Abstract
Almost two decades ago, in 1996 on International Women’s Day, Arlene May was killed by her estranged common law husband who later killed himself. Arlene’s death followed a number of other domestic violence-related deaths in Ontario, Canada, and, as a result, the Office of the Chief Coroner (OCC) held an inquest to examine the circumstances surrounding Arlene’s killing with two key objectives in mind – to identify whether there were systemic gaps in responses to domestic violence and to make recommendations for prevention of such deaths in the future. Producing over 200 recommendations, the 1998 inquest concluded that Arlene’s death arose, in part, because the systems that were supposed to help her did not. As a result of one recommendation, a provincial steering committee was established by the Attorney General of Ontario to determine how to improve community and justice responses to domestic violence (OCC 2003).
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- 1.
The Conference Board of Canada identified similar countries by selecting those identified as ‘high income’ by the World Bank with a total population of more than one million, larger than 10,000 square kilometres, and a higher-than-the-mean average real income per capita.
- 2.
While the term ‘indigenous’ is increasingly being used, ‘Aboriginal’ is used to reflect the terminology used by the various reports and publications being referenced.
- 3.
The full list of risk factors and their definitions is contained in each of the committee’s annual reports (for the most up-to-date list of risk factors and definitions, see Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario (2015); see http://www.mcscs.jus.gov.on.ca/english/DeathInvestigations/office_coroner/PublicationsandReports/DVDR/DVDR.html.
- 4.
At the time of this writing, there were 269 cases reviewed; however, while earlier years included attempted homicide cases, these types of cases are no longer within the purview of the committee. As such, eight cases of attempted homicide were removed from this examination.
- 5.
This is the primary target of the perpetrator’s abusive/maltreating/violent actions (Ontario DVDRC 2015: 29).
- 6.
It is important to note, however, that in some of the current relationships, separations may have been pending and, as such, increased the risk for lethality in the relationship.
- 7.
This information was not known in almost 9% of the cases (N = 23).
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Dawson, M., Jaffe, P., Campbell, M., Lucas, W., Kerr, K. (2017). Canada. In: Dawson, M. (eds) Domestic Homicides and Death Reviews. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56276-0_3
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