Province Announces Measures to Protect Victims of Domestic Violence

By 250 News

Victoria, B.C. -  Solicitor General Kash Heed has announced  immediate actions to protect victims of domestic violence and ensure offender accountability.
Effective immediately government will:

* Support the establishment of a domestic violence unit in the Capital Regional District. Government will make resources available for the unit, including a victim service worker and child services worker who will be dedicated to and co-located with the unit.
* Convene a death review panel in the BC Coroner's service to look at domestic violence cases with the goal of preventing similar incidents in the future. The panel of experts will be in place by mid-March and will look at cases between 1995 and 2009 with varying circumstances which will include impacts on both spouses and children. A death review panel reviews the facts and circumstances of deaths in order to provide advice to the chief coroner with respect to medical, legal, social welfare and other matters that may impact public health and safety and the prevention of deaths.
* Establish a uniform policy for investigations of all instances of domestic violence.
* Take steps to ensure that all reported instances of domestic violence are flagged as such ("K" files) in the provincial police data base (PRIME), and other justice data bases, so that it is clear to all service providers that the file is a domestic violence case requiring special attention.

In addition, to proactively identify and target high-risk offenders, government will:

* Establish a standard set of bail conditions to be requested for accused that have been identified as high-risk in order to better protect victims. For example, this will include making sure the court is asked to ensure high risk accused have a fixed address where the court deems bail is appropriate.
* Create a standardized checklist of factors such as past violent behaviour and family dynamics that may indicate a suspect is high risk.
* Develop cross-agency domestic violence policies that set out the obligations and commitments for all ministries, policing agencies, Crown and service providers involved in high-risk domestic violence cases.

"The Lee/Park inquest and the report from the Representative for Children and Youth, as well as a number of other reports on domestic violence, have produced additional recommendations and ideas that warrant further review," said Heed. "I've appointed an inter-ministry task force of senior officials that will be directly responsible to me and if we need to make more changes we will."

The task force has been mandated to provide advice and a plan to move forward to Government in the next 60 days.

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