 Welcome to the Judge Ben Show. My name is Ben Joseph. I'm a retired Vermont Superior Court Judge. This is a program in which I interview people about legal issues in Vermont. And it's actually now one in a series of interviews that I've done on the subjects of domestic violence and sexual assault. We're taping this today. And it's amazing. My guest is Amy Fitzgerald, whom I have known for many years. Amy's had quite a career. She is now the, let me see if I get this straight. The executive director of the British Columbia Society of Traditional Houses. Did I get that right? Oh, good. And she deals a lot with people who've had women who had trouble with domestic violence. And I really thought it'd be great to talk to her about how they handle this stuff in Canada. And here we are, 3,000 miles apart. And we're giving her a shot. Amy, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate this. It's my pleasure to be here. And thanks to the technology, we can do this. We can do it. Well, how long have you been executive director of this organization? I have been the executive director of the BC Society of Traditional Houses for two years. And before that, I was the director of training. I was initially hired to do training for them. Legal issues, related to family violence. Are you still a member of the bar in Vermont? I am an active member of the bar in Vermont. I am not a member of the law society here. But I can provide legal training and general legal information to frontline workers, which was my initial job here. And then I became executive director. What are the goals of your organization? So we are a provincial umbrella organization. So we are not frontline. We are the network that supports the frontline programs across British Columbia. So we train, support, advocate on their behalf, provide them skill enhancing, promising practices, lots of webinars right now, lots of online trainings. So we are the folks behind the frontline folks who are doing the work 24-7. How many member organizations do you have? So we now have 114 member programs across British Columbia. The organization has been around since 1978. It started with four women's shelters. Here they call women's shelters, transition houses or safe homes. It started with six, and they're the folks who banded together and said we need to have province-wide voice and province-wide advocacy and training. So they started it back in 1978. So it's been growing since then. And in British Columbia, we have seven regions across the province. And so we have houses and member programs in every single region. And then we also have a program that's specific to children and youth. It's a specialized counseling service for them. For when moms come into shelter, they get specialized psychoeducational counseling. And that's called the PEACE program. So we also oversee that portfolio or provide support and training. And that's 86 programs. And they're nestled in the women's transition housing supports program. So do you provide legal services to people or? We, there are some transition houses that have legal advocates on staff that are funded specifically to address family law matters. And they are funded by the Law Foundation of British Columbia. And they, so we provide support to them as well. And then we work very closely with Rise Women's Legal Center, which is a pro bono legal clinic based here in Vancouver, but it's affiliated with the University of British Columbia School of Law. So it's a working clinic where students come in and work there for a year and are supervised by lawyers. And so they provide a family law hotline and triage cases. They do unbundled summary legal advice virtually. And they also run a virtual legal clinic. And the virtual legal clinic actually predated the pandemic. And it was interesting, but it was to reach rural and remote communities where there were no legal resources available. So they, and they're run out of transition houses. So the woman would be in the shelter and then have the ability to connect with a lawyer using the technology and the internet that was provided at the shelter. I was recently told that one half of the homicides committed in Vermont last year involved incidences of domestic violence. Is there some overlap here in British Columbia? Yeah, absolutely. Significant number of homicides. I would say it's not quite as high as that number here, probably more like 40%, but very similar circumstances. And also a high use of firearms here. Although, you know, you don't, Canada has more restrictive gun control legislation, but still homicides and domestic violence are often committed with firearms here as well. Do these member organizations handle cases where the children are abused in the home? Yes, so it's usually a circumstance where that's part of the reason why the peace program, which was the children who were abused program originally and was recently rebranded, was created. Was there, the children were seen as either direct or indirect victims of the family violence in that setting. And when they would come into the shelter setting, there was a need for a specialized support services for them. And so that's absolutely, you know, sort of complimentary portfolio that the frontline folks are providing. Well, I always, I don't want to be precise. Most of the victims you deal with women? Yes, they are. So, and are there self-identified women who come into the shelters, but yes. And the majority of victims of intimate partner violence or domestic violence or family violence is consistently women. Not, you know, there are male victims as well, but the statistics are in concert with the statistics in the U.S. that women are predominantly the victims. Like 95% or something like that? It's like 90, yeah, 90 to 95%, absolutely. So that's the reality. And the reality is the majority of perpetrators are male. That is the reality. So, you know, it's better to acknowledge the reality so that you can address it. And there are programs that provide support services for perpetrators as well. And particularly those who are pre-charged and looking for support services and looking for sort of the equivalent of like a batters and prevention program. That's a voluntary program. And is that a nonprofit or some kind of separate from your organization? Yeah. So some of the houses themselves, you know, acknowledge that they're focused, they're mission and mandate to support women and children fleeing violence, but they also acknowledge that there's a bigger prevention element here that unless you're talking to the perpetrators and trying to address some of the underlying issues related to their behavior, we're just gonna be running shelters for the rest of the time. So sort of with the thought that we're trying to put ourselves at work, I think there was a recognition by some of our houses that we also need to provide voluntary counseling and support services for male, you know, that identify themselves as perpetrators. And we're more perpetrators. Well, you know, it's just such a daunting task. Well, it's a daunting task. Has the pandemic affected the volume of cases? Yeah, so we, our houses, because of the provincial health mandates, had to reduce their capacity at 50% because of the physical distancing. So houses that let's say had 10 beds now had five beds. So the capacity was significantly impacted. What happened here was the... I mean, social distancing in the place? Yeah, social distancing in the place. So the houses stayed open 24-7 throughout the pandemic and they still are providing services. And for circumstances where you are at capacity or over capacity, their main funding sources is a provincial organization called BC Housing. They provided them additional overflow capacity and hotels, so they had the ability to still provide the same amount of support and to the same amount of people. But it was just in a different, oftentimes in a different site, which was a challenge because part of the transition house sector and the women's shelter sectors, it's a communal congregate setting. And a lot of the healing goes on in that house setting. Victims support each other and that kind of thing? Yeah, there's a shared kitchen, there's a shared living room, there's a small place space. So it's very much a community. So that got fractured and also everyone had to wear masks and sanitize. Some houses in fact for preventative measures opted to wear gowns, hospital gowns, the staff, because they would come on site, change into that and sort of in concert with the women living at the house, so everybody knew and to be honest, initially it was a hard transition, but then the women realized that they were doing it to keep themselves safe and to keep everyone safe. So, and so yeah, so it definitely impacted the practice and we've had lots of webinars about sort of looking at other jurisdictions in terms of how they address some of these issues, lots to learn and we're still in a situation where all these mandates are still in place and Canada is actually behind the United States in terms of the vaccination rollout, so we will be in this situation for a longer period of time, probably then hopefully. Well, I just, I've always thought how difficult it is for the children in these situations. Yeah, it's very typical. Yeah, and also we had to sort of come up with what happens when children go to school and then they come back from school and then they've got all these sort of restrictions on their bubble and who they're interacting with and so many elaborate systems were put in place that were sort of on top of the elaborate systems that were already in place to keep women children safe. So yeah, this portfolio on average serves about 12,000 women and children a year. So lots of folks coming in and out of the doors. So these 12,000 cases. Yeah. And do some of these services involve people going to court with the victim? Yeah, so they do provide court support work and workers. You know, it's just a transition out to worker or support worker, but it also is now a court worker. They do many things at the transition houses. They provide, you know, they look for housing with them. They provide employer assistance and help, but yes, they do provide court support and they would go to court with them to assist them with applying for protection order or to be a witness, sort of a friendly witness or friendly helper at a court proceeding in our family court matter. All of our family court proceedings right now are virtual. So it's been unusual, right? A little bit unusual, a certain sense, if you find ourselves there, yeah. I'm just, I just feel sorry about that. I think it's so important to you. There's so much more communication than just a spoken word, you know, the way the nonverbal communication is often very important and you judge an credibility of a witness. Yeah, absolutely. And it's really, to be honest, it's an access to justice issue here because of the fact that women don't have the technology oftentimes to even engage with the courts. They're using Microsoft Teams to do it. So, you know, that requires you to have a Microsoft Teams account. So that's where the transition houses come in because they're able to at least provide that technical support. A woman can go to the transition house if she has to to use. Yeah, to interact with the courts. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So, yeah. So it's, yeah. And there's also here in British Columbia as in the United States, there's a lack of lawyers in family court matters. So, in particular, and about 45% of women in family court matters are going self-representing. So, huge issues in terms of, you know, again. 45% of the women represent themselves? Correct. Do they, are they told what to produce or, I mean? Yeah, when they're working with the Rise Women's Legal Center, yes. But they don't have a huge budget, but no, there's very little, there's some guidance from the courts, but not, there's no, they don't have court navigators. They have court clerks that they rely on. And those, you know, those, they're busy people. And, but yeah. So, there's a significant, I would say access to justice issue. And they also had cuts to legal services recently. So that has created even more strain on women. Legal services is a government funded operation? It's a province, provincially funded corporation, yes. And they had cuts to their legal services supports. Was that because of a lack of revenue to pay for it was? Lack of revenue. And then, and then interestingly, that legal services shifted to a lot of online resources, which is good, but in some circumstances, we argued that for domestic violence or family violence, it's much, it's great to know that information, but you really need a lawyer or a legal advocate walking alongside you to have a PMU process. Sure. Wow. Well, let's see. Do you have mental illness problems with the people who come in? Are they depressed or they're, do you provide services to people like that? Yeah, many of the women who come in, they bring very complex needs with them that includes mental health and substance use issues. And so we have a training program that we run. It's called reducing barriers and it's to train transition houses to basically meet women where they're at in terms of their mental health and substance use needs. Some of our houses practice significant harm reduction and a low barrier and have a variety of practices where they're supporting women in terms of even using onsite to be honest, all the way to other houses who don't practice that but are still trying to meet women where they're at, still trying to provide services to them and to get complimentary support services for them in the community. So it's a huge issue. And it's actually one of the biggest issues right now that we're seeing is the complex needs of the women and also the children and youth that are coming in. Yeah. A lot of trauma in their background and a lot of violence. And as a result, many of them have history associated with substance use for mental illness. And some of it is coping, right? That's how they've been coping through years. Yeah, well, in my 15 years in a bench, I read a lot of pre-sentence reports and often you could just see this stem from a very violent childhood. Where the victim became a perpetrator. Exactly. And you see that the same pattern here for certain. And the children and youth in particular, that's that you have sort of a moment in time, right? That you try, that you just wanna have some immediate services to meet their needs for that reason too, so that they don't have that trajectory going forward. But yeah, so it's definitely a huge issue. And also the other thing in British Columbia is that we have a second public health emergency, which is an opioid crisis here to the point where last year we had, in British Columbia, we had 1800 folks die of opioid overdoses. And so to put that in context, we've had 1000 people die from the pandemic, from COVID-19. So we have more people dying of opioid overdoses than we do from the pandemic. So we have sort of parallel public health emergency joining at the same time. And the opioid addictions impact our portfolio. Well, what's the population of British Columbia? There's 5.1 million folks living in British Columbia. And then we're located in Vancouver, that the lower mainland metropolitan area. And that's about 675,000 folks right here. So that's sort of like Vermont. There it is. It's funny. It's close. Close. Yeah, that's it. And how many people died of opioid overdoses in the last year? We had, it was approximately 1800. So it was it, and from the year? 1800. It was more than homicides, car crashes, combined. And it was an increase from 2019 of 80%. Or something like 79%. So it's huge issue here, huge issue. In fact, they're struggling with it and trying to, there's talk of trying to decriminalize small like, you know, doses of for use for personal use. And they're trying to get the province of British Columbia has approached the federal government to try and get an exemption to allow for that. Because it's under the, it's under the criminal code, which is federal. So, sort of, yeah. So we've got, and we do have sadly, overdoses that are in our shelters and in our houses. In your shelters? Yeah. So we've had a little over a hundred opioid deaths here. And we're very concerned about it in Vermont, of course. Yeah. No, it's terrible. Yeah, so we actually just came out with another, with a set of overdose guidelines for our, for the member programs. So we distributed those and then we're going to be doing the webinar with about the overdose guidelines that we put together. And we're going to bring in some frontline folks who are doing harm reduction in this portfolio. And you're doing that for all the membership organizations and their employees? Yeah. So we'll be doing that in March. Yeah. So, and a lot of the training that we used to do was in-person training. We used to go out into community and train, which was really fun, lots of fun. Road trips to rural and remote communities, lots of fun. You learn more than you probably give to them. Those trainings I found at least, right? Learn about the communities, but now it's all shifted to remote and virtual, which is actually, to be quite honest, the silver lining is it's very accessible for folks and everything can be reported. So there's some positives to this strange world that we're finding ourselves in. I've always known you to be honest. I understand. Thank you. Do victims have the option of getting a protection order? And can they go to court and get an order that they can't be abused by this person? Yeah. They have, it's under the Family Law Act here. And it's a civil order, but if it's violated, then it becomes a criminal sanction. Similar to the Vermont order, and they also have things called peace bonds here, which are sort of old fashioned common law remedies to keep the peace that you can get by just going to law enforcement. And law enforcement puts together the application and then brings it to the court and advocates on your behalf. And some communities find peace bonds just as effective as the protection orders and easier to get. Is there an attorney who does this? Is a police through this? Well, the peace bond, it's a police officer. You can apply directly to the court on your own as a pro-sale litigant, or you can go to the local law enforcement and they put it together. And it can apply to all, it can apply to family members, but it can also apply to non-taming members. So it's an interesting practice to be quite honest. Do you think it's a good idea? Well, it's interesting. When I first started doing the legal training here, I was focused on the protection order because that's what I knew from Vermont, right? And all the ways that once you get the protection order, you have to ensure that people know about it and it's served and that it's enforced by law enforcement. And then other front-line folks came to me and said, no, we use peace bonds. We find them more accessible, easier to get. There's more familiarity with them by the courts. So basically when we train, we train both. We say some circumstances, maybe that's the route to go and other circumstances is the route to go. But with all orders, as you well know, Ben, it's all about the enforcement, right? And it's all about the response if there is a violation of the order in terms of if there's an immediate response for it to really mean something. Well, I think that's one of the things that's lost when this is all done virtually. I think if there's a perpetrator stands up in court and you look them in the eye and say, you don't wanna see me again, I think they understand that. And I don't have to go into great detail when I warn them, so. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, and I would, yeah. So that they're very similar protections as in Vermont, but they're only as good as folks follow them or enforce them, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm running up to the end of only 30 minutes. This has been great. I wanna thank you again. If you get the yen to do this again, let me know. And I'll try to set it up. I would love to do this again. And I'd be happy to also bring in some of my other colleagues doing really interesting work to talk about stuff too, so. No, I hadn't thought of that. That's a great idea. We've got, I've got a tech safety coordinator. It's technology safety. It's about how women can use technology in a safe way and also how a technology has been used to perpetrate violence against women. So, so she's so happy to, happy to introduce you. We might be able to do 30 minutes on that. Easily. Oh, it's great. Amy, regards. It's so good to see you again. Yeah, lovely to see you. I hope that you'll come back to Vermont when the plague is finished. Yeah, I'm looking forward to traveling to Vermont when this is all over. Yeah, it's lovely to see you, Bennett. Thank you so much. Look forward to seeing you in the islands. Yeah, best regards. Thanks. Bye-bye.