Inside the domestic violence case that collapsed, years before victim's husband murdered her
Police still not doing enough risk assessments or getting sufficient history on domestics, case reviews find
The video shows an intimate partner violence detective entering the interview room at Ottawa police headquarters on Elgin Street.
Hanadi Mohammed — then 42, eight years before her murder — follows in a long black dress, glasses and beige hijab. She looks at the camera and around the room before taking a seat.
It's Oct. 1, 2013, the day after Mohammed told police she was frightened of her husband Hamid Ayoub, and that he had recently held a knife during a confrontation with her.
In Arabic, through a translator, Mohammed speaks to Det. Erin McMullan. (McMullan is now an acting sergeant, and was using the surname Lehman in 2013.)
Mohammed tells the officer about life under Ayoub's rule — how he controls and dominates her, their son and daughter; how arguments with him make her feel like she has to shut up because he's a powerful man; how she's expected to serve him.
She talks of other women Ayoub knows, and about an incident in their kitchen the morning of Aug. 11, 2013, the day after Mohammed refused to speak with one of the women.
'You were trying to kill me. You don't love me'
Ayoub asked what was going on, what the problem was, Mohammed recalls. Then he put his arm around Mohammed's neck from behind her, and as he kept her there she saw him grab a knife from a knife block in front of her.
Mohammed screamed to her sleeping children for help — they'd had to call police to help her before, she tells the detective. Ayoub, still holding the knife in his fist with his other arm around Mohammed's neck, asked Mohammed why she called police on him in the past.
The kids came downstairs. The phone wasn't working that day. The daughter asked Ayoub to let her mother go and leave her alone, Mohammed recalls.
Then Ayoub released Mohammed. He apologized, giving his oft-repeated excuse that he probably behaved that way because of his stomach and back pain. He hugged the children, got breakfast ready, and ate with the kids.
Mohammed couldn't eat. She was crying.
"You were trying to kill me. You don't love me," she recalls telling him.
Ayoub replied, "If I don't love you, I would have left a long time ago."
Flees husband after trip
Two weeks later the family traveled to Sudan, their native country, for a month. There were tensions between her and Ayoub and their respective families as she sometimes resisted his control.
On Sept. 29 and 30, 2013 — as the family was making the long journey back to Ottawa — Mohammed and the children were afraid. She defied him in Sudan, and they worried he'd get revenge and hit her. (Ayoub's trial for murder and attempted murder heard that he physically and emotionally abused Mohammed for many years.)
At the Ottawa airport, Mohammed and the kids hid from Ayoub when he went to the bathroom, and she asked her daughter to get a security guard to call 911.
After giving a statement to police, she and the children headed to a friend's house instead of going home.
Mohammed ends her recap telling McMullan that she needs help, that she doesn't want to live with Ayoub, that she doesn't know what he'll do.
McMullan asks questions about what happened, then gives her assessment.
'... I have to charge him'
"From what it sounds like right now, I definitely have enough grounds that I have to charge him. In Ontario, if we get information like this, we have to lay a charge. We don't have any choice," she says, referring to a mandatory charging policy in cases of domestic violence that has been in place for decades to reduce this form of violence.
... if I don't do anything and I have this information and something happens to you, then I'm in big trouble for not protecting you.- Det. Erin McMullan in Oct. 1, 2013, interview
Mohammed asks what will happen. She wants Ayoub to leave her and the kids alone. She doesn't want anything happening to him because her parents in Sudan — where human rights aren't respected — might face repercussions.
"Here, because we have to protect everybody, we have to take what you said and we have to protect you and your kids," McMullan responds.
"Because if I don't do anything and I have this information and something happens to you, then I'm in big trouble for not protecting you."
McMullan says she's going to put Mohammed in touch with people who can help. She'll need another officer to interview the children, and she'll call Ayoub the next day and then call Mohammed to let her know what's going to happen.
Mohammed thanks her. In Sudan, she wouldn't get service like this. She says it's why she brought her kids back to Canada — she knew they'd be taken care of.
No action taken
Nothing ended up happening after the interview.
For unknown reasons — McMullan didn't write them down at the time — she didn't follow up with Ayoub or Mohammed the next day, and didn't pursue the case in any other way.
Nearly eight years later, during Ayoub's trial for stabbing Mohammed to death with a knife and trying to murder their daughter in 2021, McMullan testified she came into work 10 days after her interview with Mohammed and found messages from Ayoub and Mohammed on her voicemail.
When the detective called back, Mohammed said she and Ayoub were back together and she was safe, happy and living at home again.
McMullan testified she might not have followed through with the investigation after the initial interview because the intimate partner violence unit is "very busy," and higher-priority casework may have come in. But she doesn't know for sure.
No charges were laid.
McMullan thought that "coming in at that time and disrupting whatever it is that they had decided was a good course of action to keep her safe may have just made the situation a little bit worse. And that's not why I'm doing this job."
There were also minor inconsistencies in Mohammed's accounts of what happened during the confrontation with the knife — another reason she chose not to lay charges.
But she agreed that the mandatory charging policy exists so that victims can't be put in the position of deciding what should happen to their abusers.
"Trust me, I am very, very aware of that decision that I made," McMullan told court.
"But in this decision, I chose to give her the power back. I chose to not bring him in because I didn't want to make the situation worse for her if she felt that she had it under control at that point. And I used that inconsistency in her statement to allow the articulation of me not laying that charge. And I, at the end of the day, have to wear that, as does Miss Mohammed and all of her family."
Mandatory charging 'unreliable at best, non-existent at worst'
Leighann Burns winced and shook her head upon learning that no one followed up after Mohammed's videotaped interview, and that no charges were laid.
"That is the story of these cases — missed opportunities," Burns said.
A timely and clear police response tells victims the violence isn't OK and that their safety is important. It also tells perpetrators they'll be held accountable, and it deters some of them from continuing their abuse, Burns said.
Burns has been working to improve the response to intimate partner violence for decades. She's part of a group that, twice a year since 2019, reviews Ottawa police responses to domestic calls that don't result in charges, and brings any concerns back to police so the force can take a second look.
Each year a random sampling of about 350 calls are reviewed out of about 6,000.
Burns's most recent report on those case reviews, from 2021-22, says a lack of police oversight, transparency and accountability "has rendered Canada's mandatory charging policy for domestic violence offences unreliable at best, and non-existent at worst, representing a profound failure to women and children who are often living in lethally dangerous circumstances."
2021 letter demanded change
After Ayoub killed Mohammed and critically injured their daughter in 2021, a coalition of groups and advocates, Burns among them, wrote a letter to Ottawa police demanding change.
Deputy Chief Patricia Ferguson and Melanie Winwood, a civilian adviser on violence against women for Ottawa police, wrote in an emailed statement last week that the force has been working on those demands.
(Police declined an interview, saying Ayoub has another few weeks to appeal the convictions and double life sentences he received this month.)
Since November 2023, two new "risk navigator" social workers have been reviewing domestic calls for service where charges aren't laid, identifying high-risk or vulnerable victims, and reaching out to offer resources and safety planning, the police statement reads.
"From these interactions, we have had women who have felt empowered to come forward and make a report," it adds.
New risk assessment tool coming
In early 2025, the force hopes to launch a new risk assessment tool it committed to back in 2022 for front-line officers responding to intimate partner violence calls.
Risk assessments were done in only five per cent of reviewed files in 2021, Burns's 2021-22 case review report found. Of those, only three per cent were thorough and accurate. And in 2022, it worsened.
"Once again, despite ongoing encouragement to do a better and more consistent job of assessing risk, in 2022 the number of completed risk assessments was even lower, falling to three per cent," the report reads.
The new assessment Ottawa police commissioned from Western University is supposed to be "more concise" for officers stretched thin on scene, Burns said.
Despite consistently reporting inadequate exploration of abuse history over the eight years since case review began (and for decades before that), OPS continued to fail to explore and document the history of abuse almost half the time.- 2021-22 advocate case review report
But after years of writing up the reports on how Ottawa police handle intimate partner violence, Burns said the force's biggest problem continues to be officers who don't adequately investigate any history of abuse.
"In the Mohammed case that we're talking about, there was a history there that was really relevant to all of this. So that's really critical," she said.
"Any time police have contact with the survivor, they need to understand the context and the history. And then they need to be able to assess and understand the risk that the woman is in," she continued. "That's the missing piece that often leaves women in real jeopardy."
The 2021-22 report noted that change on this point has been slow.
"Despite consistently reporting inadequate exploration of abuse history over the eight years since case review began (and for decades before that), OPS continued to fail to explore and document the history of abuse almost half the time," it reads.
'Charge rates have not improved'
As well, the rate at which charges are laid in domestic cases remains "stubbornly unchanged."
"When [case review] was implemented, it was anticipated that charge rates would improve. Charge rates had typically hovered between 15-18% of all reports received between 2013 and 2018, with most years at 17% of all DV reports, or between 45-52% of reports deemed Actual," the most recent report reads.
"Unfortunately, charge rates have not improved after six years of advocate case review, with the charge rate in 2022 landing at 15.5% of all domestic violence reports and 48% of those deemed actual."
As well, Ottawa police are still closing files for having insufficient evidence at a "substantially higher" rate than other police forces in Canada. But the force appears to be moving in the right direction and those figures are dropping, the report adds.
In their statement, Ottawa police said "we recognize that we can, and must, do better," and that they're continuing to work with partners to improve their response to intimate partner violence.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
