“The events after the arrest of Ms. Shaw do not, in retrospect, show the police, the Crown, counsel or the criminal judicial system in a good light, although her story is commonplace. These events have become routine and predictable in almost every allegation of spousal assault such that there is presumably some policy guiding the police and the Crown attorney and forestalling professional discretion in all such matters, no matter how remote the assault may be in time or indeed how trivial the contact. Spouses of every walk of life and often with completely unblemished prior character are routinely detained for a formal bail hearing for such assaults. Invariably, the defendant (not yet convicted) is excluded from his or her home and prevented from exercising custody of or access to the defendant’s children without any consideration of the factors that this court must apply by law before determining incidents of custody or access. This is not for one moment to diminish the impact of spousal abuse on family members and children in Canada. Spousal assaults are by nature serious and there are very sound policy reasons to lay such charges and have them proceed through the judicial system to ultimate resolution if not diverted. I observe, however, that the damage of which I speak is not from the laying of the charge — this will happen in any event, regardless of the manner in which the defendant is brought before the court. The way that the criminal justice system approaches the commencement of these matters, however, often wreaks family law havoc with the family unit of the defendant and the complainant, and in particular the children of those parties. Family courts decide custody and access issues on the basis of statute and case law defining the best interests of the children. The criminal justice system pays no attention to such interests because it is not geared up to do so nor are the participants widely trained in how the actions of the system — from the officer who refuses to release the defendant at the station, to the duty counsel who allows the defendant to agree to inappropriate conditions of release out of expediency — effect the lives of the members of the defendant’s family. Similarly the Superior Court is tasked with the duty of adjudicating the respective rights of the parties to remain in the matrimonial home pending the resolution of the matrimonial litigation. Routine orders excluding a party from the common home of the parties until the end of the criminal matter without thought to the consequences thereof, and without a remedy short of a bail review, place one party in a position of immediate superiority over the other party for as long as it takes (perhaps a year) for defended criminal charges to be resolved. Such rote treatment of all matters of domestic assault can lead, on the one hand, to concocted or exaggerated claims of criminal behaviour or, on the other hand, to innocent defendants pleading guilty at an early stage out of expediency or a shared desire with the complainant to start to rehabilitate the family unit.”