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Webcast: Women Seeking Justice Forum ~ International Women’s Day 2015

Mar 5, 2015 | Battered Women's Support Services, Events

International Women’s Day 2015

Battered Women’s Support Services Legal Services and Advocacy Program Presents:

Women Seeking Justice Forum

Women Seeking Justice Forum convenes a former judge, researchers, academics, lawyers, legal advocates, and feminist thinkers to illuminate pressing legal issues for women in law practice and policy including international, Indigenous, immigration, refugee, criminal, family, and poverty.

Agenda

MC Niki Sharma – BWSS Board Member and Lawyer

Opening and Territorial Welcome – Audrey Siegl, Musqueam Nation

Word from Sponsors

Jennifer Johnstone President and CEO Central City Foundation

My Sister’s Closet

Word from Battered Women’s Support Services

Angela Marie MacDougall Executive Director

Keynote

The Honourable Donna Martinson

First Panel

Aboriginal Women and Girls on the International Agenda

Sharon McIvor, Nlekepmux, from the Lower Nicola Indian Band, Activist, Lawyer, College Professor

Preliminary Findings from a BC Study of RCMP cases of Intimate Partner Violence: Does Gender Symmetry Exist?

Dr. Margaret Jackson, Professor Emerita, School of Criminology and, Director, the FREDA Centre for Research on Violence against Women and Children at SFU

Legal Advocacy and Violence Against Women

Vicky Law, BWSS Legal Advocate

Q & A

Second Panel

Toward a Sanctuary City: Reflections from Lucia Jimenez Coroner’s Inquest 

Rosa Elena Arteaga, Manager, Direct Services and Clinical Practice, Battered Women’s Support Services

Conditional Permanent Residence: The Dangers of Making Immigration Status Conditional on Living with your Spouse

Lobat Sadrehashemi, Staff Lawyer at BC Public Interest Advocacy Office

Women and Homelessness: Challenging Apathy in Policy and Practice

Angela Marie MacDougall, Executive Director, Battered Women’s Support Services

Violence Against Women and the Family Law Act: Early Jurisprudence

Susan Boyd, Professor of Law and Chair in Feminist Legal Studies, University of British Columbia

Q & A

Niki Sharma Closing Remarks

Webcast is in effect and brought to you by The Law Foundation of BC and My Sister’s Closet – a social enterprise of Battered Women’s Support Services

Please email endingviolence@bwss.org during the webcast if you have questions for the presenters or if you have technical difficulties.

Legal Advocacy – How you can assist women’s access to justice and equality under the law

International Women’s Day 2015 provides a great opportunity to highlight the ways in which women fleeing abusive relationships seek safety and justice through the legal system.

The virtual elimination of Legal Aid in British Columbia and the complicated acceptance process has resulted in an increase of women who are having to self represent in family law, immigration and refugee cases. Over 80% of women accessing our services identify at least one legal issue where they require information. (Read more here)

If you could do something to end violence against girls and women, wouldn’t you?

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Battered Women Justice Denied

Jan 26, 2009 | Battered Women's Support Services

January 26, 2009

Contact: Angela Marie MacDougall
Executive Director
Battered Women’s Support Services
604-687-1613
strategicinterventions@bwss.org
The Province of British Columbia Chooses to Deny Justice to Battered Women!

Cuts to legal aid mean things just got worse for women seeking safety from violence

Battered Women’s Support Services (BWSS) is on the frontline where women survivors of violence are placed at risk of injury and even death due to their inability to secure legal representation in family and civil law proceedings that routinely accompany a woman’s flight to freedom.  In recent times, our community has told women to leave abusive relationships and crisis services have been established.  Now more than ever women are leaving abusive relationships and when they do they are routinely forced to interface with the criminal, family, immigration, child welfare and civil legal systems.  This interface represents the second stage of living free of violence.
A determined group of women started Battered Women’s Support Services in 1979. Thirty years later, BWSS has grown into a strong and dynamic organization. We continue to provide support and advocacy for women who have experienced abuse, as well as education about violence against women. As part of the feminist anti-violence movement, our long-term goal is the elimination of all violence against women.
In 2008, Battered Women’s Support Services conducted research on violence against women and legal aid and published Battered Women Justice Denied detailing how the current legal system specifically target and disadvantage women victims of violence, additionally the international community has put Canada on notice for these violations of women’s rights.  January 2009, things just got worse for women and the province of British Columbia has made the choice to tell women to leave abusive relationships and then to penalize women victims by denying their basic rights for legal representation.
“It would have been easier to stay with the abuser and not deal with the courts and the painful separation”.  A woman who accesses Battered Women’s Support Services

The BWSS research concluded that of 304 women who access BWSS services only 16% of women who wanted legal aid received it and were satisfied with their experience.  The impact for women when they do not get proper legal representation and advice are:

1. women are forced to provide unsafe access to their children with their violent ex-spouses,
2. women must share custody with violent, unpredictable ex-spouses who often know where they live,
3. women do not receive fair or just child support and spousal support payments to provide themselves and their children,
4. women are threatened with deportation by their violent spouses,
5. women are forced to take hours of time to access different types of support services to get preliminary advice (working women are losing income in order to access support services),
6.  women are forced into mediation services when the power and violence issues make them susceptible to more abuse,
7. women must research and use self-help resources for complex legal problems that should be handled by a lawyer, and
8. women who do have Legal Aid report that they deal with lawyers who do not take violence seriously and leave it out of the proceedings when it is integral to fair legal outcomes for battered women.

Violence against women is a significant social issue that continues.  BWSS recognizes that in addition to securing housing adequate legal advice and representation is a key factor in a battered woman’s decision to escape abuse.  It is unacceptable that the province of British Columbia has chosen to cut women’s access to justice while establishing a barrier for women victims of violence.  The international community has already put Canada on notice for violating the rights of women, now the province of British Columbia leadership has entrenched this violation and therefore is putting women and children at risk.

Battered Women’s Support Services has been in contact and will continue to be in contact with women from around the province who are impacted by these cuts with the intention of drawing attention to these safety/justice issues and to bring voice to women who have survived so much already who are now faced with a steeper uphill climb.

https://www.bwss.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/batteredwomenjusticedeniedfinaldecember2008.pdf