After incidents where ex-partners killed their children, laws and attitudes within Canada’s court system are beginning to change about dangerous parents [thestar.com]

This is chilling.

Thanks for posting, Jane. It is just more evidence of the courts, family services, law enforcement and mental health practitioners needing to work together to put the children first. The fact that Keira would come home distraught, be kept longer by her father — which required more legal action by the mother and evoked more stress and involvement with law officials — that she would be told lies about her mother’s well-being and have her hair cut by her father to show some type of control, is horrific. I have to wonder what would it have taken for the courts to put an end to the father’s visitation?

Instead the visits ended when he killed her, his final effort, likely, to prove he had control over Keira and her mother.

I do have to wonder what happened to him that would evoke that kind of torture of his own child?

What recourse does someone have when he or she finds out their spouse is not who he or she claimed to be?

What would Keira — a four-year-old — have had to do to convince people she was afraid? It surely sounds as though she was.

I think of solutions I hope we see in years to come as the result of the work of our PACEs Connection partners, Child Advocacy Studies, led by Tyler Counsil, PhD, who has been interviewed on the PACEs Connection History. Culture. Trauma. podcast sharing about CAST’s work on college and community college campuses across the country to help students studying social work, criminal justice, childhood development, theology, education and more learn how to cooperate across disciplines to better protect children.

To learn more about Counsil’s work and how to bring it to colleges and community colleges in your area, visit zeroabuseproject.org.

You could also go to your podcast provider and look for our History. Culture. Trauma. podcast and find the episode with Counsil and PACEs Connection CEO Ingrid Cockhren and director of education and outreach Mathew Portell.

There’s a lot of work being done, but work to protect children whose parents are divorced, with one parent being coercive, disregarding court and protective service orders and such obviously needs more study and stronger recommendations in Canada and elsewhere to give children the right of feeling safe.

Carey