MPP aims to protect child witnesses who face ‘trauma on top of trauma’
Conservatives’ Dixon is former Crown prosecutor
Jess Dixon prosecuted crimes before she became a politician. She’s drawing on her justice background to seek more support for children who are victimized or who witness crimes.
“They’ve gone through a very traumatic experience, and there is no doubt that going through a court process, having to testify, is sort of trauma on top of trauma,” said Dixon, Progressive Conservative MPP for the riding of Kitchener SouthHespeler.
The former Crown prosecutor recently helped persuade the Doug Ford government to budget a further $6.4 million over three years to support child victims and child witnesses, and to support survivors of sexual assault.
Locally, it translates into an additional $35,000 per year for the Child Witness Centre, a Waterloo Region charity that is aiming to fundraise $2.5 million after it was forced to put children it serves on a wait list.
The organization will use the funding increase to serve an additional 35 children, trimming its wait list to 122. It amounts to an increase of 21 per cent in annual provincial funding.
“It’s going to keep our wait list down a little bit. And that’s always encouraging,” said Robin Heald, the centre’s executive director. The agency is also getting $95,000 in one-time provincial funding to help respond to guns, gangs and violence.
The witness centre operates out of a Duke Street house near the regional courtroom in Kitchener. It supports children in court, advocates for youths, and educates
children on bullying, personal accountability, substance abuse, resiliency, risk-taking and healthy dating.
A trained golden retriever is on site to comfort children and families. There’s a room where children can testify or attend sentencing remotely, so they don’t have to pass through courtroom security or risk coming faceto-face with a perpetrator.
Dixon, elected in 2022, sees protecting children as critical because victimized children are more likely to struggle later with addictions and homelessness, and are more likely to become adult offenders.
The witness centre began putting children on a wait list after the #MeToo movement brought hidden crimes to light, and after the COVID-19 pandemic sent people online more often beginning in 2020. Predators pounced as more children were isolated.
Between 2012 and 2022 this region experienced a
fivefold increase in sexual crimes against children. In 2022 police reported
470 sexual crimes against children, from luring to exploitation to materials showing sexual abuse.
“It takes a lot of extra pieces that help us overcome that perfect storm,” Heald said.
Dixon prosecuted crimes until late 2021. She saw the justice system burdened with rising crime and deteriorating jail conditions as the pandemic began.
“We saw a lot of escalation in domestic cases where people that might have had a more serious consequence, or may have been detained, were released to reoffend again,” she said. “There’s a lot of children that get caught up in that, and that’s very, very challenging.”
One silver lining out of the pandemic is that courts have learned to become more accepting of remote testimony, which serves children well, she said.
Dixon, 36, aims to keep advocating for witness supports, and for provincial funding for crime prevention.
“I loved being a Crown. I miss being in court,” she said. “But I ran for office because I got to the point where I thought, ‘How do I make a difference in this?’ And it’s not being a more senior Crown. It’s not being a judge. It’s not being in academia.
“That’s why I became a politician. I’ve remained fairly stubborn about advocating for the issues that I really, really care about, which are primarily crime prevention, justice reform, policing.”