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 long way to go,” concludes the coroner, Me Andrée Kronström, in her investigation report of around thirty pages.
Dahia Khellaf and her two sons, Aksil, 2 years old, and Adam, 4 years old, were found strangled at their home in Pointe-aux-Trembles on December 11, 2019. The previous day, the ex-spouse of Mme Khellaf and father of the children, Nabil Yssaad, committed suicide by throwing himself from the sixth floor of a building in Joliette.
“It is a feminicide in a context of domestic violence identifying with a 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 Me Kronstrom.
“The trajectory of Mme Khellaf, Mr. Yssaad and their children are 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 “Mme Khellaf took his steps piecemeal.”
In addition, “the dangerousness of Mr. Yssaad 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.
To get to the source of the problem, young people and newcomers must be made aware of domestic violence, also known as intimate partner violence and associated with coercive control.
Me Andrée Kronström
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.
Read “A public inquiry into the feminicide of Dahia Khellaf”
View the investigation report