Keira Kagan was a smart, passionate, empathetic four-year-old with sparkling blue eyes. Strangers would often comment on her outgoing personality and likeness to Shirley Temple.
But as the COVID-19 pandemic began to grip the world at the start of 2020, her life was tragically cut short by her biological father in what her mother believes was an act of revenge filicide.
Keira and her mother Dr. Jennifer Kagan are the focus of the London Abused Women’s Centre’s (LAWC) 13th annual Shine the Light on Woman Abuse Campaign, which launched on Friday.
“As with many cases of domestic homicide, Mr. Brown – the perpetrator – had a history of domestic violence towards me,” said Dr. Kagan. “Since the time of my separation with Mr. Brown I pleaded with family court judges and children protection workers to protect her. No one in the system did.”
The bodies of Keira and her father Robin Brown were discovered at a Milton conservation area on February 9, 2020. The pair had fatally fallen from a steep escarpment at Rattlesnake Point Conservation Area. According to Dr. Kagan, it was a murder-suicide that could have been prevented if the courts and child protective agencies took domestic abuse more seriously.
“It was obvious that institutions were not protecting Keira from harm. I was begging for help and nobody was helping her,” said Dr. Kagan.
She had been married to Brown for two-and-a-half-years. While Brown, an engineer, was initially charming and charismatic, the façade soon faded and what was left was a pathological liar who used coercive control and isolated incidents of physical violence to intimidate and humiliate his wife.
“Unbeknownst to me, he placed a tracking device on my car to monitor my whereabouts. He made threats that if I did not do what he wanted that he would punish me using whatever means necessary, and after separation using Keira – the person I loved the most – as a tool to harm me.”
Dr. Kegan left the marriage when Keira was just eight-months-old.
A judge in family court dismissed her worries that Brown was a danger to their daughter. He told the court “domestic violence was not relevant to parenting and he was going to ignore it,” said Dr. Kagan.
“Being up on the stand, speaking about the abuse, being told by a judge that domestic violence isn’t relevant to parenting, being told that I need to sit down and ‘talk’ with my abuser who I knew was extremely manipulative, dangerous, and a pathological liar. My experiences were ignored and Keira was put in danger which was utterly devastating.”
Just two weeks before Keira’s death, Dr. Kagan filed a motion in court for Brown’s access to their daughter to be suspended or allowed only under supervision. That motion was deemed “not urgent” by the judge, who adjourned the case and asked a local family and child services agency to investigate.
Dr. Kagan tried repeatedly to get caseworkers at such agencies to act with no luck.
“She was an innocent victim to a deranged predator and was failed by the systems that were supposed to protect her. She was my best friend in the world and was so much like me in many ways that when her light went out, so did mine,” said Dr. Kagan.
Since Keira’s death, her mother has fought for change across the legal and child protective systems. With the help of Liberal MP Anju Dhillon, a private members’ bill known as Keira’s Law was tabled in the House of Commons. It requires all federally appointed judges to undergo an increased amount of educational training about intimate partner violence and coercive control. The bill passed in June and is currently before the Senate.
“It’s difficult to speak out about intimate partner violence but I want to raise awareness to prevent this from happening to another parent and family,” said Dr. Kagan.
Through the Shine the Light campaign, she will have the chance to do just that. She and her daughter will be honoured throughout next month, starting with the campaign’s illumination of the Tree of Hope in Victoria Park on November 1.
The annual initiative was created in London in 2010 to cast a spotlight on the issue of men’s violence against women. During its month-long run, buildings throughout the city and country are bathed in purple light. The colour purple is a symbol of courage, survival, and honour. Shine the Light has gone from being a local awareness campaign, to a national and international one.
“It is time to shift the shame and blame from the women to the shoulders of the perpetrators of the abuse,” said LAWC Executive Director Jennifer Dunn. “We need to show women that they are not alone and they have a community to support them.”
During the campaign launch Friday, Dunn noted that the abused women’s centre, which is staffed by just 16 people, provided 11,717 service interactions last year. That included more than 6,000 individual counselling or urgent support interactions and over 5,700 phone calls for service.
“Between 60 to 80 per cent of women accessing service have experienced coercive control,” said Dunn, who issued a call to action to the various politicians who were in attendance at the launch. “You have the power to create change. So it is very important that you are listening”
A list of Shine the Light events and important days scheduled throughout the month of November can be found by clicking here.
