Thank you to the committee for providing me the opportunity to speak on such an important topic. My name is Christy Dzikowicz, and I'm the chief executive officer of Toba Centre for Children and Youth, a charitable organization and Manitoba's only child advocacy centre.
Child advocacy centres are child-friendly spaces in which law enforcement, child protection, prosecution, mental health, medical and victim advocacy professionals work together to investigate abuse, help children and their families heal from abuse and hold offenders accountable.
The first child advocacy centre was established in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1985, and the movement has been growing ever since. There are over 900 accredited child advocacy centres in the United States. We have over 40 in Canada, and there are centres in over 20 countries around the world. These centres are recognized around the world as the leading practice in responding to child abuse cases. However, I would suggest we have a long way to go in Canada in supporting these centres and ensuring the best outcomes for children.
Before I go further, I'd like to speak directly to the issue of child maltreatment. At our centre, we serve children, youth and their caregivers who experience child sexual abuse and physical abuse, and children who witness IPV and significant violence. There are approximately 200,000 child abuse investigations across Canada each year, and these are only the cases we know about—the ones that are reported. There are significant barriers to reporting, coercive behaviour being just one of them.
While I speak to issues impacting children, youth and their caregivers, as it is the focus of my life's work, I'd like to note to the committee that the majority of my comments today also speak directly to the experiences of vulnerable adult populations also impacted by interpersonal violence.
Child abuse is anything that intentionally endangers the development, security or survival of a child: the act of emotionally, physically or sexually harming a child. To be very clear, coercive behaviour is central to almost all of this criminal behaviour. A further impact of that coercive behaviour and inevitable abuse can be setting children, youth and adults up for additional challenges in dealing with the criminal justice system. Abusers work very hard to silence their victims, take away their voice and disempower them. The system that is set up to respond must understand this and work in a coordinated fashion to ensure we are meeting the needs of the survivors.
Child advocacy centres are designed for this purpose, but in Canada we do not have any mechanism to enforce internationally recognized standards of practice.
In the United States, child advocacy centres must be accredited and prove that they are meeting minimal standards, which include a multidisciplinary response from the point of report, child forensic interviewing standards, inclusivity and diversity standards and victim support, amongst others.
At this point in time, it is up to folks like myself to convince partner agencies like law enforcement, child welfare agencies and medical centres that working together and demanding standards is a good idea. While I have no doubt that all folks working in this area would say they want to put children first, it is no easy task to change these old, large and institutionally based systems. It requires a great deal of humility for folks to step back and say they need to work differently and better.
All levels of government have tools at their disposal that can and should be used to demand that these standards be met through legislation; professional standards, like policing standards; and through funding of child advocacy centres to ensure all children in Canada have access.
When considering this testimony on coercive control, I also reflected on how poorly children, youth and those impacted by interpersonal violence fare in our criminal justice system. I believe that significant reform is both needed and possible. Again, victims in these cases have often been stripped of their voice and their confidence. Our criminal justice system is not set up to consider the needs of these vulnerable populations.
Child advocacy centres across Canada are working with their local prosecutors to try and facilitate closed-circuit testimony being offered from their centres. In Calgary and Edmonton, this practice is happening. In each jurisdiction, though, we have to start from the beginning to create precedent and enable this option. When we consider the coercive abuse endured by the victims we work with, we're struck by the horror of asking that child to enter into a room with their abuser and speak their truth in front of their abuser, their families, and strangers, and it seemed inhumane.
Psychologist Rachel Zajac has published a great deal of research outlining the failures of the courts to meet the needs of children.
She wrote:
Recent research has made it clear that cross-examination is unlikely to be the truth-finding technique that many believe it to be. Instead, the style of questioning typically used during this process directly contravenes almost every principle scientifically established over the past 30 years for obtaining complete and accurate evidence from any witness, particularly a child.
There are countries we can learn from in this area, with innovations like intermediaries in the U.K.
I cannot imagine anything more important than ensuring safe pathways, so victims of child abuse and IPV can come forward and proceed through a criminal justice process. Our failure to create environments that can effectively hear their outcries and respond with safety can be devastating. We are not just risking survivors being retraumatized by our response or disbelieved by our systems but also empowering those who are engaging in the coercive, abusive behaviours. A child or person who makes an outcry of abuse and then recants, either out of fear or coercion, is often more at risk. Offenders tell their victims they will not be believed.
While we must always seek the truth, we must do everything we can to create the safest possible pathways for our vulnerable populations.
Thank you.