On Tuesday during Victims and Survivors of Crime Week in Saskatchewan, Saskatoon provincial court looks a little different.
Domestic violence court cases are heard every Tuesday in a therapeutic court aimed at holding offenders accountable and connecting families with support.
Statistics Canada data shows that Saskatchewan has the highest rate of family and intimate partner violence among provinces.
Domestic violence court was introduced in Saskatchewan to break that cycle and support the people caught in it.
“Therapeutic court is designed basically to get to the root issues of why people are offending. Unfortunately, not everybody learns how to deal with conflict in a healthy way, so this program gives people an option to learn different skills,” domestic violence court co-ordinator Jenny Ivanochko says.
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To be eligible for domestic violence court, Crown council has to refer the case and participants must enter a guilty plea.
The Courts of Saskatchewan says one-third of those charged with domestic violence are not referred because the violence was too repetitive and extreme.
“For some people, it is an epiphany: ‘I had no idea that I had options in conflict and that using violence isn’t always the answer.’ So it’s been very interesting to see people learn that about themselves and you can see that cycle start to break,” Ivanochko says.
Throughout the process, Family Service Saskatoon provides domestic violence court case workers for victims.
The counselling service says it sees improvements in the pattern of violence in families as a whole.
“If that behaviour can be changed, we have families then who are not experiencing violence or not at risk of experiencing more violence, which of course helps to break that cycle of violence,” Family Service Saskatoon executive director Janine Baumann says.
“So that hopefully those children then don’t either get into a situation as they get older where they’re either causing harm or receiving harm in a relationship.”
The program first launched in the Battlefords in 2003 and quickly expanded to Saskatoon and Regina.
Last year, Family Services also expanded its outreach to include an early intervention program.
“So we’re trying to change it so that instead of saying, ‘Why don’t you just leave?’ We say, ‘Why doesn’t the other person change their behaviour?’ We need to get to a point where it’s just not acceptable,” Baumann says.
She hopes that with this program, families can seek help before violence starts in the home.
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