I'm going to try to figure out all of what you've asked. I'm very familiar in terms of what happened this week in Toronto. I'm not familiar with the specifics of that case. It's probably very similar to a lot of situations that happen if a woman returns. There are other things that are implemented in a shelter when a woman returns, in particular when there are children. When there are children, child protection is notified because if a woman decides to return—and there are a lot of reasons that she would be doing that—when children do go back with her, then we get child protection involved in making sure that all of those things are looked into as well. There are lots of cases that happen like that.
We had a similar situation happen in our shelter, and no shelter staff ever want that to happen to them for sure. It doesn't matter how much you put in place and everything that you did right, and all of the safety, and what you wanted to do, if he wants to kill her, he's going to. That's a reality. If he wants to, he is going to find a way to do that.
In our situation I think a lot of systems let her down. We have court systems; we have police systems. There are all of these different groups of people who sometimes are working in a very fragmented way, and not together in a collaborative way to ensure that this doesn't happen. I think sometimes as shelter workers we're looked at as men hating, family annihilating, trying to rip the family apart, trying to keep men away from their children. It's not what we do, and I wish people would inquire more about what it is that we do. So trying to work together with people who are already thinking that about us makes our jobs very difficult. We're not over-exaggerating when we tell somebody that they're at risk, when we call another agency and say, look, there's great risk here, and these are the things that we see are going to happen and we're worried that the outcome is going to be very devastating—as it was in a particular case for us.
The client had gone to court. We wanted them to consider having no access to the child at this time until something was put in place in terms of his own anger and what he needed to do, and they didn't do that. In fact, he found her at our shelter and when that happens we have to move her. She is no longer safe in our shelter and we have to move her. Often, they are found at our shelters not just because he's done some searching around, but the systems have told him.
So in a courtroom a judge decided that he had the right to know where his child was. So now he's publicly said our address. We now have to go back, and this domino effect takes place where we have to now move her, we have to change this child's school. There are all of these things that happen. Then she goes to another shelter. The court again says, “No, he can have access, he can come and pick the child up at your house,” and that's exactly what he did, and he stabbed her to death in front of the children.
You would like to think he is currently in jail, but he's not. He's out. I think he served four years. I don't know that there's anything at the federal level that happens when they're in jail. He is now released. What is the process to ensure that every woman he ever comes into contact with is going to be okay?
Even at the provincial level we have the PARS program, but it's not evaluated. We have no idea whether these programs that spend a lot of money are working. How do we know they're working? How do you measure them? How do you do those kinds of things?
I don't know if I've answered your question; I probably went off a bit.