's not a criminal law issue. It's not a legal issue. It's not a criminal law issue. It has health components, it has housing components. It has basic income components. Right, we have to look at it in its broadest way.

Pamela Cross:

I think that's one of the very helpful aspects of the recommendations that came out of the CKW inquest in Renfrew County in 2022. The first I think it's seven recommendations deal with system accountability, and they talk about the importance of an all of government approach, but also of collaboration among and between different levels of government and within government, between ministries and departments, and within government between ministries and departments, because that really is the only way that we're going to get solutions that are holistic. It's no good making a change let's say, I'm just making this up to housing regulation if that's now contradictory to how ODSP operates or how Ontario Works operates, right, because now you've got something that was intended to make an improvement over here, but it can't work because it conflicts with another set of rules over here. And if those people are talking to each other, the changes can be made so that they reflect what's happening everywhere. We need to engage all of us. So we were talking earlier about the importance of sort of neighbours, friends and families or bystanders. I think that is a huge systemic change that needs to happen, and you see that thread through virtually every report from the DVDRC looking at different aspects of it, but it comes down to the same thing we all have to engage. It comes down to the same thing we all have to engage.

Pamela Cross:

And if I want to think about really big picture changes, as a starting point, let's be honest we need to end misogyny. Women need to have equality in this country. Of course, we need to improve things like how probation is managed and supervised so that when someone is on probation and they violate any of the terms of that probation, they don't just get away with it. We need to look at bail. Is it working? My answer is no, okay. So what do we need to do about that? Family law is in better shape than it's been in all the time I've been doing this work in Ontario because of changes both to provincial and federal legislation, so we're making some headway there, but we need judicial education. Women should be able to access housing as soon as they need it housing that's safe and affordable, and we know that there is a massive housing crisis right across the country. Yeah, a woman could be on a priority list, but that doesn't mean she's going to get housed anytime soon.

Jerusha Mack:

No, the wait list is like two years.

Pamela Cross:

Two years where you are. Yeah, it literally drives women back into the relationship with the abusive partner. Because if she's got kids, she's not going to live on the street. Yeah, she can't stay in the shelter forever. So we need to be looking at those big items that aren't necessarily what people automatically think of when they hear the phrase domestic violence or intimate partner violence.

Jerusha Mack:

Yeah, I know. I think the points that you just raised were so valid. Like I mentioned before, housing is a huge issue for us, especially in our shelter, where the purpose of our shelter is to be an emergency, safe shelter. So the point is to take away that immediate risk of the woman being killed by her partner. She has a safe space to stay. But now where women used to stay maybe three months at most, now they're here sometimes for almost a year because there's that stop quark there where they can't get their second stage housing. So that affects our ability to maybe help additional women and it affects their ability to move on in their healing process and to be able to live independent lives. And you're right, a lot of women sometimes will just decide because who wants to stay in a shelter? We try to make it as comfortable for women as possible but at the end of the day that is a barrier and a reason sometimes why women will go back to a situation that may be more comfortable or familiar to them.

Pamela Cross:

And more manageable for the children, right? I mean, especially if kids are adolescent to teenage years, which I can say, having raised children through those years is, you know, they can be pretty unpleasant people themselves and they like things to stay the way they're used to them being. And suddenly moving into kind of a dorm, even if you've got your private sleeping space, but sharing the dinner table with other people, hanging out with other people, not getting to watch what you want to watch on tv, whatever the children may be putting a pressure on her. So, yeah, I mean, where would we be without shelters they're, I think, in some ways the most important resource that we have but without the backup of second stage housing, adequate second stage housing or even third stage housing so that the woman can become more and more independent as she's learning the skills she needs and as safety plans are put in place for her. Without that, you're right, it continue. It's just sort of like, I don know, keeping everybody in the emergency room at the hospital.

Jerusha Mack:

Yeah, yeah, that's a great analogy. Systemic changes are always a tough conversation and I think sometimes it can be like so larger for people to figure out like well, how? Because that sounds hard, how are you going to do that? That's never going to happen, but it's a. It's a necessary conversation because domestic violence is a complex issue and it requires a multifaceted approach. So it's important that we highlight where there are systemic needs for change.

Pamela Cross:

One of the things I find really both frustrating and unclear. I usually have an opinion on just about everything. I think I know you know this is what we need to do here. This one, I don't know how to figure it out. We have the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee, which puts out a report every year with recommendations. We have, from time to time, inquests into the deaths of individual women. Likewise, although this time the recommendations come from a jury, but we have recommendations, although this time the recommendations come from a jury, but we have recommendations.

Pamela Cross:

So the CKW inquest produced 86 recommendations, for example. There's no statutory requirement that those recommendations, whether from an inquest or from the DVDRC, be implemented. And so if you look back over the last 20 years of the death review committee's recommendations, you will see the same or very similar recommendations for systemic change being made again and again and again Education for judges, more training for crown attorneys, more training for police, training for family law lawyers, and so on and so forth. And I have friends and colleagues who have been on that committee since the beginning. They're a little frustrated. That's a whole generation. 20 years is a full generation of recommendations, but there's nobody saying what's the law? You have to implement these, yeah.

Pamela Cross:

So I think that when we're talking about systemic change, that's something we need to have conversations about. Can we create a requirement that at least every recommendation be reviewed and studied by an independent body, not by the person who's supposed to change? Right? There's no point me saying, oh, yes, I know that I need to start cooking better suppers and I'm the one who will decide whether I'm doing that or not doing that. Of course I'm going to say I'm getting better at it, right, yeah. So when we say, oh, here's 86 recommendations, 68 of them are for the provincial government. We can't have the provincial government, the ones telling us it's okay, we've taken care of it. We need an independent entity and that is in fact one of the recommendations that came out of the ckw inquest. But of course it's not mandatory, so the government doesn't have to make that change.

Jerusha Mack:

Yeah, and I can imagine the frustration there, because you spend all this time creating these reports and people often will refer to it. But it's what you said earlier where we're're always like shocked, you know, when we're here. Like recently, the Halton region, along with other regions in Ontario, declared intimate partner violence and epidemic. So there's always this shock about gosh, like the numbers are keep going up. But there's recommendations, there's information about how we can prevent it, but it just seems like there's a lack of will to actually take action and do something about it.

Pamela Cross:

One of the things I found really interesting about being part of the inquest was to hear from people who aren't part of this work and hear how they react to reality. So of course, the five members of the jury were an example of that. And one thing about a coroner's inquest that's unlike a trial in a criminal courtroom, for instance, is the members of the jury get to ask questions. They're not just sitting there listening to the lawyers and the witnesses talk so they can ask a witness questions, and the members of this jury had lots of questions for the witnesses and they would get frustrated from time to time and they would say I can't believe that nobody has implemented that change yet, or I can't believe, are you telling me that you're still doing this, even though that and also one of the parties to the inquest, malcolm Wormadam, whose mother was one of the three women killed that the inquest was about At a media conference we held I believe it was at the end of the three women killed that the inquest was about.

Pamela Cross:

At a media conference we held I believe it was at the end of the inquest, you know he talked about how he had read some of the earlier recommendations from the DVDRC about, I think, in particular, gun control, but perhaps also some of the probation related recommendations that had been made in years past.

Pamela Cross:

And then he said I couldn't believe that I sat in this room for three weeks and I heard that none of those implement, that none of those changes have been implemented and if they have been, my mother might be alive today. So I think it's really helpful for those of us who do the work to also be out there in the world where we can hear what I think of as normal people. Saying this is outrageous. This just doesn't make common sense. And the fact that you have these recommendations and they're not just from Ontario the Mass Casualty Commission report in Nova Scotia, death review committees in other provinces and territories and indeed in other countries we're all saying very similar things, but the change isn't happening yet. So we need this all of society approach. We need there to be so much social pressure that politicians realize that they could actually win or lose an election based on how they deal with intimate partner violence. It's not just about taxes, employment, roads those are all important issues too.

Jerusha Mack:

But this one is right up there Absolutely. What are some improvements or changes you'd like to see in the way domestic violence cases are handled in Ontario?

Pamela Cross:

I feel like I've touched on some of that already. I do want to talk a little bit about our obsession I guess I'll call it with the criminal law as being the best way to respond to intimate partner violence. I'm not convinced of that, for a whole variety of reasons. First of all, these people are not strangers to one another. You know, the criminal law might be helpful if somebody drives while they're intoxicated and they cause an accident that causes harm to strangers, or somebody robbed a bank. But when you have an intimate partner violence case that winds up in criminal court, those two people the victim and the accused who are normally kind of on opposite sides because it is a very binary kind of system, they're actually completely intertwined with one another. She may still love him, she wants the violence to stop, but she doesn't necessarily want harm to come to him. She's thinking about the children, she's thinking about the family income, she's wondering who's going to stay with the kids when she goes to work, because normally it's him. So if we continue thinking, as many people do, that the criminal law is the answer, I'm concerned we're not going to get to prevention. I think we may. Yeah, obviously there are cases where charges need to be laid and where the abuser needs to not be anywhere near the survivor ever again, but I would argue that's not the majority of cases.

Pamela Cross:

So I get concerned when I see something like a bill that's making its way through the Senate now to criminalize coercive control, because I think, oh, that's the wrong direction to go. We need to understand coercive control. That's the wrong direction to go. We need to understand coercive control is very relevant in family court in terms of making decisions about parenting and decision making for kids and that sort of stuff.

Pamela Cross:

But why do we just have to keep creating new laws? They haven't worked before. We know that fewer than 30% of women whose partners abuse them ever call the police. Well, why, I mean, I know the answer, but let's pay attention to what we already know. So to me, that's a change I would like to see is to focus less on criminal law, continue to see improvements made to family law, because if there are kids, there are family law issues by definition. We need to focus on earlier interventions, so we're disrupting the behavior before it escalates to the level of lethality, and one way of doing that is to have more community supports of the kind that we've already talked about, you know, basic income, better housing and so on, so I would pick those as some of the society-wide changes that I think we need if we want to improve how we handle these cases.

Jerusha Mack:

Yeah, if you look at why survivors sometimes they don't leave or they don't want to press charges, you're right, they don't want to. There's an emotional entanglement there. This is somebody they care about, even if they're being harmed by this person. So they wouldn't want to press charges because, I, like you said, they don't want harm to come to them. So we need a system and there are so many different examples, even within, like the indigenous community, of how they do healing and reconciliation and restoration without having to make everything that. Oh well, we need to criminalize this because there is some healing on the part of the perpetrator of violence that needs to happen huge yeah, many of those who engage in abusive or harmful behavior have been harmed or abused themselves in the past.

Pamela Cross:

That doesn't mean it's okay. It doesn't doesn't give them a pass. Not everybody who's been abused becomes abusive and not every abuser was abused. But we have to understand that there has been harm on, often to both people before they even encountered one another.

Jerusha Mack:

So we've discussed systemic issues and changes needed to prevent domestic violence deaths. So, like the story I shared at the beginning about Keira Kagan, so for the average person listening, what can they do? How can they become a part of the solution and play a role in prevention?

Pamela Cross:

There is truly a role for everybody, and that might sound like a sort of facile saying, but it's actually true. Yes, it is, and the starting place is to find out what's going on. So what's going on in your community in terms of supports and services? What are some of the biggest challenges in your community? Maybe you live in a community where there isn't a shelter and a woman has to go a long distance to get to a shelter, or there's a lack of public transportation. So, and then I think people next need to learn about intimate partner violence, and there's lots of resources for both of those things. Then they need to look at themselves. What am I good at? So am I? I'm never going to be a public speaker? Okay, that's fine, I don't have to do that. I'm fairly comfortable financially, so I could start to provide some financial support to the shelter, the sexual assault center, whatever. I have some free time, can I find out how I could volunteer for one of those organizations? And then what we all have to do is learn how to listen really actively, so that when that neighbor or colleague says something to you that just tweaks something in your head, you listen to that, you pay attention to that and through resources like Neighbors, friends and Families, you become confident in how you would follow up.

Pamela Cross:

I think we should be talking about this everywhere not all the time, but there should be nowhere where we don't think about talking about it. You're in a book club, read a book it could be a novel that involves IPV, or it could be a nonfiction book and then talk about it. You're in a church group. You're having a dinner party. People love to talk about world politics and problems in other parts of the world, so talk about your own community. If your community is one that has declared intimate partner violence to be an epidemic and there's about 100 of those now in Ontario find out what the local violence against women organizations are doing. Next, I know in a lot of communities they're now working with their city councils to make sure that violence against women or gender-based violence is included in the community safety and well-being plan. Maybe there's a place for you in that work. There really is a place for everybody in this work.

Jerusha Mack:

Yeah, yeah. One of the lines that we always say is everybody has a role to play in ending domestic violence or ending violence against women. What's yours? Because everybody, like you said, everybody has a talent, everybody has a skill, everybody has something that they can contribute. And it doesn't have to be this mass because, again, sometimes we make things bigger kind of paralyzes us because we're thinking of, like, how am I going to end it in all of Ontario? But it doesn't have to be in all of Ontario, even all of Halton or all of Milton, but it could be. The statistics are one in three women experience this. So chances are there's somebody in your life or circle that is experiencing this and you can be a support to them.

Pamela Cross:

And that is as important as changing a law. Yeah, that could change that woman's life. It could save her life.

Jerusha Mack:

Yeah right.

Pamela Cross:

We all know somebody who is being abused and or who is abusing someone else. We need to pay more attention to that fact and then figure out where we fit in their story.

Jerusha Mack:

Thank you, pam, for this great conversation and for joining me and for sharing your invaluable insights. Your work on the committee and your tireless dedication to improving responses to domestic violence are truly inspiring, and we're so grateful for the important work that you're doing. So thank you for taking the time to be with me today.

Pamela Cross:

Oh, thank you very much for the invitation. I've really enjoyed our conversation, same Thank you so much, Take care, Found today's discussion informative.

Jerusha Mack:

Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and leave a review. Your support helps us continue to bring these important conversations to light. For more information about Halton Women's Place and how you can get involved in creating a safer future, visit our website at haltonwomensplacecom. I encourage you to stay tuned for our next episode, where I'll be kicking off a compelling true crime series that highlights real domestic violence cases. We'll delve into the stories behind the headlines, explore the impact of these cases on victims and their communities, and highlight the need for action because we can end violence against women. Until next time, let's commit to building healthier communities. One conversation, one action and one relationship at a time. Take care.