Ellis, a senior scholar at York's LaMarsh Centre for Research on Violence & Conflict Resolution, has spent eight years developing a risk-assessment formula to help prevent the violence that can be perpetuated by estranged spouses. On Sunday, a Toronto man threw his five-year-old daughter off an overpass, and then jumped to his death. His wife had recently filed for a divorce.

DOVE (Domestic Violence Evaluation), utilizes 13 risk factors that can be used to predict violence after a separation. The formula, which incorporates a safety plan, ranks a woman's former partner as being at low, medium or high risk for continued violence.

“We’ve been able to come up with statistically significant predictors,” says Ellis, who developed the warning system with York psychology professor Noreen Stuckless.

One notable red flag Ellis has been able to identify in men who abuse or kill their spouses is borderline dysphoric personality disorder, which is characterized by extreme emotional dependency.

“Their spouse leaving them or threatening to leave becomes warped into an act of utter and complete abandonment,” Ellis says.

“They see nothing but bleak darkness ahead. They are completely dependent on their spouse, and view her as irreplaceable, the relationship without substitute. Their whole world simply ends, and this allows them to do desperate things to people they love, to children they love. That which was unthinkable becomes doable. The overwhelming emotion becomes, ‘I hate you, don’t leave me.’”

Ellis has also found that men who abuse their wives are also more likely to abuse their children.

“We’re particularly interested in identifying predictors for those subtypes such as generally violent batterers, family batterers, and those batterers who are dysphoric borderline,” he says.

The risk factors Ellis has identified have been drawn from detailed interviews and analysis of data culled from following more than a hundred families through the mediation process in the Ontario family court system.

His hope is that DOVE will be adopted by social workers, family lawyers, mediators, lawmakers and enforcement officials.

“Predicting violence is of course not the main point of DOVE. It’s to enable frontline workers to make arrangements that will hopefully prevent such acts of domestic violence from ever occurring.”

DOVE’s risk factors include:

·         Physical or emotional abuse perpetuated during or after relationship

·         Restraining order against spouse

·         Calls to police due to spouse’s behaviour

·         Complaints of substance abuse

·         Depression

·         Outbursts of violent anger

·         Threats to harm/kill self or partner

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For further information, please contact:

Melissa Hughes, Media Relations, York University, 416-736-2100 x22097/ mehughes@yorku.ca