Courts not protecting our kids, domestic violence survivors say

Warning: This story contains accounts of intimate-partner violence and self-harm.

Kristen's nine-year-old daughter says she's afraid of her father and wants nothing to do with him. 

But there's a court order saying they have to spend time together, something the B.C. mother says she can't understand. 

Court records show the father has a criminal conviction for assaulting a family member. 

Kristen says the assault happened in the child's presence and that her former partner has hurt both herself and her daughter in the past.

"Some children … are going to be frightened and they're not going to want to see the person that has done this to them and to their parents," Kristen said. "And that should be OK."

But the B.C. Supreme Court ruling on parenting in this case stated that Kristen's nervous behaviour is likely to blame for the child's reluctance to see the father and ordered counselling to repair their relationship. The ruling makes no mention of the father's assault conviction or his repeated breaches of probation orders. 

A CBC News investigation over the course of several months examined the experiences of a dozen domestic violence survivors in family court. Many told CBC they were forced by courts or court-appointed counsellors to hand children over for visits or as part of shared parenting plans to former partners they were afraid of. 

The women were generally supportive of their children having a relationship with their former partners, but all say they wish their concerns about safety, retraumatization and their children's fears about being around the other parent were given greater consideration. 

CBC is not using the women's real names because some have active child custody cases, are concerned for their personal safety and risk losing access to their children if they are identified. 

Data on how often courts grant unsupervised access to parents with a history of domestic violence is difficult to come by. Intimate partner violence survivors don't always disclose abuse to police or lawyers and it can be risky to do so in court. Much abuse, especially non-physical, does not result in a criminal conviction. 

Studies that have been done on family court outcomes refer to intimate partner violence cases as "high conflict," but Kristen and other survivors say this is a misnomer because it lumps such cases in with acrimonious breakups where there's no history of domestic violence. 

CBC reviewed several family court rulings in which judges expressed disappointment that the parents' relationship had become dysfunctional to the point where they could not agree on a parenting plan. 

Georg Stratemeyer, a former mediator who worked with the family courts in Alberta for six years helping families in this situation, said part of the process was to screen for domestic violence.