Case summary: Returning children under the Hague Convention

This case summary was prepared by Pamela Cross. In this case (Y.S. v J.S., 2024 ONSC 1028), two young children – one and two years old – were removed from Pembroke, Ontario, by their mother and taken to the United States, ostensibly for a week-long visit with her sister. The father consented to this visit,…

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Turning to the experts

As was discussed in last week’s blog, it is critical that judicial education about intimate partner violence be mandatory rather than voluntary. It’s also really important that the development of education for judges, like training for police, health care providers, child protection workers, and all others whose work brings them into contact with the issue…

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Case summary: Parental alienation and reunification therapy

This case summary was prepared by Pamela Cross. In this case, Justice Sullivan comprehensively reviewed the evidence, law and case law in making an order that the 14-year-old son be required to participate in reunification therapy, against his wishes, largely because she believed the father had influenced the child to such an extent that his…

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The Consequences of Using Violence

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.…

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Community safety includes safety from gender-based violence

Community safety and well-being plans (CSWPs) came into being as the result of the Safer Ontario Act, passed by the provincial government in 2018. It requires municipalities to create these CSWP plans, but offers little in the way of detail about what the plans need to include. Recommendation #10 from the CKW inquest calls for…

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Case comment: Coercive control & family violence

hands on a book

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. The case also involves a claim for spousal support by the mother,…

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Parental alienation, family violence and family law: Part two

In her 2023 report entitled, “Custody, violence against women and violence against children”, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Reem Aslalem, describes parental alienation as a “discredited and unscientific pseudo-concept” that serves as a tool for abusers  “to continue their abuse and coercion and to undermine and discredit allegations of domestic violence…

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Parental alienation, family violence and family law: Part one

Woman looks out window

The terms parental alienation syndrome (PAS) and its more recent iteration, parental alienation (PA), have been creating challenges in family law cases involving parenting claims since at least the 1990s. Initially proposed by American psychologist Richard Gardner, PAS was his response to what he claimed were false allegations of child sexual abuse brought by mothers…

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Criminalizing coercive control: Part two via Law360 Canada

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…

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Criminalizing coercive control: Part one via Law360 Canada

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…

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