Family violence deaths spur recommendations

Two children killed during a court-authorized, unsupervised weekend visit. A man who died in hospital after being stabbed by his partner.

A woman who died in her family home as a result of blunt-force trauma. A victim killed by a samesex partner following their arrival in Canada as refugees.

These cases were reviewed in four reports recently released by a government committee that aims to curb domestic violence in Alberta.

The family violence death review committee, which reports to the ministry of community and social

services, was established in 2013 to investigate deaths related to violent family circumstances.

A May report examined the 2011 death of a man who had been stabbed by his partner during an argument at home while six children were upstairs with a relative. The woman was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 10 years, the report said.

The RCMP had responded to a domestic violence complaint at the home in 2009, and didn’t charge either partner.

Two of the recommendations from the committee call on the Alberta government to better support programs to reduce family violence in Indigenous communities, as well as to create a public action plan focusing on root causes.

In its response posted online, the government said it “accepts the intent” of those recommendations, noting a $2.8-million investment in Indigenous family outreach and domestic violence prevention.

The province has worked across ministries to address recommendations, said Community and Social Services Minister Irfan Sabir.

“I will be meeting with the committee in the fall to continue conversations on how we address these recommendations and ensure the committee’s work continues,” he said in a statement Monday.

From January 2008 to December 2015, there were 132 family violence deaths in Alberta, according to the committee’s latest publicly available annual report.

The majority of the victims were between the ages of 20 and 49, with female victims accounting for 60 per cent of those killed.

Fifty-eight per cent of victims were killed by a current partner, compared to 17 per cent killed by a former partner.

During Alberta’s latest economic downturn, the justice ministry reported increasing rates of domes- tic violence across the province. The number of criminal charges for intimate partner violence in Edmonton rose to 2,336 in 2016 from 1,955 in 2011.

In another report released in March, the review committee examined the 2010 deaths of two children killed during a court-authorized, unsupervised weekend visit. The family had “continual disputes related to the custody, access, supervision and parental discipline,” the report said.

There were long-standing mental health issues that raised concerns about the safety of the children, as well as interactions with child welfare services, the report added.

One key finding was that child and family services needed access to more information to reduce reliance on client self-reporting, which may not be reliable.

Recommendations ranged from ongoing training for front-line staff in child intervention services to updating court software so civil and criminal systems can better share information.

“We have made a number of changes to the way we work with families in the years since this tragic incident, including improved supports to help front line staff critically consider risk assessments,” reads the government’s response.