Thank you very much for that question.
Yes, the Berry case is a very disturbing one. Sadly, it's only one of many cases of children being killed by abusive fathers.
Something we found in the Divorce Act research that I mentioned is that even though the Divorce Act now requires that children's exposure to family violence be taken into account when making parenting orders, it seems that courts are still really struggling to understand what that means. In many cases, what they look for is children having been directly exposed to violence, rather than also considering how children's indirect exposure to violence can have a very adverse impact on them.
What we see is it's very rare for things like supervised parenting orders to be made by the courts. Even if it is a case where criminal charges are laid, if a person is incarcerated, they get out of jail eventually.
What I'm encouraging the committee to do is to think not only about the criminal side of things, but also about the family law side of coercive control, and the need for courts and legal professionals to be educated so that they understand the impact on children and the need, sometimes, for parenting orders to be supervised to try to prevent these types of killings in the future.