Keira's Law

Keira's father killed her. It was predictable and preventable.

That is the finding of a report of the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee (DVDRC) of Ontario's Chief Coroner's office. They based their conclusion on the many risk factors that Keira Kagan's father displayed over the course of her young life with him. 

From the age of 8 months, Keira’s life with her father was regulated by the Ontario Family Court system aided by Jewish Family and Child Services. Her mother left her father when she was that young, because she was afraid for her and Keira’s safety. The courts awarded Keira’s mother sole decision-making authority, and her father substantial access through a shared custody arrangement. This arrangement saw Keira in her father’s care three out of four weekends a month and more.

Almost 4 years later, Keira’s body was found at the bottom of a cliff beside her father’s body. It was his weekend. At the time her father was under investigation by the children’s aid society for abuse of Keira. Her mother was afraid for Keira’s safety, so she went to court to try to keep Keira from having to go to her father’s. In court she said through her lawyer that her ex was out of control. He’d made threats. And there was the investigation. The matter was urgent.

And yet the judge at the hearing said he had only one side to the story. He said that things could wait until the children’s aid society had finished its investigation.

The notion that there are two sides to every story ignores decades of research regarding domestic abuse, and particularly domestic abuse as it is understood in the court system. That research indicates that women who have survived domestic abuse tell their side of the story from a position laced with fear – especially if their ex and abuser has any custody of their child. They fear retribution and are often threatened.

The other side of the story is told by men who are, according to the research, often very charming and persuasive. They speak from a position of wanting to demonstrate that they still have control of the situation. They will lie, and they will manipulate. Keira’s father had a documented history of lying to the courts.

Still, that weekend the judge ruled that the other side of the story was needed, and that he couldn’t curb Keira’s dad’s access on the word of an ex-wife.

Both the judge that granted Keira’s father some custody, and the judge that refused to curb that access, failed to take into account any of the history of ongoing violence and coercive control that Keira’s father imposed upon her mother. The two judges failed to consider how Keira was herself a tool of that coercive control.

Over the course of Keira’s life, her father had regularly threatened to harm himself, Keira or kill her mother, if her mother ever left him. He would also send messages on Keira’s body, such as cutting off a piece of her hair, if her mother instituted some proceeding through the court that he didn’t like. It was having a negative impact on Keira’s life. She was getting help with her mental and emotional health, regularly having a more challenging time after having been returned from her father’s care.

Decades of research into intimate partner violence have shown that patterns in abuse can be identified, and when those patterns show particular factors, there is a greater risk of lethality. That is to say we can predict if an abuser is likely to kill their partner or take something of great value to her, for instance her child’s life. Keira’s father displayed several of those risk factors.

The DVDRC has identified 44 risk factors that they take into account when reviewing cases. In their report into Keira’s death they determined that 21 of those factors were present. Among those they named: end of marriage, ongoing custody dispute, misogynistic attitudes, history of intimate partner violence with previous partners as well as with Keira’s mother, prior choking and strangling, and more.

Research could predict that Keira’s father was at risk of killing someone. Our court systems failed to do so, and now Kiera is dead.

There is a remedy in process, and that remedy is Keira’s Law (Bill C 233). It has passed through the House of Commons and through its third reading at the Senate. If no more changes are proposed, it will await Royal Assent and then become law. That law mandates judges undergo training regarding domestic violence and intimate partner violence, with an emphasis on coercive control. That training will work towards ending the stereotypes of the “high conflict” divorce, wherein it is supposed both parties are equally to blame, and of the “vindictive woman” who is simply making trouble for her ex by raising issues of abuse.

Keira’s law is a step in the direction of fewer women and children being murdered by abusive partners or ex-partners.