How a family-court recommendation tried to erase my bail protections and forced me to relive the trauma the criminal system was meant to prevent.
Many of you know from my previous posts that I am involved in ongoing court matters. My own criminal case goes to trial early next year, and two of my children have related proceedings later in the year. For safety and legal reasons, I can’t be named until those trials conclude.
I keep a private blog and website where I write about my experiences as a survivor — not only about systemic harm, but about healing, resilience, and rebuilding life after trauma. It isn’t public yet because of the court process, but one day I hope it will help other survivors who feel powerless inside the system.
What Happened in Court
Last week, in Northern Ontario family court, a judge said something that shook me to the core.
She recommended that the man charged with raping me apply to amend his criminal bail conditions so he could meet me face-to-face for child handovers.
That single comment — offered almost casually recommendation — directly contradicts the criminal court’s no-contact order and undermines everything those bail conditions are supposed to protect.
I immediately contacted VWAP (the Victim/Witness Assistance Program). They reached out to the Crown Prosecutor and confirmed, in writing, that I am vehemently opposed to any bail amendment.
I told them I could give them far stronger words than vehemently opposed, because that phrase doesn’t even begin to capture what I felt.
Three Days to Stop Spiralling
It has taken me three days to stop spiralling.
I suffer from high anxiety — my hands shake, my body lives in permanent fight-or-flight, and I’m hypervigilant all the time.
I’m working full-time again and raising four children on my own. I’m trying to hold life together. But that’s not the point.
The point is that what that judge did — those words spoken in open court — made me relive my trauma.
It made me question my own sanity:
Am I wrong?
Am I doing something I shouldn’t?
If a judge can suggest that a man charged with rape should apply to change his bail, does that mean those conditions shouldn’t exist?
Of course they should exist — absolutely they should. The criminal court recognizes that.
So why does the family court dismiss it?
Safety Should Never Be Optional
I told both VWAP and my family lawyer that if anyone ever amended his bail conditions to allow direct contact with me, I would be held in contempt of court than comply.
I shouldn’t even have to contemplate that choice.
But that’s what trauma survivors are forced to do in this broken system — choose between obedience and survival.
This man faces eight criminal charges: multiple counts of serious criminal charges -including rape, two counts of child abuse, and two counts of uttering threats of death and bodily harm against children.
And yet a family-court judge advised him to seek permission to meet me face-to-face so he could see his young son.
That recommendation isn’t just wrong — it’s dangerous.
It invalidates every survivor who has ever tried to rebuild, every advocate who pushes for trauma-informed practice, and every public promise of “progressive justice” made by our leaders.
The Odds and the Betrayal
Here’s what makes it worse:
Only 5 percent of sexual assaults reported to police in Canada result in a conviction.
Research estimates that less than 1 percent of sexual assaults reported to authorities ever lead to jail time.
We know the odds. We know how few cases end in justice.
And yet, when a judge — a female judge — tells a man accused of rape to go apply to meet his victim face-to-face, it feels like betrayal layered upon betrayal.
Because this is not just poor judgment. This is complicity in a system that still measures a woman’s safety against a man’s convenience.
And it makes me wonder:
Would this same judge ever grant such an allowance if the accused were a white abuser and the victim a Black man? Would society tolerate a bail amendment that put a racialized victim face-to-face with their abuser — in the name of “their civil rights”?
Of course not.
The outrage would be immediate and justified.
So why are women and children — victims of domestic and sexual violence — still being treated as though their safety is negotiable? Why do fathers’ “civil rights” still outrank survivors’ right to safety?
This is not gender equality. This is institutional regression.
And it’s happening quietly, in Canadian family courts, every single week.
Comparing UK Reform — and What It Reveals About My Case
Over in the UK, major reforms are underway that contrast sharply with what I experienced in Ontario. The government has announced plans to repeal the presumption of parental contact in family court decisions — the idea that a child should automatically spend time with both parents is being scrapped because evidence shows it can perpetuate harm in abuse situations.
In parallel, new amendments to the Victims and Courts Bill will automatically restrict parental responsibility for parents convicted of serious sexual offences against a child, or where a child was conceived through rape.
These changes come after reports found that domestic abuse is present in the vast majority of family court cases — yet courts often failed to treat it as a serious factor in decision-making.
What does this mean for my situation?
It means that in the UK the law is moving towards recognising that a parent’s rights don’t automatically override a child’s or survivor’s safety. In my case, I faced a family-court judge recommending that a man charged with rape should apply to amend his criminal bail conditions so he could meet me. Meanwhile, the UK reforms emphasise that child welfare and safety must come first.
The Epidemic No One Wants to See
There is a wave — an epidemic — of domestic violence in Canada right now.
Women are being hurt and killed. This is why bail reform is happening — because the statistics are staggering.
But here’s the truth no one wants to face:
While criminal court is finally trying to adapt, family court is still operating on outdated assumptions. Fathers’ rights often take priority over women’s safety, even when those fathers are facing criminal charges.
Three of his children have cut him off completely. Even before that, he manipulated them horrifically — lying about being terminally ill, hiding older children from previous relationships, and constantly rewriting reality to suit his narrative.
This is coercive control in its purest form.
If coercive control were a criminal offence in Canada — as it now is in parts of the UK and Australia — this man would face multiple additional charges.
But here, psychological abuse, isolation, and manipulation still fall through the cracks.
And so, family court rewards him with legitimacy while the criminal system struggles to hold him accountable.
Other Women Are Living This Too
I’m not the only one.
I have friends who have no-trespass orders and whose exes have been warned that if they continue with the tresspassing and abuse they been doing they will be charged with criminal harassment.
Yet in family court, judges overrule those protections and write orders for the same men to walk right up to their front doors for child handovers.
One friend’s judge even called parts of her ex’s affidavit “abusive” and ordered them redacted — and still ruled that he could come to her home. They wrote off her concerns as minimal – in truth she is terrified – and with good reason.
How is this justice?
This is the gap people don’t see.
Bail reform is progress on paper — but it means nothing when family-court judges quietly erase those same protections in practice.
What I’m Asking For
I’m not seeking attention. I’m seeking accountability.
I’m asking that the justice system stop treating safety as negotiable.
That courts stop forcing victims to face their abusers under the guise of “co-parenting.” That family court is updated to protect the vulnerable.
That we finally recognize coercive control as the abuse that it is.
Because until that happens, all the bail reforms in the world won’t make survivors safe if family court judges can recommend that they apply for variances so that rapists can meet their victims face to face and call it as being in the best interests of the child…..
