COMMUNITY APPROACH TACKLES DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

The Domestic Violence Death Review Committee (DVDRC) is a multi-disciplinary review committee of experts established in 2003 in response to jury recommendations made in two major inquests into the deaths of women killed by their intimate partners. Ontario was the first province in Canada to develop this type of expert death review committee to explore the circumstances surrounding intimate partner homicides and develop recommendations to prevent further deaths.

In June 2022, Office of the Chief Coroner (OCC) issued a call for new members for the DVDRC to enhance the representation of Ontario’s diverse people and to modernize its processes.

The OCC developed a public process to identify suitable candidates to participate in the death review process and selected 15 committee members (along with two resource members) to serve on the DVDRC for two-year terms, with possibility of extension.

The members represent Ontario’s diverse communities and come from frontline services, academia, public safety, and the legal field. Their deep commitment to the elimination and study of IPV and appreciation of a survivor’s experience brings tremendous credibility and value to the important work of the DVDRC.

The members chosen have dedicated their careers to addressing intimate partner violence and each has extensive expertise and experience in IPV and related areas. Their collective expertise spans:

• Personal and experiential understanding of a survivor’s perspective

• Child and youth welfare protection

• Victim services

• Immigration, family, civil, and criminal law

• Mental health, family, and housing support

• Law enforcement

• Perpetrator understanding and prevention

• Research, education, and training

• Rural, remote communities

The committee will investigate ways to impact effective change regarding the issue of IPV and its impact on individuals and communities, taking the opportunity to address the need to be more efficient and impactful with recommendations.

 The new members of the DVDRC announced recently include:

Shalini Konanur, the executive director of the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO). Konanur graduated from Osgoode Hall Law School and was called to the Bar in Ontario in 2000. She has spent her entire legal career in Ontario’s legal aid clinic system working with low-income Ontarians with a focus over the past 15 years on supporting racialized communities. She practises in immigration, family, human rights, income maintenance, tenant’s rights, and employment and has worked at all levels of administrative tribunals and courts  including the Supreme Court of Canada.

Konanur has direct experience working with people facing IPV, including those with precarious or no immigration status. She also has significant knowledge of the complex barriers that many racialized people face in family violence situations.

She received the Ontario Victim Service Award of Distinction and the Ontario Bar Association’s Award of Excellence in the Promotion of Women’s Equality. 

Konanur has appeared at multiple municipal, provincial, and federal government standing committees and at the United Nations to advocate for racialized communities facing gender-based violence.

She serves on the Board of Governors of the Law Commission of Ontario, is Board Chair of Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, and helped develop Canada’s toolkit for people facing forced marriage, and she was a co-author of a Roadmap for Canada’s National Action Plan on Gender-Based Violence

Deepa Mattoo is an award-winning lawyer and intersectional feminist whose work is rooted in equity and anti-oppressive and anti-racist practice. She is the executive director of the Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic and served as executive director at SALCO previously.

She oversees the Clinic’s strategic direction and provides leadership to the legal, counselling, and interpretation departments and for the Clinic’s intervention and advocacy work. Mattoo is directly involved in critical projects related to the criminalization of women, sexual violence and the precarious status of women, the risk assessment of gender-based violence, and interdisciplinary case management. She  has appeared before parliamentary committees and UN civil society meetings on a wide range of social justice and human rights issues.

Mattoo has represented hundreds of clients at tribunals and courts in numerous jurisdictions, including the Supreme Court of Canada. She is an Adjunct Professor and Visiting Faculty at the Uof T’s Faculty of Law and an Adjunct Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, where she is the co-director of the Feminist Advocacy Program hosted at the Schlifer Clinic.

She is a recipient of the Spirit of Schlifer Award, the Law Society medal and the Women of Distinction Award. She has trained thousands of service providers for best practices and legal education to work with forced marriage survivors, racialized non-status women, and immigration law clients in the context of gender-based violence.

Prabhu Rajan continues in his role as the Chair of DVDRC, which has been at the forefront of promoting change in policy and practice through the analysis of intimate partner homicides. He is leading the revitalization of the DVDRC.

Rajan is chief counsel to the Chief Coroner for Ontario and Chief Forensic Pathologist, and co-leads Ontario’s Inquest System. Previously, he was the Legal Director for the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, Deputy Legal Director at the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Deputy Legal Director at the Ministry of Labour. He was  Counsel and Legal Director at the Ontario Human Rights Commission. He is a graduate of the University of Manitoba (B.A. Criminology) and Osgoode Hall Law School. He articled at a prominent union-side labour law firm and was called to the Bar in 1996.