We’ve spent a lot of time engaged around the possible criminalization of coercive control over the last several years. Most recently, this involved appearing before Senate and House Committees and providing written briefs in their study of Bill C-332. However, with the recent prorogation of the federal government,
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Last week, Luke’s Place submitted a Brief to the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs on Bill C-332, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (coercive control of intimate partner). This Brief reflects our decades of experience supporting survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) and navigating the intersections of the family law and criminal law systems.
Luke’s Place Advocacy Director, Pamela Cross, is featured in the latest episode of She Is Your Neighbour. She Is Your Neighbour is a prevention project and storytelling series created by Women’s Crisis Services of Waterloo Region to explore the realities and complexities of domestic violence by sharing stories from people of all walks of life.
At Luke’s Place, we support women and their children who have left abuse and are engaged with the family law/court process through both direct service and system change work. Through this work, we have developed a deep understanding of the many ways different legal systems intersect with and affect women’s family law experiences.
Case summary prepared by Luke’s Place Advocacy Director, Pamela Cross
In this case (F.S. v. M.B.T. 2023 ONCJ 102), Justice Sherr carefully analyzes the context of family violence, including coercive control, when making a decision related to parenting arrangements for a 12-year-old child.
Over the past 40 years, we have seen the many ways in which the criminal law has failed survivors of IPV. Criminal law interventions and initiatives – new laws, changes to laws, new court processes, education for those who implement and interpret the law, different approaches to bail and to punishments for those found guilty – have failed to make significant inroads on the rates of IPV and,
We’ve heard a lot about coercive control in the past few years. Its first big appearance in the legal world came with the 2021 revisions to the Divorce Act which included, among other changes, a definition of family violence that included the phrase “a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour.”
Coercive control is a term that describes a pattern of behaviours,
As we have previously explored in our blog, coercive control is a term that describes a pattern of behaviours, including psychological abuse — which itself can encompass such things as intimidation, demeaning and insulting treatment, verbal abuse, threats, gaslighting, surveilling and stalking — as well as social isolation and financial abuse.
On November 16th, Luke’s Place Advocacy Director was a guest speaker at the Walrus Talks Gender-Based Violence live and streamed event at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto, Ontario.
The event, presented by the Canadian Women’s Foundation featured seven speakers discussing how we can change a culture that doesn’t have a good track record of supporting abuse survivors or even of talking about the abuse women,
The creation of a new coercive control offence in the Canadian Criminal Code is being explored following the tabling of two private member’s bills as well as the consideration of information and testimony shared during the study by the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on controlling or coercive conduct within intimate relationships,
