Hundreds gathered at four-old Keira Kagan’s funeral on Thursday, as her mother read her favourite books “No Matter What” and “The Runaway Bunny” aloud to her a final time.
“Keira, you and mama will be together and love each other forever,” Jennifer Kagan said.
Halton Regional Police are still investigating the deaths of the four-year-old girl and her father Robin Brown. Their bodies were found on Feb. 9 in Rattlesnake Point Conservation Area in Milton with injuries police have said are consistent with a fall. Kagan and step-father Philip Viater believe it was a murder-suicide.
Keira had been at the centre of a long-running and “high-conflict” custody dispute, and, according to court documents, her mother had recently asked a court for an emergency hearing to limit her father’s access.
The details of the protracted three-year court battle expose some of the challenges family courts face in high-conflict cases, which researchers say have become more common in Ontario, straining an already over-worked family court system.
“I have never understood why we don’t have the same sense of alarm around delays in family court as we do in criminal court,” said Peter Jaffe, a professor at the University of Western Ontario and expert on family violence, speaking in general and not specifically about Kagan’s custody case. “For children in a child-custody dispute, there needs to be timely intervention and there needs to be ways to expedite matters.”
That means having enough judges with specialized training available to hear cases, and agencies with the resources to do parenting and risk assessments as soon as possible, he said. “The vast majority of cases that do end up in litigation involve serious allegations around domestic abuse, child abuse and mental health. They have to be a priority,” he said.
CONTINUE READING FULL ARTICLE HERE: What a 4-year-old’s death says about Ontario’s strained family courts | ThePeterboroughExaminer.com
