November is Domestic Violence Awareness Month in Canada. In order to understand the complexities of domestic violence, it is important to raise awareness about a type of abuse that very often goes unnoticed, unreported, and consequently unpunished—coercive control.
A Recent Act of Intimate Partner Violence in Canada
On 18 October 2024, Brenda Tatlock-Burke was killed by her toxic and controlling husband, a retired RCMP officer. Two days before she was killed, Brenda had told her daughters that she intended to leave her husband. After her death, Brenda’s daughters were frustrated about the RCMP’s hesitancy in calling this an act of intimate-partner violence and demanded that the RCMP explicitly label this incident as an act of intimate partner homicide.
Those who are subjected to violence at the hands of individuals who work in law enforcement are in a particularly vulnerable position, as their assailant often has access to weapons and is often esteemed and respected among the community, which makes reporting their assailant difficult. Coercive and controlling behaviour such as this is considered a precursor to intimate-partner homicide. So, what is coercive control?
What is Coercive Control?
According to the Department of Justice Canada, coercive control is “a pattern of abusive behaviours used to control or dominate a family member or intimate partner.” Behaviours may include threats, emotional abuse (e.g., continual degradation and criticism), gaslighting a victim for the abuse they have been made subject to, isolating the victim from their loved ones, activities, work, and school, stalking behaviours, and excessive monitoring and control over a victim’s finances. The proposed Bill C-332 is aimed at protecting against intimate partner violence, including “coercing or attempting to coerce an intimate partner to engage in sexual activity.” More generally, coercive control is a form of abuse that intends to subordinate a victim to the control of the abuser and evoke feelings of fear, dependency, and entrapment in a victim.
The Canadian Legal System’s Response to Coercive Control
The legal system has continuously failed to respond to coercive control, as it prioritizes responding to traditional forms of violence, such as physical violence (where there is overt, visible injury on a victim’s body). Traditional understandings of violence are imbued with stereotypes and misunderstandings of how domestic violence looks, including the myth that a victim has only been victimized if they have a physical injury to show for it.
The Criminal Legal System’s Response to Coercive Control (or Lack Thereof)
As of now, coercive control has not yet been criminalized under the Criminal Code of Canada. Criminalizing coercive and controlling conduct as a form of family and intimate-partner violence is important because although coercive control may appear less severe and more discreet than more overt forms of abuse like physical abuse, coercive control, in many cases of intimate-partner and family violence, has the potential to escalate to more physical forms of violence and even death. Failing to identify coercive and controlling behaviour in cases of domestic and family violence as criminal conduct diminishes the severity of this violence and the often repeated, ongoing, and thus life-threatening nature of this abuse in many domestic and family violence situations.
The Family Legal System’s Response to Coercive Control (or Lack Thereof)
Legal actors in the family legal system have often neglected the issue of coercive control, which has had some fatal consequences in Canada. Family courts have tended to prioritize shared parenting time, even in cases where a parent has subjected the other parent to violence or coercive control. This is troublesome because abusive partners can employ coercive control tactics against their children to taunt their former partners. In 2020, in an act of post-separation intimate partner and family violence, four-year-old girl Keira Kagan was killed by her father. Prior to her death, Kiera’s mother had expressed to a judge that she was fearful of her former partner having parenting time with Kiera and sought help from the court in protecting her daughter from her ex-husband’s violent and controlling conduct. Her concerns were minimized when the judge advised her that domestic violence is irrelevant to parenting considerations. This dismissal of Kiera’s mother’s concerns and the judge’s failure to consider the far-reaching effects that domestic violence has on both the mother and her child diminished the severity of the domestic violence and coercive control tactics her abuser was subjecting her to.
Recent Developments
Kiera’s death led to the development of Kiera’s law, which requires that judges be trained on coercive control and the way that it manifests in intimate partnerships and family relationships. Similarly, the Divorce Act has recently undergone an amendment to recognize coercive control as a type of family violence. Additionally, a bill that would criminalize coercive control passed its third reading in the House of Commons in June and is currently being heard in the Senate. These measures are important because highlighting that coercive control is a form of abuse helps legal actors in family court identify the behaviours that constitute coercive and controlling conduct and, in turn, protect victims and their children from repeated abuse. Just as importantly, it helps victims of coercive control understand that the conduct they are being subject to is not “normal,” appropriate, or justified in any case but that it is rather abusive and a violation of their dignity and autonomy.
Concluding Remarks
While the legal system can be used as a transformative tool to achieve justice for victims of coercive control and victims of domestic violence more generally, it is important to understand that it can and has the potential to further marginalize victims of abuse. Such violence is misunderstood, and traditional gender and victim stereotypes tend to plague legal actors’ understanding of a victim’s victimization. For instance, in situations of male-perpetrated abuse, the assumption that children should maintain contact with their father after their parents’ separation, regardless of the fact that their father is abusive, places domestic violence victims and their children at risk of ongoing abuse, including coercive and controlling behaviour. This is why it is important that legal actors, including lawyers and judges, as well as law students and the public, more generally, are educated on this topic so that they may approach victims in a way that is trauma-informed and victim-centred. It is only when legal actors obtain an understanding of coercive control (and domestic violence more broadly), the potential for this abuse to escalate into more life-threatening forms of abuse, and its prevalence that the legal system can be used as a vehicle for effective domestic violence response and prevention.
It is also just as important for domestic violence to be explicitly labelled for what it is by law enforcement, just as Brenda’s daughters have maintained. When police services are reluctant to label domestic violence as such, it renders the topic taboo and individualizes the act of violence. This reluctance is an issue because, although this violence is extremely personal, it is perpetrated in a broader social context that enables this violence to occur. Domestic violence is a hidden epidemic. To protect victims from such violence and bring this topic out of the shadows, it is important to use this term so that individuals can recognize this insidious type of violence and acknowledge its prevalence and the multitude of ways in which it can manifest.
Marija Blazevic is a 1L at Osgoode and a Co-Publications Director for the Osgoode Hall Family Law Association.
If you are interested in family law, follow @ohfla.osgoode on Instagram or reach out by email to ohfla.osgoode@gmail.com
[1] Kayla Hounsell, “The RCMP say a man killed his wife. Her daughters say police won’t admit he’s an ex-Mountie,” CBC News (30 October, 2024), online <https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/tatlock-burke-homicide-mike-burke-rcmp-1.7368154>.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability, “#CallItFemicide – Understanding gender-related killings of women and girls in Canada 2019,” (2019), at 47-48, online: <https://cnpea.ca/images/callitfemicide2019.pdf>.
[4] Department of Justice Canada, “Coercive Control as a Form of Family Violence,” (last visited 29 October, 2024), online: <https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/rib-reb/mpafvc-capcvf/pdf/RSD_2023_MakingAppropriatebrochure-eng.pdf>
[5] Ibid.
[6] Parliament of Canada, “Bill C-332 – Third Reading” (12 June, 2024), online: <https://www.parl.ca/documentviewer/en/44-1/bill/C-332/third-reading?
[7] Jennifer Koshan, Janet E. Mosher, and Wanda A. Wiegers, “The costs of justice in domestic violence cases: Mapping Canadian law and policy,” The Justice Crisis: The Cost and Value of Accessing Law (Vancouver, UBC Press, 2020) (2020) at 151.
[8] Jessica Mundie, “‘Keira’s Law’ passes Senate, signalling a change to the way courts approach domestic violence,” CBC News (19 April, 2023), online: <https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/keira-kagan-domestic-violence-coercive-control-1.6815711>
[9] Cynthia L Chewter, “Violence against women and children: Some legal issues.” Can. J. Fam. L. 20 (2003) at 99; Fiona Kelly, “Enforcing a Parent/Child Relationship at All Cost?: Supervised Access Orders in the Canadian Courts,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal (1960) 49, no. 2 (2011) at 279.
[10] Ibid, Chewter.
[11] Supra note 4.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Government of Canada, “The Divorce Act Changes Explained,” (1 March, 2021), online: <https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/fl-df/cfl-mdf/dace-clde/div15.html>
[14] Supra note 2.
[15] Elizabeth Sheehy, and Susan B. Boyd, “Penalizing Women’s Fear: Intimate Partner Violence and Parental Alienation in Canadian Child Custody Cases,” The Journal of Social Welfare & Family Law 42, no. 1 (2020) at 87.[16] Toronto Star, “Ontario’s slow acceptance of a grim reality: Intimate partner violence is an epidemic,” (7 March, 2024), online: <https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/ontarios-slow-acceptance-of-a-grim-reality-intimate-partner-violence-is-an-epidemic/article_a469b90a-fe44-11ee-9800-cf3b4e4e38c7.html>