Newsletter: Battered Women Support Services,
May 15th, 2026, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Today marks a historic moment for survivors of intimate partner violence across Canada.

This morning, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized, for the first time in Canadian history, a new tort of intimate partner violence grounded in coercive control.

Today is also a testament to the extraordinary courage and determination of Kuldeep Ahluwalia, who stood in her power and used her voice to pursue justice through years of litigation beginning during the COVID lockdown period, much of it while self-represented. Today’s decision is the result of her persistence, courage, and refusal to allow her experiences to be minimized or erased. Today is her victory.

For decades, survivors and anti-violence organizations have tried to explain that intimate partner violence is not simply a collection of isolated incidents, but often an ongoing pattern of domination, surveillance, intimidation, humiliation, financial control, fear, entrapment, and post-separation abuse that strips away autonomy and freedom. Today, the country’s highest court recognized that reality in law.

At BWSS, we hear these realities every single day:

on our crisis line
in counselling sessions
in legal advocacy
in family court and protection order cases
in housing and safety planning
in the experiences of women navigating coercion, fear, isolation, surveillance, financial abuse, threats involving children, and post-separation violence

Long before courts had language for coercive control, survivors were already living it.

BWSS intervened before the Supreme Court of Canada alongside our legal team at Lawson Lundell LLP to ensure the realities facing Indigenous, Black, racialized, disabled, and marginalized women experiencing intimate partner violence and coercive control were before the Court. Those realities were specifically recognized in the Court’s reasons, advancing the racial justice of survivors of intimate partner violence.

We express our deepest gratitude to our extraordinary legal team, especially Caitlin Ohama-Darcus and Nicole Welsh, for their brilliance, care, and commitment in helping bring BWSS’s intervention before the highest court in the country.

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This work does not happen alone.

Every donor, supporter, volunteer, fundraiser participant, community partner, advocate, and person who has stood beside BWSS over the years helped make this possible. Your support has allowed BWSS to continue advancing law reform, legal advocacy, public education, and systemic change rooted in the realities survivors face every day.

Today is a moment of recognition for all the victims and survivors whose experiences were too often minimized as “relationship conflict,” “communication problems,” or “high-conflict disputes.”

The Court recognized coercive control, cumulative harm, litigation abuse, financial control, surveillance, intimidation, threats involving children, and post-separation abuse. It recognized that intimate partner violence can be “greater than the sum of its parts.”

There is still enormous work ahead. Women continue to face barriers to safety, housing, financial security, immigration stability, child custody, and meaningful access to justice every day. Legal recognition alone does not guarantee safety or justice. But today matters.

Today, the law moved closer to the realities survivors have always known.