Child & Youth Fatalities Reviewed by the BC Children’s Commission: A Family Violence Perspective

Cooper, Mary

This report sets out to determine whether the Child and Youth Fatality Reviews published by the BC Children’s Commission contain information that is suitable for aggregation and that facilitates identification of patterns or trends in family violence experienced either during the deceased’s lifetime or in the circumstances leading to death.

38 pages / $10
FULL TEXT ONLINE

Child Custody and Access in the Context of Family Violence: a review of the literature and annotated bibliography

Braun, Joan

Update of 1994 BCIFV publication. This publication consists of three sections: a written overview of the topic, an annotated bibliography of selected materials, and a longer bibliography consisting of citations used in this literature review and other resources.

Topics include:

• The legal system’s shortcomings for victims of family violence


• The legal system fails to recognize the special circumstances of female victims of family violence


• The legal system does not routinely consider family violence or past parental conduct in determining the “best interests of the child”


• The legal system fails to protect abuse victims from ongoing harassment


• The legal system creates obstacles for victims through the “friendly parent” presumption


• The legal system fails to recognize the existence of power imbalances between litigating parties


• Specific issues relating to custody and access in the context of family violence


• The best interests of the child


• Child abuse


• True and false allegations of child abuse


• Psychological effects of divorce on children


• Parental alienation syndrome


• The effect on children of exposure to domestic violence


• The “fathers’ rights” movement


• Gender and the law


• Violence in lesbian and gay relationships


• Custody evaluations


• Joint custody


• Mediation


• Supervised access

50 pages / $10
FULL TEXT ONLINE (pdf)

Evaluation of Three Assaultive Men’s Treatment Programs: a summary report

Kropp, P. Randall and Bodnarchuk, Mark

In May of 1996, an inter-ministerial committee representing the Ministries of Attorney General (Corrections Branch), Health (Forensic Psychiatric Services Commission), and Women’s Equality initiated and committed funds to a three year plan to evaluate assaultive men’s programs in British Columbia. It is of course impractical to evaluate every assaultive men’s community program in the province at once; at last count there were over 40 such programs in existence. Moreover, it is unnecessary to do so given the similarity in structure and design of the programs. There are of course minor variations among them, but all are currently required to adhere to the Guiding Principles for Services in British Columbia. Thus, it was determined that three programs would be targeted, one for each year of initiative. Each of these evaluations has been published separately by the BCIFV, from which information concerning these studies is available upon request. The purpose of this report is to summarize the most important findings reported in each of these three evaluations. In the final section of this report, we make some comparisons between the three programs and offer a series of recommendations for improving future evaluation efforts.

26 pages / $10
FULL TEXT ONLINE (pdf)

Under Scrutiny: Corporal Punishment and Section 43 of the Canadian Criminal Code

Tijerino, Adamira

This literature review looks at the non-legal issues relating to the corporal punishment of children, the lack of consistent and agreed-upon definitions of corporal punishment and/or child physical discipline, the religious roots of the practice of corporal punishment, effects and risk factors, legal analysis and implications of Section 43, and child abuse statistics.

39 pages / $10
FULL TEXT ONLINE (pdf)