Since Dahia Khellaf and her two sons were murdered in the Pointe-aux-Trembles area in 2019, several changes have been made to better protect victims of domestic violence. Work remains to be done, in particular to raise awareness among new arrivals, however, underlines coroner Andrée Kronström in her investigation report published Wednesday.
“Since 2019, significant progress has been made to protect victims of domestic violence […] However, there is still a way to go,” concludes the coroner, Me Andrée Kronström, in her thirty-page investigation report.
Dahia Khellaf and her two sons, Aksil, 2, and Adam, 4, were found strangled in their home in Pointe-aux-Trembles on December 11, 2019. The day before, Ms. Khellaf’s ex-partner and father children, Nabil Yssaad, committed suicide by throwing himself from the sixth floor of a building in Joliette.
“This is a femicide in a context of domestic violence that can be identified as familicide,” concluded a first coroner’s report in June 2022. The public inquiry was ordered the following month by the chief coroner, Me Pascale Descary.
Since then, the Rebuilding Trust report, accompanied by 190 recommendations, has become “the turning point of a profound transformation”, underlines Mr. Kronström.
“The trajectory of Ms. Khellaf, Mr. Yssaad and their children is echoed in several findings from this report,” notes the coroner.
For example, “no integrated service center or similar project existed in Montreal or elsewhere in Quebec” in 2019, so that “Ms. Khellaf took her steps piecemeal.”
In addition, “Mr. Yssaad’s dangerousness had not been assessed or very little had been assessed.”
However, the tools available for “victims, children and perpetrators of domestic violence” must be known to the population, “particularly in Montreal,” writes the coroner.
The coroner presented around twenty recommendations targeting around ten entities. The specialized court for sexual violence and domestic violence planned for Montreal, the training of investigators from the National Police Academy of Quebec as well as the section specialized in domestic violence of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) are particularly targeted.
