Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)

I must commend an Ontario Superior Court judge for drawing attention to the endemic of IPV by citing the following statistic in his March 2025 decision:

“In 2023 Peel Regional Police responded to just over 16000 incidents of IPV:  44 disputes everyday, or almost 2 every hour.”

There have been legislative changes to recognize IPV as a factor in the best interests test. But, in my view, family court judges, in general are not doing enough.

The same judge who cited the above statistic, after an 8 day trial, decided that the perpetrator of abuse should have increased parenting time.  The judge said that this was in keeping with his personal philosophy of “restorative” justice.  He found that the husband had engaged in a 5 year pattern of psychological, sexual, physical and financial abuse, with controlling behaviours.  The upshot was that the children, age 5 and 8, had witnessed the abuse and the eldest child was refusing contact with the father.

In addition to ordering increased parenting time, rather than making a specified order with terms to protect the wife and children from future harm, he delegated this task to counsel to attempt to provide terms of a final order in keeping with his reasons, despite the fact that he had found that counsel had become so embroiled in their clients respective positions that they could not agree upon a single item.

Having read thousands of court decisions in my ongoing role as a research/writer, starting 25 years ago, I am sorry to say that there is still a long way to go to make progress in the area of IPV in family law.  More change is still needed.