Purpose <p>This commentary provides an historical overview of work on children exposed to domestic violence across three generations of researchers in Ontario, Canada (PhDs completed in 1974, 2001, 2020).</p> Methods <p>We focus on those children who never recover from the violence, namely, children killed in the context of domestic violence. Although recovery and resilience are critical areas of research and practice, not all children survive. Children who lose their lives to domestic violence are often overlooked as “collateral” victims in family homicides. It is equally important to examine the emerging data from domestic violence death review committees that point out an overwhelming number of risk factors and missed opportunities to intervene by the community, with special attention on the role of child protection.</p> Results <p>This research aligns with the articles in this special issue on the identification of the problems in the field, solutions to prevent child homicides and the challenges in the implementation of change.</p> Conclusions <p>We draw attention to our recent review of the failure to implement repeated death review recommendations over a decade in our jurisdiction and the roadmap needed for significant changes in the child protection system.</p>