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Saturday, April 22, 2006

Remember we have collected over 5,500 sigs, from doctors nurses, hospital social workers, in 2 cities, one in only a small affluent area, all stating agreeing with the below statement, one has been presented, already, the other should be next week, and still going strong. I am shocked by the stories from the medical community they are NOT fans of the child protection agencies, nor are the teacher, they see this system doing more harm then good. Its time to really listen to the people, of this province after all we are whom they represent. So yes we have spoken to doctors social workers nurses, lawyers, judges, parents, there needs to be change, this petition has yet to reach the family's that have had involvement , but it will be interesting to see what they have to say. The mandated reporters are not happy. They report they feel more harm is done to the child and family.

PETITION

TO The Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

WHEREAS The Child and Family Services Act of 1999 has been misused toapprehend large numbers of Canadian children; it is financially onerous tothe people of Ontario;

WHEREAS the current legislation gives CAS workers more power than anypoliceman, physician or judge, the rights of Canadian children are routinely trampled in the name of "child protection";

WHEREAS the funding of this agency is piecework based, it is financially rewarded for each file opened and each child apprehended;

WHEREAS to insure accountability and transparency, we need to have the Ontario Ombudsman have oversight over Bill C210

We the undersigned petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to open up the process to public scrutiny to ensure a level playing field, and ensure a proper judicial review with proper representation.

Name (Please Print)
City Signature________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Name

(Please Print) City Signature

If people want a printable copy of this petition calling for Ombudsman oversight, Andrea Horwath will email them one. You can then print and circulate it to family, friends, neighbours, etc.

150 comments:

Anonymous said...

If people want a printable copy of this petition calling for Ombudsman oversight, Andrea Horwath will email them one. You can then print and circulate it to family, friends, neighbours, etc.

Anonymous said...

A similar petition can be downloaded from Dufferin voca front page.

Anonymous said...

At the bottom of the petition there should a signature, legal address and city.

Anonymous said...

It was not that difficult to get signatures, I spoke with Doctors and nurses, and hospital staff,some depts took the petition around for signatures.even many of the hospital SW signed it. I asked at the school, and they had no problems as well signing, and everyone had something to say about either a friend or patient, or in a few cases where the doctors told me they had been the ones to make the reports to the CAS and had no idea how bad it would go for the family and felt the child was not really help at all indeed perhaps two told me more harmed.
Minister Chambers should be inviting Ontario's medical community and school personal, and ask what they think of the child protection agencies, when the social workers are not around and sharing dinners and propaganda, it reminds me of how big pharmaceuticals treat the docs.

Its truly is sad, more sad that its allowed to go on, there is no reforming this.
The agency's are corrupt, and so is the government its NOT a child protection racket. its a terrifying agenda.

Good luck and I encourage all of you to go out and speak to the public in your community's and listen, and learn, it is not what I expected to hear.
And please we can try and make a difference for children and families. by handing in more petitions.

Anonymous said...

How are we going to retire, who will buy are houses, the mass we are going to have a massive welfare crisis, to may toxic injured children, to many children with broken bonds, to many prisons to build, how will we get buy in are old age, how will my friends 10 years younger, it will be much harder for that lot.
THINK the more children you take, the more damage done, we already know there is a massive problem with so many vaccine injured children or what ever you want to call the cause. How will we afford to take care of them all, and will there be anyone left to work at all, nurses doctors, god knows we will still need lawyers, will they be bright enough, every generation since the second world war, ( the industrial revolution the toxic world, and toxic body's) have lost IQ points, now Johnny cant read, and Suzie is living in care.And the CAS is tearing family's apart, and causing more havoc, so Joey wont bond, and Sally will suffer from a mental illness for the rest of her life.
Who will buy my house, when I retire and want to buy that condo in Victoria, Minister Chambers. Who will be left in tack. If anyone cared about children, they would have spent that money cleaning up this planet, and not taking children from parents, even broken parents can be fixed, its to late for the planet, but I still want to retire and sale my house in a few years, will there be anyone capable to do so, This government has no foresight. breaking familys bonds is a life time of risk.

Anonymous said...

i have been asisted by some freinds in reguards to my matters at hand over the last week, and have had them in my home this week as well,low and be hold, in true fation, the C.A.S showed up at thier door based from a anonimos complaint!while the worker was there she asked some very paculiar questions that had nothing to do with child protection but also questioned them about their asociates, during that questioning that worker ask who their freinds and extented family were,and with this the worker sujested that they shoyld not be asociating with individuals that have any contact with the C.A.S. in which the only person that they know is my self,then once her husband came home from work and she informed him of what took place, his then disclosed to his wife" thats why ive been getting the cold shoulder at work!"
Once again, im offered assistance by a freind who is trying to help me stop this merigoround night mare, then they get swarmed and attacted,and this is not the tenth time either!
for example, i wonder if sandra got her children back from the C,A.S.,
not!
and i wonder why an asociate john, a 5"10 ft 240 pound man is so wooried about being "gutted", in which his worries started just after
he started comming with me to the pick up and drop offs of my son!
to which my sons mothers husband did not like to much!
i sure would like to know whos these licence plates belong too!,
the gun flasher, mr. balaclava,mr.SIX who likes to follow but not have his plates exposed or seen through the windows, then mr. home window peeper,
so what do you do!!
P.S. and these only seem to happen when abuse uf my son is exposed,
a impending court hearing is at hand then it stops again till the next time!
so what do you do ????

Anonymous said...

To: Ontario MPP's
Subject: Foster child describes recent orgy of drugs, booze, abuse and
neglect while in CAS care

News Release to Members of the Ontario Legislature and the Ombudsman of
Ontario (distributed via e mail)

RE: Foster child describes orgy of booze, drugs, neglect and abuse while in
the recent care of the CAS. Some CAS workers even boozed up with the kids!

(April 20, 2006) Attached to this message, please listen to a short audio
file in MP3 format of a former foster child who called the Canada Court
Watch help line to describe some of the horrible experiences she was exposed
to while living under the care and control of the CAS. This foster child
just recently came out of foster care and is now realising the harm caused
by years of abuse and neglect by CAS workers. She is going to be going
public with her story in hopes that the harm being done to children in care
of the CAS can be stopped.

During her interview, this former foster child describes: How booze and
drugs were permitted right in the CAS facility and in some cases CAS
supervisors boozed up with the kids - Some workers allowing uninsured foster
kid to drive CAS vehicles - Some CAS supervisors abandoning their assigned
shift duties early so that they could go to their boyfriend's homes yet
still get paid as if on the job - Some workers taking younger foster kids
with them on dates with their boyfriends and in effect getting paid by the
taxpayers for personal business. These events did not occur many years ago,
but are very recent with some of these same CAS workers still working for
the CAS today!

The Ombudsman of Ontario must be given authority to watch over these CAS
agencies. The internal complaints process at most CAS agencies is NOT
working and is only designed to put barriers in front of parents. CAS
workers are helping each other to hide the massive abuse of taxpayer's
dollars because they all benefit.

It's time for the Province of Ontario to put an end to the mess with the
CAS! It's time to make these CAS agencies accountable to the taxpayers of
Ontario. It's time to give Andre Marin the authority to investigate these
out-of-control CAS agencies. All Members of the Legislature are urged to
support Bill 88 introduced by Andrea Horwath, MPP from Hamilton East riding.


Attached MP3 audio file (Running time: 7 minutes) A copy of this news
release is also attached in Adobe PDF format for printing.

Yours truly
Canada Court Watch
http://www.canadacourtwatch.com

If you wish more information you may contact Court Watch at (416) 410-4115
or you may respond by mail to the address indicated below. Please address
any response to the Archbishop Dorian A. Baxter, National Chairman.

Canada Court Watch

Box 30, The Reimer Building, 5500 North Service Road,

Burlington, Ontario L7L 6W6

Telephone (416) 410-4115

Anonymous said...

Dear Fellow Canadians.

As Chairman of the National Association for Public and Private Accountability (N.A.P.P.A.), the Canada Court Watch Program and the Family Justice Review Committee, I would like to request your indispensable support to assist us in our endeavor to bring an end to the needless injustices being perpetrated against many innocent children and families by institutions such as our family court system and branches of the Children's Aid Society.

The main goal of our non-profit, community-based organization is to provide guidance and to make recommendations to the courts and/or legal and health care professionals based on standards developed by a cross section of families within the community and implemented through consultation with representatives of the community. Where individuals or institutions violate the rights and freedoms of Canadian Citizens or conduct themselves in a manner that is detrimental to the best interests of families in our community, our goal will be to make those responsible accountable to the community for their actions.

There is a growing sense of outrage amongst the people of our great land. No longer are we prepared to stand by while others suffer the unbelievable torment that has been inflicted upon children and families in general. The time has finally come for the madness to be restored to sanity. Individuals and institutions that are clearly found guilty of negligence, incompetence and malicious prosecution must be held accountable for their actions. We need to remember the great importance of those immortal words, "All that is required for evil to triumph over good, is for good people to do nothing". Similarly it is imperative that we recognize the truth in the very sobering statement, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely!"

We, in this magnificent country of ours, are tired of political impotence in the face of tyranny. Whilst we have many fine judges and lawyers across the nation, we remain in a vice-like grip of a "Legal System" that embraces an adversarial approach whilst paying shallow lip service to such concepts as mediation, shared parenting/custody, and involvement of the community to help children and their families. Too many families are being pillaged and plundered as homes and relationships are ripped to pieces by litigation that takes much too long and offers much too little.

My concerns outlined herein are not just the vain musings of a disgruntled citizen, but rather they come fresh from the crucible of personal suffering over the 11 years, 2 months and 11 days it took me to become the first person in Canadian legal history to successfully sue a Children's Aid Society. In July of 1996 the Ontario Court of Appeal unequivocally found the Durham Children's Aid Society and its social workers guilty of the grossest negligence, gross incompetence and malicious prosecution.

Judge Summers described the behavior of the social worker Ms. Marion Van den Boomen in particular and the agency in general as "utterly reprehensible". You may well be familiar with my case, which was published by Reader's Digest and in over twenty newspapers across Canada as a moral victory and a pathetic, pyrrhic financial victory. The whole immoral and sordid action by the C.A.S. cost me in excess of $380,000 and my final pathetic award for damages was a pitiful $70,000 and the indignity of personal bankruptcy. (To read the Ottawa Citizen Newspaper article about this case click here )

Whilst my life was all but destroyed (thankfully I did win sole custody of my two precious daughters in Jan of 1987), the social workers along with many others responsible for similar injustices continue to work with impunity while harm continues to be done to other families. The cost to the taxpayers to defend the reprehensible actions of C.A.S. workers, in my case alone was between one and two million dollars. The fact that social workers who have caused such needless cost and brought such needless pain and suffering continue to work for the Children’s Aid agencies is clear evidence that the system as it now stands is utterly broken.

It is time that the citizens stand up and take an active role to usher in a new era of checks, balances, and accountability within our community. An era where the needs of our children and families will be placed first in word AND in deed. An era where justice and mercy will prevail and the families of our country will cease to be ravaged by the unbridled adversarial system that encourages the complete and utter annihilation of the family unit. An era where the families of Canada will be allowed to blossom and flourish.

We ask that you help our organization continue the work of helping those families being singled out and destroyed by our courts and government institutions. What is happening now to others could just as easily happen to you, your children, friends or family.

We ask that you join in with other people of your community in a movement which will show that people really do care about others in their community. We would very much welcome your moral and financial support and invite you to be a part of the citizen’s movement to make our system of child welfare and our system of justice for children and families the best in the world.

Respectfully and sincerely yours,

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ACCOUNTABILITY

The Archbishop Dorian A. Baxter B.A., O.T.C., M. Div.
National Chairman

Anonymous said...

Check this out. At least Manitoba has the option of having their Ombudsman investigate the child protection system!

CTV, Apr. 24 2006:

Group prays for children like Phoenix Sinclair
CTV.ca News Staff


A group gathered outside the Manitoba legislative building Sunday to voice their anger at the province's welfare system and honour the children who have suffered while in government care.

The ceremony was prompted by the recent discovery of what the RCMP say is the body of five-year-old Phoenix Sinclair, found near a garbage dump in Fisher River, Man.

The group formed a circle and said prayers before expressing their concern about the quality of care children receive in Manitoba's child care system.

"I am not angry, I am enraged that our government is letting our children die in care! I am enraged that the children are being abused in care," said Kim Edwards, Phoenix's former foster mother.

Police officers are now conducting forensic tests to positively identify the remains, the Winnipeg Sun reports.

The RCMP charged the parents of the little girl with five counts of first-degree murder in March.

The charges include allegations that five-year-old Phoenix was locked in a pig pen, shot at with a BB gun, beaten with a broom handle and deprived of food and water.

The little girl's mother Samantha Dawn Kematch initially faced various non-homicide charges, including failure to provide the necessities of life.

Police had first charged her common-law husband, Karl Wesley McKay, with second-degree murder.

Police believe Phoenix was killed on the Fisher River reserve last June. The community is located 220 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

The slain girl went missing for nine months. It was allegedly only until her 12-year-old stepbrother went to police two months ago that her disappearance was reported.

The case has brought criticism to Manitoba's child welfare system. Phoenix was placed in foster care, but returned to Kematch in 2003.

Child welfare officials closed their file on Phoenix in March 2005, three months before police allege she was killed.

In that same year, the agency was transferring files on aboriginal children from Winnipeg's family services division to new aboriginal-run agencies.

Conservative critic Mavis Taillieu speculated that a bureaucratic error may have closed Phoenix's file.

"What we've heard with the whole transfer process was that it was pushed through very quickly ... that there was a lot of room for error," Taillieu told CP in March.

Premier Gary Doer called the case deeply troubling and said a public inquiry should be launched.

Meanwhile, two provincial probes of the child welfare system have been announced. One, by the provincial ombudsman, will examine the system as a whole. The second -- involving the ombudsman, children's advocate and a psychologist -- will focus more specifically on the Phoenix case.

With a report from CTV Winnipeg and files from The Canadian Press

Anonymous said...

The social welfare system is an inverse pyramid that requires a new, daily supply of our children to run its machinery. The problem crosses a broad social economic class, from the poor welfare mother to highly skilled professionals, even the most privileged.

Government has created a social welfare industry that it cannot control, a monster that will swallow up the government that created it. McGuinty cries out that he does not know what is going on over there in Ms. Mary Ann Chamber's department, the Ministry of Child and Youth Services. A "blackhole," he calls it, a Ministry totally owned and operated by the OACAS.

The "best interests of children and families" are irrelevant to this social welfare industry. It concerns itself only with jobs, careers and money, most of all money. It takes aim at the poor, single, uneducated parent, the vulnerable. It targets the immigrants, the minorities and the disabled. It has nothing to do with the "best interests of the child." Law professor, Martin Guggeheim in his 2005 book "What is Wrong With Children's Rights" warns us to beware of "child protectors." They clothe themselves in fashionable slogans such as "children's rights" and the "best interests of the child" while making money hand over fist.

It is a policy that leaves children in drug houses and violent and dangerous situations because the "workers" are too afraid to enter. It is an industry that seeks to download through this glut of crown wards to anyone who will take them. It is rewarded with fat "adoption" bounties for every crown ward that it downloads. It is an industry that relegates troubled adolescents to "box homes" under bridges, a system that uses the "Jeffrey Baldwin" situations to call for an increase in absolute power, more tax dollars and freedom from judicial review. It is a system that refuses to admit that its own CAS agency screwed up.

Is it in society's best interest to try to preserve the biological family structure? The unraveling of the rights of children from those of parents makes children mere objects, properties of the State, to be moved around at will. This may occur for just cause or simply to meet a quota of children in care or for simple retribution against an adversarial parent. Remember the Agency must always have sufficient numbers of children in care to pay its own bills.

Government would take the child-parent loyalty and convert it to the child-state loyalty. Parents are reduced to mere incubators with the State assuming the parental role, parens patriae. Will the State do a better job than the parent? We have the residential school model in the aboriginal community. Did government help the aboriginal family? The aboriginal family is still continuing to disintegrate before our eyes. A way of life was destroyed forever. The orphan trains of the 19th and 20th Centuries also represent another government policy gone awry. It targeted poor, immigrant children to execute its own manifest destiny. Slavery, the black family has yet to recover from the its shackles. The black family was ripped apart, its social order destroyed as individuals were bought and sold like property. Children were torn from parents and husbands from wives. They were forever lost to their extended families and culture.

It was done and justified in the name of paternalism and assimilation.

In today's world, we see the continual interference of government in health care, expensive and inefficient. Government's policy on environmental issues is smoke and mirrors. Is the water we drink, safe? Is the air we breathe, clean? Can government improve on the ability of families to parent?

What can we do as concerned citizens to prevent this new, upcoming fiasco of "Leave it to Beaver" families?" Government sets a standard that few can meet, as parents and children are just imperfect human beings. Government is using legislation to micro-manage human behaviour. One cannot legislate human behaviour. Throughout history, religion has served as the vehicle to modify human behaviour. Is government legislation going to supplant religious training?

Government (McGinty's Best Start program) is already planning to be in your home from your child's birth and to age 6 when he enters school. Then the school system takes over. Similar home visitation programs are springing up all over North America. They are an intrusion into the privacy of your home, Government supervising its investment in its (your) child.

Everything leads back to the UN Convention of the Child. Canada uses this treaty to carry out its agenda but it continually violates the spirit of the Convention. Only children without parents are entitled to government support for health, food, education, clothing and shelter. Why does child poverty continue to escalate? Are we going to produce a new generation of adults who will work hard and respect their elders? Through her legal writings, Hilary Clinton has become a spokesperson for government"s enhanced parental role says, "It takes a village to raise a child." She goes on about what a wonderful job she and Bill have done with their daughter Chelsea while most of North America yawns and rolls their eyes.

Are our religious leaders not afraid that government will usurp their moral authority? These religious leaders will soon find themselves gone, as Government tries to legislate morality. Will this work? I stand convinced that the government's intrusive behaviour to the family will be disastrous. There is a growing, vocal reform movement. Can it be stopped? In my lifetime I have seen the Fascists and Communists come and go. Religion will now have to out-survive and outmaneuver the totalitarian Socialist state.

Anonymous said...

See April24 4:48 post

OMG this makes absolutely no sense. Besides the very very poor spelling and grammar I have no idea what this person is trying to say.

Her son's mothers husband? What the hell?

Anonymous said...

Religion and government do not mix to start with - this is how this disaster began. It is very disturbing that we have Catholic CAS agencies, even more then the regular one's. With the Catholics only unmarried people are unsafe, and married people "safe". It is a totally stupid platform that has destroyed thousands of families - and that has given too many to abusers who were seen as being safe due to their marital status. Religion does not belong in child protection - it is being used as a weapon of fear, oppression and intolerance.

I also consider religions that encourage the hatred of poor and unmarried people to be purely evil. Take a look at the list of dead children from the site adopters who abuse and kill - almost every one of them was given to adopters by a religious adoption group. These groups are dangerous.

Frankly I don't care about religion I care about children being abused by the CAS and CCAS agencies of Ontario and elsewhere.

Anonymous said...

To the poster that is suggesting that mothers willingly gave their children to the CAS in the 60's or at any other time stop lying. That is one of the greatest lies of all time.

Anonymous said...

Does anyone know if the 12 year old charged with murdering three family members in Alberta is a CAS kid? News reports I saw mentioned she lived with this family but was not a member of it. I have read numerous newspaper articles regarding other situations which meticulously avoid revealling the relations between people and strongly suspect that CAS is involved in the majority of such cases.

Anonymous said...

"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely!"

This statement is so true, and quite indicative of the CAS in general. And it is only they that appear to not want the Ombudsman to have oversight. There days of absolute power and control would be dismantled. Shouldn't that just say it all.

Anonymous said...

Instead of bickering with a broker we should focus on being positive in that out of this horrible death the Ombudsman may finally be given oversight of CAS.

Anonymous said...

The article below is in the Toronto Star today - it should be a good reminder of the hell created when governments and the CAS have total power and no control. It is a dark chapter in Canadian history.

$2B for native residential school students
Apr. 25, 2006. 07:58 PM
SUE BAILEY
CANADIAN PRESS


OTTAWA — A final deal has been reached that will offer about $2 billion in compensation and healing programs for former students of native residential schools.

"The government will now immediately consider the settlement agreement and the interim payments and the timing of those payments," Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice said Tuesday in the Commons.

The deal must be cleared by cabinet, a formality that's expected within days. It must then be approved by courts in several provinces.

If upheld and accepted by enough survivors, the agreement would allow about 78,000 people to apply for compensation. Many are over age 65 and living in poverty.

Payments are not expected before early next year even if the legal process goes smoothly.

Prentice has been pressured by opposition critics and survivors' groups to offer advance or fast-track cheques as promised last November when an interim deal was announced by the former Liberal government.

Hundreds of former students have died waiting for such a gesture.

Those who are sick or over age 65 were told last fall that they could apply to receive $8,000 even before the agreement is finalized by the courts.

That interim deal offered all former students of the once-mandatory network of live-in schools $10,000 plus another $3,000 for each year they attended.

Descendants of those who died after May 30, 2005 — when Ottawa appointed former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci to help negotiate a settlement — could also apply.

Sources say the new final agreement also proposes funding for healing and education programs and for a truth and reconciliation forum to allow survivors to tell their stories.

The federal government admitted in 1998 that abuse in the schools meant to educate and "Christianize" native kids was rampant.

More than 13,000 plaintiffs have since sued Ottawa and the Catholic, Anglican, United and Presbyterian churches that once ran the institutions.

While some defend the educational benefits of the now defunct schools, their sorry history has long been cited by native leaders struggling with epidemic rates of alcoholism, drug addiction and sexual abuse.

Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, was one of the first public figures to tell his own story of sexual and physical abuse at the Fort Alexander School in Manitoba.

He welcomed Prentice's announcement Tuesday.

"When I went public with my own experience in 1990, I knew that any efforts to resolve the legacy of the residential schools would have to involve not only compensation, but healing and reconciliation as well."

Those who take the lump-sum payments would release the government and the churches that ran the schools from further legal liability, except in the worst instances of sexual and physical abuse.

In those cases, an improved out-of-court settlement process to be overseen by independent adjudicators was proposed by the interim deal.

Compensation is in part meant to derail more than 21 class-action lawsuits alleging billions of dollars in damages. Many such cases were expected to bog down in court for 10 years or more.

A settlement deal would also pay off dozens of lawyers who have worked for years on related files with little compensation.

For example, a consortium of 20 law firms that led the largest national class-action was expected to receive about $40 million under the interim deal.

Those lawyers point out that the Department of Justice spent an estimated $80 million to $100 million fighting related litigation for the government.

Anonymous said...

People we need much more them over sight we need a royal commission of inquiry I hope the good reverend will agree.
We should be writing the PM and are MPPs many who come from Christian back grounds, something this government wants to get rid of, Christian is a bad word it seems.
But is anyone were to state lets call anything Jewish something that's its not, like the Holiday trees ( removing the word Christ form everything is just as offensive to a non Christian) The CAS practices hate crimes. With the help of this government. We need to take this higher, and really need to ask for and inquiry into all child protection practices, its NOT child protection.
For others that think religion should be taken out of everything, that's a very dangerous place to tread, they are trying to do so, but it was not so very long ago the Berlin Wall came down, do we need to rebuild it. Do the Jews need to live in fear, NEVER again.
Yet it is happening today to the Christians in society, many are called cults, psychology is the cult, freedom of religion is democracy, is that not why we now have troops not peace keepers getting killed in a war we have no right being in. No wonder the press is not allowed to film the flag draped coffins coming home, this is not the USA, we do not want to be red white and blue or would have left for less taxes and more money years ago.
The world is becoming more and more dangerous, lets keep are children close, helps others do the same, what ever you believe it is just plan good citizenship to help one another, and not want harm to come to children and parents needlessly.

Ask for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into CAS, this is a country wide problem,
its just really bad in Ontario, ask the social workers in other province, They have oversight, children die and are murdered in care at higher rates then in the general population, clearly it does not work.
And not only do the children suffer, parents extended families and friends, but so do the young social workers, there jobs could place them in danger, as the public is fed up. Taking other peoples children, who made them god.
They will also have to live with what they have done for the rest of their lives, high turn over staff rate, is not because of the money, or to many cases, its because many did not go into social worker to do what they are forced to do working for child protection. Social workers suffer from depression and stress at an alarming rate, most of them female and many parents themselves, do the system not understand its even damaging its own workers.
Do they care?
This is a monster, that does need children to serve. As real child abuse cases came down, they manufactured more things to consider child abuse, till living with ones own parents is the risk, how silly. We all care about children no one wants to see a child neglected , maltreated, but what is all the so called new risk really about. Parents do disagree, today's new world order, they wont even talk in case they disagree in case a social worker may ask do mommy and daddy argue. Women are being killed, true, but they all know going to a shelter there is risk they will lose their children, because CAS gets called when a women and children arrive at a shelter today, and the CAS takes the children because its no place for a child, what about GROUP HOMES, the streets the crown wards live on. The countless homeless ex crown wards.
What should a women being abused do? leave and protect herself and children, YES I agree, but once she does that, why on earth would CAS take the children, and MEN do get abused as well, WHERE are the shelters for dads.
I am a women but I know fathers get screwed in family courts,they have reasons to be unhappy.
And what reasonable mother, would want to take the child's father away from them, even if the marriage is over, the parenting is not. Want to see damaged adults talk to the adults that watched their parents go though angry divorces.
CAS encourages them is this helpful????
A Inquiry is needed into all so called Child Protection Agencies.
write your MPs and the PM office as well as MPPS, and please petitions can make a differnce, so may a large peaceful rally.

Anonymous said...

Some years ago I gave a child up for adoption thru the Catholics Childrens Aid Society.
I was an unwed mother and for the past 10 years have been searching for this now near 40 year old man.Even with registering in government and non identifying information and other avenues have not heard from him to date.
It makes me wonder now reading this if I also handed my baby, thinking I was doing what was best for him over trustingly...........TO KILLERS

Anonymous said...

There are still class actions, the special needs children, the CAS lied about, and this government knew about, its still going on. Every child in care today, will sue at a later date, if abused in care and many are. The crown wards who are prostitutes at age 12 and 13, both young girls and boys, in so called care. The social workers know they do nothing to stop it. They run from foster home abuse then group home hell, end up on the streets, no parents, because this government is not taking them in, why do they not sleep at the Minister Chambers when they need to run from abuse, they are after all her children she claims. OUR CHILDREN and the press release was a joke the Tories holding Ontario's most vulnerable/ valuable, children hostage, No Minister Chambers the CAS and CCAS is holding them, and taking more all the time,
young Matthew Reid, died in care why did no one mention his name in Queens park, none of you really give a rats ass about children. If you watched the Crown Wards, it made so many of us sick, it back fired as the reason for bill 210, and CAS previewed it??? the young girl gets better after she leaves care???
what's wrong with love she ask, why was she taken from the people that loved her??
Adoption is the answer??? have you looked at the American adoption sites, children the size of NFL players. with so many needs, who do you think will adopt the troubled teens with messed up back grounds because they have been played like pawns in a chess game for money.
Nice loving homes, I don't think so, look what is happening to so many now, incentives to adopt, that's sick truly sick, parents don't get money to help them raise there own children,and many in care because of poverty, give them the money and send the children back home.
Breaking bonds is dangerous for many reason, do some research.
Jeffery Baldwin would be alive today if he was not taken, his life was tragic, his mom and dads arguing he would have lived though, to perhaps learn from it and not repeat the pattern not every person that has witnessed parents arguing repeats the pattern. This multi generation abuse is caused by the system, Read some of the social workers own writings we have a child in care today, his mom was a crown ward and we all know where grandma was she was in the residential school system.
This system is a total failure you cant reform or fix it, and how much money will it forever cost us, how many more children and parents can you harm?

Anonymous said...

keep looking for him, I hope you find each other.

Anonymous said...

Why would the CAS oppose such a great service to us??
Ombudsman is serving Ontarians well
Marin to tackle six
big issues a year
Apr. 26, 2006.
ELLEN ROSEMAN

Getting It Right: that's the title of Ontario Ombudsman André Marin's report on the provincial agency that assesses property tax values.
Released a month ago, the report said the conduct of Municipal Property Assessment Corp. was "unreasonable, unjust, oppressive and wrong."
While praising MPAC for doing a tough job with not enough resources, Marin said the agency operated with "an exaggerated sense of the quality of its product, an unhealthy commitment to its complex computerized method of mass appraisal and a habit of secrecy that is too deep to enable public trust."
Did he make a lasting impact with his investigation? In other words, did he get it right?
Yes, I believe, on two levels: by getting MPAC and the government to implement most of his recommendations right away; and by showing how an ombudsman can be relevant in today's world.
Handling complaints only goes so far. More boldness is needed to battle a behemoth like MPAC, the non-profit agency established in 1999 to determine the current value of all property in Ontario. That amounts to 4.4 million units, or more than $1.1 trillion in property value.
MPAC is understaffed, the report said. Even with 1,400 full-time employees at the head office in Pickering and 33 field offices, revenue last year ($153.3 million) didn't meet expenses ($158 million).
"Conducting property valuations across Ontario is evidently a massive undertaking," said the report, which is available at http://www.ombudsman.on.ca on the Internet.
Many of his recommendations, Marin says, were "no- brainers."
For example, MPAC would refuse to accept a recent sale price as the best evidence of a proper assessment. Today, the agency has agreed to treat a sale as "evidence of great weight in determining current value," to be challenged only if concrete reasons suggest the sale wasn't made under market conditions.
And when property owners appealed to the Assessment Review Board, MPAC would often bring in new comparable values without giving any disclosure. Today, the agency has agreed to tell people when different comparables will be used ahead of time, seven days before the hearing date, for example. If MPAC fails to do so, it will consent to an adjournment to give owners more time to digest or arrange to counter the data.
The most important recommendation, in Marin's view, will require legislative change. He wants MPAC to substantiate its assessments in an appeal to the Assessment Review Board, instead of requiring the taxpayer to prove a mistake.
"This will redefine the relationship between the property owner and the state's assessor," he said in a telephone interview this week.
Putting the burden of proof on a taxpayer makes sense in the income tax system, but doesn't belong in a property tax regime.
You're the best source of information on yourself when filling out an income tax return each year. Only you know how much money you made and how many deductible expenses you incurred. With a property tax assessment, you're well placed to know the characteristics of your own house, but this is only a small factor.
"The heart and soul of the assessment process is the mysterious, intimidating mass of information available only to the assessor — information that in a real sense belongs to the taxpayer who has subsidized its collection through his or her taxes," the report said.
This is a "morass of data that the taxpayer's litigation adversary, MPAC, can access in its entirety." But the taxpayer's access is limited to what the agency agrees to provide.
In Manitoba, the onus is on the assessor to justify the property value.
"Its system hasn't broken down, nor has it caused a glut of appeals," the report argued. "Manitoba has liberated itself from the false analogy to income tax and reflected an appreciation of the dynamics and realities of assessment."
Marin took over as ombudsman on April 1 last year, saying he would bring the office to a new level after 30 years in existence.
Resolving injustices for the ordinary citizen is still part of the mandate. But, by reallocating resources, he has created an investigation unit to tackle difficult systemic issues that were impossible to resolve with a low-key diplomatic approach.
MPAC was a good target, having made so many enemies. The ombudsman's office got a huge 3,700 complaints from property owners and politicians after announcing the MPAC inquiry last fall.
Marin and his team plan to do six such reports a year, challenging the arbitrary exercise of power by government agencies. The ombudsman's office is doing Ontario citizens a great public service.
Ellen Roseman's column appears Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. You can reach her by writing Business c/o Toronto Star, 1 Yonge St., Toronto M5E 1E6.

Anonymous said...

The 12 year old in Alberta has been charged with murdering her brother, mother and father.

Obviously a lost soul with little or no boundaries.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this clarification. According to early reports neighbours said the "young girl in Grade 7 lived with the family, who had moved to Medicine Hat from Ottawa." What makes this even more tragic is that the family is described as wonderful by adults and youths that knew them.

Anonymous said...

OMBUDSMAN ON GOLDHAWK LIVE!
Check out who's on Goldhawk Live on Thursday:
About the show


Comin up on Goldhawk Live...

MONDAY, APRIL 24: OHL Pre-empted, Barrie vs. Peterborough Game 3

TUESDAY, APRIL 25: How are you handling the soaring gas prices?

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26: OHL Pre-empted, Barrie vs. Peterborough Game 4

THURSDAY, APRIL 27: Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin

Anonymous said...

You know I find it very insulting that someone is on here defending the CAS after the death of little Jeffrey. This blog is about making the system accountable. Many people have written to politicians and the Ombudsman to ask for his help in oversight for CAS - and all this hateful person can do is to bash single mothers, mentally ill people etc.. it is in poor taste and I hope that the person stops. If it is a broker then it is very sick that they are on here.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the info on the radio program that is good to know.

Anonymous said...

From what I understand and the website, the Ombudsman's Goldhawk appearance will be on rogers television, whatever channel that's on

Anonymous said...

You know it is not unreasonable to ask for the Ombudsman to have oversight, or to request an inquiry. Considering the activities of the CAS in past and present, it is quite logical. I don't understand why anyone would fight against it?

Anonymous said...

the above press release was from the Dufferin Voca web site, a great site to begin to educate yourself on the issues, Canada Court Watch as well.

Anonymous said...

The last poster is right on. Something needs to be done. Too many are sitting there thinking "If I shut up, it won't happen to me." This attitude allows this abuse of human rights to go on. Eventually it will touch all of us.

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much for posting this article. It may shock some readers, but is not surprising to readers that have had any contact with CAS. As you mentioned, these type of shenanigans also go on in Ontario - the land of lost files and endlessly open cases. Your analysis is excellent. No wonder CAS fights all rational attempts at accountability - it could not be more evil.

Anonymous said...

Kudos to Dufferin VOCA!

Anonymous said...

Heck, let's all move to BC! Look what's happening over there (plus the weather's nicer to boot!):
Child watchdog coming soon
MetroValley Newspaper Group
Wed 26 Apr 2006
Page: 0013
Section: The Tri-City News - News
Byline: Tom Fletcher Black Press
VICTORIA - A new representative for children with the same status as B.C.'s auditor general and ombudsman will likely be in place by the end of May, Premier Gordon Campbell says.

A transition team headed by the deputy attorney general has been appointed to implement the recommendations of retired judge Ted Hughes, who blasted the government's handling of child protection in a report presented in early April.

As the legislature resumed sitting this week, Campbell said staff are working "around the clock" to set up an all-party committee that will choose the new child representative, and oversee its work.

"The opposition said they wanted to see this legislation move forward this session, with all respectful haste if you want, they'd like to get it done," Campbell said. "So I think there's a good opportunity for us to pass it during this session."

Hughes traced the history of child advocates appointed by the B.C. government, and agreed that there was duplication in the system when the B.C. Liberal government began its core services review in 2001. But imposing budget cuts while at the same time trying to reorganize the ministry into regional child welfare agencies was a mistake, Hughes said.

Opposition critics had their first chance Monday to question the government about the report. Campbell refused NDP demands that he apologize for the loss of more than 900 child death review files, and what Hughes termed a "revolving door" of ministers and senior bureaucrats.

The government intends to implement all 62 of Hughes' recommendations, and has budgeted an extra $100 million to increase social worker staff and other services to the ministry. A new deputy minister was hired from South Africa to oversee the establishment of regional and aboriginal child care services.

The new representative for children will replace the existing child and youth officer, who reports to the attorney-general. Hughes said having the representative report annually to an all-party committee of the legislature would help take the politics out of child protection issues.

tfletcher@blackpress.ca
Copyright 2006 The Tri-City News

Anonymous said...

Maybe I overlooked it, but can you please tell me where to send the signed petitions?.. Thank you!

Anonymous said...

From the Toronto Star April 12, 2006
==========================

TO ALL FAMILIES OF SPECIAL NEEDS CHILDREN

If you are or were, at any time between 1997 and the present, the parent
or family member of a child with special needs related to, or caused by,
a behavioural, developmental, emotional, physical, mental or other
handicap this notice will be important to you.
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has allowed a class action lawsuit
to proceed which may make it possible for you to obtain money for you
and your family The Class Action alleges that the defendant, the
Province of Ontario as represented by the Minister of Child and Youth
Services, was negligent in its administration of "Special Needs
Agreements" for the provision of services for special needs children.

The law firm of ROY ELLIOTT KIM O'CONNOR LLP ("REKO") has
been approved by the Court to act as Class Counsel for the Class
Members. If you have any questions about this class action or if you wish to
receive information about this class action you should contact REKO at:
REKO LLP
Barristers
Attention: Won J. Kirn
10 Bay Street, Suite 1400
Toronto, Ontario
M5J 2R8
Tel: (416) 350-2480
Fax:(416)362-6204
Email: info@reko.ca
Web: www.reko.ca

This notice is published by order of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice
and explains:
1. The lawsuit;
2. Who might benefit from the lawsuit;
3. Your right to choose whether or not to be part of the lawsuit;
4. Financial consequences for you;
5. Other matters.

1.The Lawsuit
Anne Larcade and her son, Alexandre Larcade, of Huntsville, Ontario have sued Her
Majesty the Queen in right of Ontario, as represented by the Minister of Child and
Youth Services (formerly the Minister of Community and Social Services), for damages
for allegedly failing to provide adequate services for special needs children and their
families. The lawsuit alleges that the Minister's refusal to issue "Special Needs
Agreements", as provided by section 30 of the Child and Family Services Act forced
hundreds of parents to surrender custody of their children to the Province-
Ms. Larcade's claim alleges that section 30 of the Child and Family Services Act
empowers the Province of Ontario, through the Minister of Child and Youth Services, to
enter into Special Needs Agreements with the parents of special needs children to
provide services for children with complex disabilities. In 1997. notwithstanding the
legislative provisions for Special Needs Agreements, the Province of Ontario unilaterally
directed that no new Special Needs Agreements would be entered into.
Ms- Larcade's claim alleges that the Province of Ontario's refusal to enter into any
new Special Needs Agreements constitutes:

a. Negligence;
b- A breach of the government's special duty to protect vulnerable
children; and,
c. Misfeasance in Public Office.

The lawsuit claims damages of $500 million to compensate persons who did not
receive adequate services for special needs children between 1997 and the present.
The lawsuit claims an additional $50 million for aggravated, exemplary and punitive
damages, and $50 million for damages pursuant to section 61 of the Family Law Act.

The Court has not yet determined whether this lawsuit will be successful. The
province of Ontario has appealed the decision certifying this action as a class
proceeding to the Court of Appeal for Ontario. The Province's appeal will be
heard by the Court of Appeal on September 12 and 13, 2006. If the Province's
appeal Is successful, this action may be de-certified as a class proceeding.

2. Who might benefit from the case
If you are or were at any time since 1997:
a) the parent or guardian of a child under the age of 18;
b) that had special needs related to or caused by a behavioural
developmental, emotional, physical, mental or other handicap: and
c) your child required services that you were unable to provide as
a result of those special needs,
you may be a class member in this action.

It may be necessary for the Court to determine whether you are a class member if
this action after the trial of the common issues. As of the date of this notice, no trial
date tor the trial of the common issues has been set.
3. Your right to choose whether or not to be part of the lawsuit
(a) How to be included in the class.
If you are a class member described above, Or if you are one of the relatives mentioned
above, then you will automatically be included in the class unless you opt out of the class.
(b) How to be excluded from the class.
To opt out of this class action you must opt-out in writing before August 10, 2006.
Please contact REKO at the address above to receive an opt-out coupon.
Please note that whether you choose to remain a class member or opt-out of this action,
REKO will treat your identity as confidential and will not share your personal information
or your participation in this proceeding with anyone without your consent.

4. Financial consequences for you
In the event that Ms. Larcade is successful at the common issues trial, or any subsequent
appeal, and the Court awards damages to the class as a whole, the Court may establish
a process, including individual hearings, to review ,the amount of damages each individual
class member may claim and to assess the amount of damages each individual
class member is entitled to receive.
If the Court establishes individual assessment hearings, you will have the opportunity
to decide whether to take part in a hearing to have your individual claim reviewed and
assessed. If you decide to take part in an individual hearing, you may be responsible
for your legal expenses related to the review and assessment of your claim for damages.
You will have the opportunity to consult with REKO to obtain legal advice regarding any
individual assessment process established by the Court. In addition, you will receive
an official notice from the Court regarding any individual process.
If the class action lawsuit is not successful at the common issues trial, or any subsequent
appeal, the class members will not be awarded damages and you will not receive any
money. The members of the class, other than Ms. Larcade, will NOT be responsible
for any legal costs of the class action lawsuit and will NOT have any other financial
obligations because of the class action lawsuit,
Whether or not the class action lawsuit is successful, all members of the class who
do not opt out of the class action will be bound by the judgment of the Court. This
means, for example, that after this lawsuit is over, you could not start your own lawsuit
tor the same claim.

5. Other Matters
Ms, Larcade and her son have retained the law firm of REKO to represent them and
the class in the lawsuit. REKO will be paid legal fees only if the lawsuit is successful.
If the lawsuit is successful the amount of legal fees will be approved by the Court.
If you wish to participate personally in the lawsuit, you may apply to the court for
permission to do so. ,

For further information about the class proceeding lawsuit you may contact Won J. Kim
of REKO. Please do not contact the Ministry of Child and Youth Services about this action.
The court papers in this lawsuit are available for inspection at the office of the
Superior Court of Justice, Courthouse, 393 University Ave., Toronto, Ontario,' Court
file no. 02-CV-224460 CP. ,
Veuillez contactor REKO pour obtenir une version francaise de cette annonce.

This Notice is published under section 17 of the Ontario Class Proceedings Act and
has been approved by the Honourable Justice M. Cullity of the Ontario Superior
Court of Justice.
.
PLEASE DO NOT CALL JUSTICE CULLITY OR THE REGISTRAR OF THE
COURT. THEY WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS ABOUT
THE LAWSUIT.


for the pro CAS poster are the parents unfit ?? do you know anything at all about why so many children really are in care today.
Do you not understand only children with out parents are entitled to services.That the children's aid society's made up protection concerns, told parents to abandoned children, so they could get the care they needed, since only children with out parents can access so many service, how nice, can you imagine, taking care of a special needs child, most brain injured, vaccine injured, autistic and the like, got warehoused, or sent to foster care, I know a foster parent that has two special needs children , she is an ex crown ward, one agency fired her, ( unfit) yet another hired her, she takes in foster children with special needs because it pays very well, and receives all the services, for her own children ( that over wise she would have had to give up, therapist of all kinds in her home daily, a SUV to transport the children and all mileage , and such paid, she and her husband get respite care, and they do need it. BUT WHY ON EARTH DO THE PARENTS OF THE SPECIAL NEEDS CHILDREN NOT GET PAID RESPITE CARE, SERVICES FOR THE CHILD, IT WOULD BE SO MUCH LESS HARMFUL, AND THE RIGHT THING TO DO.
Because CAS profits.
there is no other explanation.
Doctors threatened and had there children removed to give the so called services, the CAS made blamed the mother in writing took it to court,with the same families that did perhaps abuse their child. For what, do you think this parents will ever get over the treatment she received from the social workers NO, the treated her like a criminal, because she had two adopted special needs children, and HAD paid for all the care they needed, the CAS apprehended her child days before his 16th birthday, MONEY.
This case will be heard at the Human Rights level. there are thousands of like parents in this province alone.
The special needs children, are for the most part vaccine injured, only now is the government in the US being to understand this will become the worst welfare crisis in just so few years, so are now wondering if they should not sue the vaccine industry, lol. and stop helping them bury studies.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place scratched the surface, it the tip of the ice burg.
The aboriginals settlement, they waited to many had died.
will they wait till they find a way to end the life of all the special needs children, far fetched. not really. Many have died in care, in the hands of the protectors, by un experienced staff, restraints causing death, medication errors and so many have been sexually abused. Ontario's special needs are the most vulnerable children, but very valuable to the corrupt government and CAS agencies.

Anonymous said...

Opposition critics had their first chance Monday to question the government about the report. Campbell refused NDP demands that he apologize for the loss of more than 900 child death review files, and what Hughes termed a "revolving door" of ministers and senior bureaucrats.

The new representative for children will replace the existing child and youth officer, who reports to the attorney-general. Hughes said having the representative report annually to an all-party committee of the legislature would help take the politics out of child protection issues
900 childrens deaths!!!

Anonymous said...

Instead of bickering with a broker we should focus on being positive in that out of this horrible death the Ombudsman may finally be given oversight of CAS.

To the people other than the pro-CAS mother hater, thanks for the articles and the petition!!!

Anonymous said...

Please send in your petitions to Andrea Horwath, NDP at Queens Park

Anonymous said...

Brian Ross
Known for his in-your-face confrontations, ABC's Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross has demanded answers from con artists, fugitives and billionaires. On one memorable assignment, while exposing the crooks behind a charity scam, his fight for the truth got him punched in the face!

On assignment for 20/20, Brian uncovered one of the most horrific cases of child abuse our country has ever seen. He spoke with six children in foster care who say they were starved and locked up like animals for years. He was the first and only reporter they had ever talked to about their inhumane treatment.



from the Ophrah Winfrey Show,
Montel Williams, now also doing stories on false allegations, and problems with child protection.
Bill and Melinda Gates, have spoken out about concerns,
The New Times,
Chatelaine Magazine.
The Globe and Mail
Toronto Star.
Washington Post.
Parents Magazine.
There are many books, from people that have worked in the system including lawyers, psychologist,
the Crown Wards, are trying to be vocal, the CAS still tries to gag them, like the appalling adds they ran, with the gagged child no voice, this is what does happen to a child once in care, and family's.
New Yorker,
Dr Phil.
How will the agencies keep hiding from the truth as more and more people come forward. Its as if Rosa Parks has sat down on the bus seat, times are changing, and indeed fast. Will they harass all that post their names, perhaps, but it is time we became public.


The police report made at the time the children were discovered describes nightmarishly inhumane and dangerous conditions. The children say for five years their foster mother, Jacqueline Lynch, locked them in a small barren room with one dog bowl of food and no toilet. In addition to regular beatings, the children say they endured sadistic torture at the hands of Lynch's teenage son. One brother remembers standing by helplessly as his siblings were taped into a large plastic crate and dumped into the swimming pool.

"I used to think I wished I was dead," says one child, "so I didn't have to be in this stupid place."

Brian says Lynch received $150,000 as the children's foster mother while caseworkers turned a blind eye to the abuse. Despite tips from teachers about possible mistreatment, official reports contained nothing but high praise for the Lynches. One file read, "Excellent foster parents. A secure, loving home." Finally, Brian says, a neighbor called a child abuse hotline and police responded. The six children were discovered huddled together in their room, emotionally battered and malnourished.

Brian Ross tracks down Jackie Lynch. »Jackie Lynch pled no contest to one misdemeanor count of child neglect, was put on one year's probation and ordered to pay $140 in court costs. Brian followed her trail to a small Alabama town and the confrontation was captured on tape in 2002. When Brian asked her about the children, Jackie said she had nothing to say. Her husband, Frank Lynch, was more vocal. "Don't take no damned pictures around here of me," he told Brian. "I'll break that [camera] in a heartbeat."

The children now live with loving, adoptive parents who say that watching this confrontation has been a major turning point in the siblings' lives. "You faced their demon. They thought the people didn't believe what had gone on. When you went on TV and you faced their previous parents, you made sure that they know now people do believe them."

Brian says this is one of the most important stories of his career. "I'm happy to say that the top official in Florida resigned three months after our story. There was some sense of justice for these children. … I think that we [as journalists] have a job to go after the powerful and make sure that they are accountable for what they've done."

Anonymous said...

Couple Charged With Torturing Adopted Children
A former Hillsborough County couple accused of torturing their children, including locking them in a closet, starving them and pulling their toenails off with pliers, were arrested in Utah and will be extradited to Citrus County. John Dollar, 58, and his wife, Linda, 51, allegedly forced five of their adopted children - 14-year-old twin boys, two girls ages 12 and 13, and the 16-year-old - to sleep in a closet in the master bedroom so their parents could keep an eye on them.






More Information







Name: John Dollar, 58
John Dollar and his wife, Linda are accused of using cattle prods, pliers, vises and starvation to torture five of their seven children. DCF officials said the Dollars had been licensed as foster parents in Hillsborough County from March to October 1995. Documents show the family was no longer in Florida's foster care system when they left the state. A warrant charges the Dollars with one count each of aggravated child abuse involving the children, all of whom were adopted.







Name: Linda Dollar, 51
Linda Dollar wrote in a 1995 DCF application that she left home at age 16 because of an alcoholic and abusive father. She also wrote that her first marriage ended because of abuse. The Dollars kept a low profile in recent years and lived in relative seclusion, moving in August to Beverly Hills in north Citrus. Their adopted 16-year-old son weighed 59 pounds when hospitalized Jan. 21 in Citrus County, which started an investigation, officials said. Twin boys, 14, subsequently were found to weigh 36 and 38 pounds. Two girls, 13 and 12, also were severely undernourished.


Source: The Tampa Tribune, The Associated Press, News Channel 8
Online Producer: Vidisha Priyanka of TBO.com

Anonymous said...

http://www.abolishadoption.com/in/signers.html

Read the comments from the victims of the foster/adoption industry for some insight.

Anonymous said...

I demand the journalists of Toronto to investigate and report their findings on the CCAS and CAS!!!

Anonymous said...

I demand Mary McConnville to resign per position! I do not want my tax dollars paying her salary!!!

Anonymous said...

I don't know if demanding things will get us anywhere but I hear you. The journalists that have written about Jeffrey have done a good job, and it must have been reeling for them to write about such a tragedy as well. In the past while things have been much better with the media though - City TV had a man who was abused in foster care talking after the guilty verdict, Vivian Song did a series of excellent articles, The Lens did the Crown Ward documentary, the Fifth Estate did "Failing Jeffrey", etc.. they have been listening.

I think if anything we need to DEMAND that the CAS not be allowed to hide under bogus privacy laws, and that politicians clean up this mess. The NDP are doing their part which is terrific.

I do suggest that the media stop listening to the spin doctors of this disaster, and that they reach out to those who were in the system for the truth and give them the dignity of being heard. Forcing people into silence by disregard is not good, and people need to be heard. There is a lot of pain and anger out there in regards to the CAS and for good reason. Lives have been destroyed and it is impossible to just sweep it under the carpet.

What has happened is a disaster and a mess of mammoth size. I encourage journalists to continue to listen to those who have been in the system or to those who have been affected by it - be they parents who had their children taken, those in foster care, or those adopted.

Anonymous said...

There is only so much that people can take before the bough breaks here. Jeffrey was the case that was simply too much. When this story was first covered in the media it hit various groups who were in foster care, who were adopted, and who had their children taken by the CAS. It prompted profound sadness, anger and a will to change the system more then ever before. That it took this tragedy to bring people more together is tragic itself, but it has brought a lot forward.

I think it will continue to gain in both numbers and in intensity.

From the reaction of Mary McConnville I agree she should be fired - her reaction to this tragedy on the Fifth Estate is breath taking in the callous disregard.

Anonymous said...

I also think the government needs to get the Ombudsman in the CCAS with a team of others to review and to find all the children who were in under the care of the social worker responsible for Jeffrey Baldwin to ensure that they are safe. Considering the ineptitude of this case, it is chilling to think of where other children were sent to from this worker.

The government needs to act here and stop playing cat and mouse with the truth. People do not condone child abuse in any way who are trying to change the system. It is possible that the worker gave children to other abusers - yes it is - and for that reason something needs to be done. Instead of a focus on damage control they need to make sure all other children are okay. If the worker could not determine that the murderers of Jeffrey were monsters then how many other monsters did this worker "screen" in her job?

Anonymous said...

Children are taken away – but the system can't admit it's wrong
By Cassandra Jardine
(Filed: 02/08/2004)


Social workers who believe that parents have harmed their children say they always act 'in the best interests of the child'. But what happens to those parents who protest – and believe that they can prove – their innocence? In a two-part investigation into the closed world of child protection, Cassandra Jardine hears from families who have suffered at the hands of a system they say is unjust and biased – and uncovers disturbing suggestions that, in one county at least, the council's efforts to meet government adoption targets may be making a bad situation worse



The bonus for adoptions, will the same thing happen here?

Anonymous said...

Yes it will be the same here - and there will be incentives for this strange plan. Many kids in care likely have people who can raise them and who want to raise them in their own family. But the emphasis will be on infertile couples, gay couples and anyone who "wants" a child. The crown wards will be farmed out all over the earth via the Internet with the government and various private baby brokers. It is a disgrace.

Anonymous said...

terrific we can now have more babies bought and sold in Canada like what has already happened

http://home.primus.ca/~pfmtl/BMB/

Anonymous said...

an article about the perils of foster care

http://www.liftingtheveil.org/foster04.htm

Anonymous said...

Is adoption safe?

Jail for Abuser of Adopted Girls
by The Associated Press
Published Apr 19, 2006
ROCHESTER, N.Y. A Henrietta man received his sentence for sexually abusing two of his mentally disabled adopted daughters.

Monroe County Judge Stephen Lindley sentenced William Every, 60, to 4-12 years in prison. He was convicted of raping and sodomizing his two adopted daughters from the summer of 2004 to April, 2005. Every apologized for his actions. His lawyer said alcohol abuse led Every to abuse the girls. ll

Anonymous said...

Former NFL Player, Wife Charged With Child Abuse

POSTED: 11:54 am EDT April 21, 2006

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Former NFL offensive guard Rich Tylski and his wife were accused of hitting their adopted daughter with a belt, slamming her head on a table and other abuse that left the girl with broken bones in her hands and leg.

The 35-year-old former Jacksonville Jaguars player and wife Jane, 36, were free on $20,000 bond each on the child abuse and neglect charges. They were released Wednesday after turning themselves in. A message left on their home answering machine was not immediately returned and it was unclear if they had lawyers.

The child, whose age and name were not released, was taken to a Jacksonville hospital on March 10 for a fractured right thigh bone. Her parents said she had fallen down the stairs about eight hours earlier.

Doctors found extensive bruising in various stages of healing. A skeletal survey found six or seven healing fractures in the child's hand, the police report stated.

The girl later told investigators that she lied about falling down the stairs and she demonstrated on a doll how her mother had pushed her leg over her head until they heard a pop, the report said. The report also stated that Rich Tylski said he had hit the child with a belt.

The Department of Children & Families told police the girl missed 14 days of school from October to March.

During an interview on March 24, the child told investigators that her mother slammed her head on the table when she would not eat. She said both her mother and father hit her. She said a scar on her forehead was from her mother slamming her head into the table, but denied her mother hurt her leg, the police report said.

In a second interview on April 3, the girl described how her mother would bend her fingers backward.

All Pro Dad, which promotes active fatherhood, listed Tylski as an NFL player involved with the organization on its Web site. A call to its Tampa office was not immediately returned.

A call to the DCF about the case was not immediately returned.

Tylski played the first four years of his career for the Jaguars, then spent four years with the Pittsburgh Steelers and one year with the Carolina Panthers before retiring after the 2004 season.

On the police report, he said he was self-employed. His wife did not list an employer on her arrest report.

Anonymous said...

Published June 13, 2004

Accused foster dad had clean record
Christopher L. Gray, Maya Gasa are charged in sexual abuse of two girls.


Gray



Gasa


Chronology of the case
July 21, 2000: Christopher Gray and his wife are licensed as foster parents.

April 10, 2002: Routine update of the Grays' license.

July 21, 2002: The Grays are re-licensed as foster parents and licensed to be adoptive parents.

Feb. 28, 2003: Foster and adoptive home updates conducted as a result of the Grays' split.

Aug. 22, 2003: Routine adoptive update on Christopher Gray only.

Jan. 14, 2004: Gray voluntarily discontinues his foster care license.

May 25, 2004: Nixa police arrest Gray and live-in girlfriend Maya Gasa after receiving a report of possible child sexual abuse and a controlled substance in their home.

By James Goodwin and Didi Tang
News-Leader Staff

The state considered Christopher L. Gray fit to be a father.
But that changed last month, when police arrested the Nixa man and his live-in girlfriend, Maya Z. Gasa, on charges that they sexually abused two girls in their home.

Officials subsequently removed five children — three daughters adopted by Gray, 39, and two sons of Gasa, 28. Besides adopting the three girls, Gray had been a foster parent until voluntarily discontinuing his license in January.

The case comes two years after the death of a Springfield foster child and a month after the state legislature approved an overhaul of the foster care system.

But even past critics wonder what more could have been done in the Nixa case.

Current charges aside, Gray's record is unblemished, by all accounts previously known to the state. Background checks of him reportedly turned up no criminal history.

And he checked out with references foster care officials contacted.

"What's the state to do until (suspected abusers) get caught the first time?" asked state Rep. Mark Wright. The Springfield Republican pushed for changes to the foster care system after the death of 2-year-old Dominic James.

Gray would go on to adopt the three girls, presumably to offer them the safe and stable home they lacked. But investigators now wonder whether his interest in children was sinister from the start.

According to a probable cause statement filed with the Christian County Circuit Court, Gasa told police that Gray "told her that he became a foster parent so he could have the girls as 'sex slaves.'"

Gray has pleaded not guilty to five counts of first-degree felony statutory sodomy and one count of first-degree felony statutory rape involving an 11-year-old girl.

He awaits a June 25 preliminary hearing on two other charges — first-degree felony statutory rape and first-degree felony statutory sodomy — involving a 6-year-old girl.

Gray posted $25,000 bond and was released June 1, a week after his arrest. Gasa posted bond June 3. She is scheduled for an Aug. 10 hearing.

The defendants and their attorneys didn't respond to requests for interviews.

Investigators are now trying to determine whether Gray abused any of the 10 or so foster children he took care of between July 2000, when he was first licensed as a foster parent, and January 2004.

Five times during that period, foster care officials checked on Gray and his home as part of licensing and relicensing procedures, in addition to regular visits.

Eight times during that period, Gray allegedly committed statutory rape or sodomy on the 11- and 6-year-old girls.

Gasa was known to state adoption officials only as a caretaker, not as an adult living in the home. She is accused of taking part in some of the alleged activities.

The 11-year-old told police that two home videos were made of her, one while Gray alleged abused her and the other while Gasa reportedly did.

Gray destroyed the latter video, the girl told police. But a search of the home turned up more tapes, Nixa Police Chief Bruce Belin said.

"We recovered a bunch of videotapes, and what's on those videotapes I'm not going to release," he said.

The search also turned up a substance Belin said field-tested positive as a controlled substance. Police are awaiting lab confirmation of the test. Belin wouldn't say what he believes the substance to be.

Chris Whitley, associate director of the Missouri Department of Social Services, said a review of procedures in the case isn't complete.

But, he said, it appears all background checks and inspections of Gray's home were handled properly.

Whitley's department oversees the Children's Division, which handles both state adoptions and the foster care program.

He said Gray and his wife were licensed as foster parents in July 2000.

They underwent a routine review in April 2002 and were relicensed as foster parents and approved as adoptive parents that July.

In February 2003, officials conducted foster and adoptive home updates as a result of the Grays' split. Gray's wife has not been charged in the case.

A routine update was conducted on Christopher Gray only in August 2003.

Whitley said the checks are done to ensure "the person is fit to be a foster parent."

Caseworkers and others involved with checks on Gray's home will not face disciplinary action, Whitley said.

"We had no prior cause whatsoever to believe children were unsafe in his home, in his care, until the police brought this matter to our attention," he said.

Whitley noted there is only so much officials can do to verify the intentions of those volunteering to be foster and adoptive parents.

"Even with the best checks and balances, this system still relies to some degree on the truth and veracity (of prospective and active foster parents)," Whitley said.

"And that will probably forever be the case, whether that's in Missouri or any other state."

Regardless of where any fault might lie, the allegations against Gray and Gasa place state foster care officials and their practices under scrutiny once again.

A heavy push for changes to the system began after the August 2002 death of Dominic.

His foster father, John W. Dilley Jr., was convicted in November of felony assault and child abuse resulting in Dominic's death. Dilley was sentenced in January to 15 years in prison.

State officials have dealt with other suspected sexual abuse cases recently. In January, a 29-year-old West Plains woman pleaded not guilty to statutory rape after she was accused of having sex with her foster son when he was between 13 and 16.

Cara Elizabeth Allen also reportedly gave birth in 2000 to a child fathered by the foster son. A trial date hasn't been set. Allen was sentenced to 120 days in jail and five years' probation in 2002 after admitting she had sex with an 11-year-old foster son.

Changes enacted after Dominic's death are supposed to keep these things from happening. The Dominic James Memorial Foster Care Reform Act requires stricter background checks for prospective foster care parents and outlines the procedure for firing state employees whose job performance leads to the death or serious injury of a child in state custody.

The law will go into effect as soon as Gov. Bob Holden signs it.

Fingerprint checks through the Missouri Highway Patrol and FBI have been required since February for the licensure of prospective foster care and adoptive parents, said Jim Harrison, assistant deputy director of the Department of Social Services.

The same goes for routine relicensing, he said.

"Dealing with human beings often results in unpredicted events," he said. "You do your best to try to get the information. You build a system where you hopefully see red flags. ... But when you don't have that information, it's difficult to predict the future."

In some of the recent cases, the new law likely would not have prevented any alleged abuse, Whitley said.

Wright said, if further investigation shows more extensive background checks could have been performed, perhaps the legislature should consider requiring them.

"Maybe the background checks aren't sufficient," he said.

But "as far as this specific case (in Nixa), I don't know what more the state could have done."

Certainly, Gray's case once again highlights the difficulty of predicting who will make a proper adoptive and foster parent when he or she has no criminal history.

Past critics of the foster care system, including Wright, sympathize with the dilemma.

But Ronnie Dean, president of Families for Change, isn't among them.

He said allegations against Gray and Gasa point to one more failure of the Children's Division.

"It's another case of (division employees) not doing their job," Dean said.

"We have forgotten the children. We never consider the children, what they're going through."

Dean is involved with a federal suit filed this month by a Fair Grove couple against the Department of Social Services. They say they suffered mental anguish and emotional distress after the state refused to let them adopt a nephew along with his two other siblings.

Bev Long, the Springfield-based regional coordinator for the state Children's Division, said she couldn't discuss specifics of the Nixa case.

But she said officials are always concerned anytime something bad happens to a child, as is alleged in the Gray and Gasa case.

"We'll look at the situation and see if there's something we can do better in the future," she said.

"But there may be nothing."

Anonymous said...

Jeffrey labelled `bad,' trial told
Sister told of horrific abuse
`Bad things happened in tub'

Toronto Star, NICK PRON, COURTS BUREAU, Nov. 2, 2005.

The revenge the young girl wanted was clear — her grandparents should be jailed "forever" and get roughed up in prison for killing her younger brother, 5-year-old Jeffrey Baldwin.

And, as a court also heard yesterday, the 8-year-old child said she never wanted to see her mother and father again "because they let it happen."

Eight months after Jeffrey's death on Nov. 30, 2002, the anger that had been bottled up inside the girl boiled over one day in a fit of screaming, crying and cursing, her one-time foster mother recalled. Both her identity and the child's are protected by a court order.

"He was just a little boy," the woman recalled the girl saying, adding that she said she hated "all those assholes" who lived at Jeffrey's east-end home.

It was a reference, in part, to her grandparents, Elva Bottineau, 54, and her 53-year-old husband, Norman Kidman, who have pleaded not guilty to one count each of first-degree murder and unlawful confinement.

Jeffrey died from septic shock after prolonged starvation.

The foster mother told prosecutor Beverley Richards how she kept a diary of what Jeffrey's three siblings — two girls and a boy — said about their life with Bottineau and Kidman. The grandparents were given custody of the children under a court order after allegations of abuse were made against their mother.

The court has heard from other witnesses that the children had been branded by the grandparents as the "good kids" and the "bad kids," with Jeffrey and one sister being seen as bad.

When they first went to the foster home, Jeffrey's brother wanted to know where the "pig wall" was located because that's where Jeffrey and a sister had been ordered to sit at their grandparents' home, the foster mother recalled him asking.

The oldest child was "horrified" when her younger sister sat at the table with her to eat because back at her grandparents' house neither she nor Jeffrey were allowed to eat at the table but had to sit on the floor on a mat, she told Richards.

"Pigs don't eat on the floor and pigs don't share the table," she recalled the child telling her.

Gradually, the woman testified, the children divulged that they had "secrets" about life at their grandparents' house.

One girl blurted out that "bad things happened in the tub," going on to say that Kidman would hurt her, and pointed to her vagina, the woman recalled.

Her sister then described how Kidman would hit them with a metal spoon until their buttocks bled, she said.

Everyone in the house knew that Jeffrey was dying, the oldest girl told the foster parent, she recalled. The day before Jeffrey died he had to take his regular forced march around the kitchen for exercise, but he was so weak he collapsed, she recalled the child saying.

And with a representative from the Catholic Children's Aid society making notes in the gallery, the foster mother testified she recalled the girl asking her: "Why didn't they (CCAS) come before Jeffrey got sick?"











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Anonymous said...

Send abusive mother to jail



Jake Rupert

The Ottawa Citizen



Friday, October 25, 2002

An adoptive mother who abused a toddler, causing six bone fractures and injuries, should go to jail, a court heard yesterday.

Calling the abuse Louise Lavergne, 43, inflicted upon the child inexcusable, assistant Crown attorney Brian Holowka told Justice Lynn Ratushny society demanded denunciation of the crime.

"The community entrusted the care of that child to Ms. Lavergne, and that trust was violated," he said. "This is not an incident that happened once. ... These injuries happened on at least three occasions."

Earlier this week, Ms. Lavergne pleaded guilty to one count of assault causing bodily harm, which covered her actions between March 2000, when she adopted the 10-month-old girl, and September 2000, when doctors detected the abuse on a trip to CHEO.

She initially denied the allegations and claimed the injuries were the result of accidents.

She later admitted to police she caused the injuries in various ways, including pushing the child into the table while the child was in a high chair, banging the child's elbows into the floor and swinging the child into the side of a bathtub.

In his submissions to the judge, Mr. Holowka said an 18-month jail sentence, followed by two years' probation, would adequately reflect society's abhorrence of the crime.

Earlier, Ms. Lavergne's lawyer, Joe Burke, introduced evidence showing Ms. Lavergne will never have custody of children again, has true remorse for the crime, is taking counselling and has changed.

He suggested a conditional sentence, which would spare his client time in jail, was an appropriate sentence in the circumstances.

Judge Ratushny will sentence Ms. Lavergne in two weeks.

© Copyright 2002 The Ottawa Citizen

Anonymous said...

April 4, 2006
Long road to recovery
One man battles to overcome a childhood full of abuse and loneliness
By VIVIAN SONG, TORONTO SUN
All John Dunn remembers is the feeling of cold metal against his bare penis.
As punishment for being a 6-year-old bed wetter, his foster father stood in front of him, held
pliers to his penis and threatened to clamp it down.
When he accidentally flooded the toilet after a large bowel movement, as punishment, his
foster father grabbed his little head, pushed it down into the bowl, and flushed the toilet.
"I thought I was going to die," Dunn, 35, says from his Ottawa home.
Dunn was 3 when he and his two older sisters and older brother were placed in the child
welfare system. Their mother suffered from depression and alcoholism and had attempted
suicide.
The former Crown ward speaks openly and earnestly about his experiences as a byproduct of
the system himself, but also as the founder of afterfostercare.ca, a website he created for
children living in foster care.
The comprehensive site is a one-man show for now, born out of a crisis in his adult life.
But the child advocate has lofty ambitions for his work-in-progress, Foster Care Council of
Canada, hoping to empower children in the system with their legal rights and perhaps spare
some of them the pain he endured.
Like thousands of youth in care before him, Dunn, now 31, grew up against the odds of a
loveless and lonely childhood.
AN INNER RESILIENCE
Happy memories are scarce but inextricably linked to prolonged periods of stability in a
caring home, be it months or a few years.
Like thousands of children before him, Dunn survived by summoning a resilience and
courage unique to lost, marginalized children.
But eventually, as he would come to discover in his adult life, the towering buildup of anger
and abuse most often ends in a fantastic crash that can threaten to crush its victim.
In 2001, Dunn went to the Toronto Catholic Children's Aid Society to retrieve his personal
files and retrace his life steps as a child. When the agency refused to hand them over, saying
he could only see them on site, he succumbed to a nervous breakdown.
"I thought I was going crazy," he says. "Normally I'm a happy-go-lucky guy but I spent a
month crying. It just made me snap ... It set me off because that's how I was always treated
by the CAS."
Dunn equates the importance of his files to the importance of a family photo album -- the
only tangible record that connects him to his past.
"That's like saying I had to schedule my reminiscing time," he says. "Seeing files --
handwritten files -- are proof you existed. You can hold it in your hands and say, look you
existed."
INVISIBLE CHILDREN
The notion of confirming one's existence is a common motif among children of the welfare
system, many of whom grow up feeling invisible, full of self-doubt.
In a stirring documentary, Wards of the Crown, released last month by the National Film
Board of Canada, Emily, now 20, echoes Dunn's sentiment, when she describes life on the
streets and the rush it can provide for a lost, fading girl.
"Men care," she says matter of factly. "And that's okay, even if it's in a bad way. It makes
you feel alive. Your heart actually beats whether it's beating so fast because it's dangerous or
because you think they do care."
To draw attention to his plight, Dunn embarked on a little-noticed protest walk in 2001 from
Toronto to Charlottetown, which took a month to complete. During that time, he created a
documentary about his life in foster care, which aired on a CBC radio program four years
ago.
Before his journey, he set up a website that would eventually morph into a resource for other
children of the welfare system.
Because he was uprooted so many times in his childhood and lost countless friends along the
way, Dunn developed a habit of detaching himself from potential relationships, attaching
himself instead to geographic sites.
"I miss locations more than people: Parks, highways. I never missed people and I still have
that pattern today."
The pattern of instability is another trap for children of the welfare system. In his adult life,
Dunn worked hundreds of "joe jobs" and moved countless times, including to the streets of
Toronto.
"The effects of instability were I never learned to stick with anything," Dunn says.
"Nothing's stable. I had problems working because when people treat you the way you were
treated in group homes, you weren't able to handle authority. Today I can handle authority
but it took one year of therapy and lots of time."
13 HOMES IN 15 YEARS
Dunn was placed in 13 different homes between the ages of 3 and 18. He and his older
brother were nearly adopted from the foster father who abused them in Trout Creek.
According to the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies, there is no standardized
system of screening potential parents, nor are the eight to 12 training sessions standardized
among the province's 53 CASs.
More than Dunn, it was his older brother who bore the brunt of abuse from their foster father.
When he played with fire as a child, their foster father burned his hands with matches and
would drag him down the stairs by his hair.
Finally, when Dunn was 9 years old, he and his older brother decided to run away.
"My brother said, 'That's it,'" Dunn remembers. "(My foster dad) was sleeping so we snuck in
the house to get our allowance money from the jars and snuck out."
The two little boys walked along Hwy. 11 all afternoon and into the evening.
But at about 9 p.m., a family member found the pair and drove them back home.
For the next nine years, Dunn and his brother would move through other abusive foster and
group homes.
The only time Dunn brightens when speaking of his childhood is when he speaks about the
time he spent with his biological mother. She had been sober for six years and was allowed to
be reunited with her children for visitations.
"I remember sitting in the main lobby of the Toronto Catholic CAS, and beside me was a
lady. She knew (who I was) and flew over to me and gave me a big hug. It was pretty wild,"
he says. "It was a good moment for me, the first time I felt any good care."
MOTHER'S SUICIDE
She committed suicide in 1998.
"I loved her like crazy," he says. "The only time I felt loved was when I was with her."
A chance meeting with his older brother in Toronto years later would confirm the scars of
abuse are too overpowering for some to recover from.
"He's in too far," Dunn says of his brother's drug and alcohol problem. "I was too young to
(understand) but he was old enough to be affected and missed mom. He was devastated."
For Dunn, defeat isn't an option. He's now studying at Algonquin College to be a law clerk,
with the ultimate dream of becoming a lawyer. He wants to learn how to use the law and
know his rights.
"If I can't beat them, might as well be them," he says. "I see a future now whereas I didn't see
one before."

Anonymous said...

The story of Doug on this site is not uncommon. The CAS placed too many in abusive homes and never looked back. This is why Jeffrey's story has caught the attention of so many who were in the system. This is why the plan to accelerate adoption is so disturbing.

Many kids in care should be heard, and many cases should be reviewed. I wonder how many can be returned home or given to loving relatives that do care, as opposed to being shipped to "forever families" where the child is expected to just "blend" in and pretend that the strangers that adopt them and their families are their roots.

There is something gravely wrong with a system that is allowed to change a persons identity for others. Remove the abuse in actual abuse cases, not the identity, not the truth, and not the history and background of the child. In altering and removing the identity we teach children to be more ashamed for things that are not their fault to begin with.

In actual cases where one cannot live with their family the child should have a guardian where the person is NOT allowed to tamper with their identity, where the childs birth certificate is not falsified as if they are born to the adopters, where the child has ongoing help - and a system based on truth, no lies, no illusions and geared toward the child not those who are adopting.

Anonymous said...

And above all people need to look for abuse where these agencies claim there is none. The CAS screening a person does not mean that they will be forever safe. The sooner that society understands that the better to protect children. Look at Fred for instance the brother of Jeffrey, it is obvious that he was re-abused. Now how horrible is that? A double edged sword of abuse.

For years it has only been one group of people that are abusive in our society - the natural family, both paving the way for foster and adoptive families to abuse, and in teaching people that those who adopt and foster are safe simply for that reason alone. While not all abuse in either situation the numbers are abnormally high overall.

Check out foster and adoption groups of survivors of the system and ask them how many they know who were abused. The numbers are staggering. This is something that the CAS does not want to explore. They don't want to as the truth will as well hamper their industry.

We worship those that take others children and put them on a pedastal while degrading the natural family. We trap kids in between a system that has nothing to do with them. And when it fails the CAS fails as well - they fail by running, denying and not answering.

Jeffrey Baldwin "the case of one too many" will change the system if we are to have any hope left for families and children. This case has touched the hearts and minds of thousands of people. He was one too many, and his death must be examined in great depth, along with a system that has not changed in decades. All the system has done is get more powerful over the years with no oversight.

And of course once again, it is only the CAS that does not want the Ombudsman to have oversight which is telling and transparent in and of itself.

Anonymous said...

And in the past the CAS told people that their mothers and fathers were unfit, that they did not want them, that they chose adoption, that they were hiding, that they signed contracts to never be found or seen again, that they do not care, and that they moved on with their lives - happily ever after leaving their babies and children behind.

And it worked and for years people believed them. Until a wonderful thing happened - the mothers and fathers came out of the closet and started speaking changing the lies to truth, changing the pain to some type of healing in a system that was never about children to start with.

Many groups have come together to change the past, and to make the future a better place. It is no secret that the majority of those who were in the system do not support it in the future. The story of John Dunn, and others in the system is the very beginning and the tip of the iceberg in what has went on with the CAS.

Absolute power always becomes corrupt, perhaps it is just human nature, but it is inevitable that such power must be brought down to earth.

Anonymous said...

BC will have external oversight plus, Hughes writes about the increase in children taken into care, he has concerns about it as well.

Judge Ted Hughes on BC agencys, his report is on line

Anonymous said...

That is great for BC, I wish Ontario would get it together. I hope that the NDP bill passes.

Anonymous said...

If the government is really serious in protecting children, Kevin's law should provide an inquest into the death of all children, those at home, in hospital and in care.

The government needs to dissolve the Ministry for Child and Youth Services as it is totally owned and operated by the OACAS. There is a basic conflict of interest. These organizations need to be put outside of government and subjected to strict regulation and review.

The police activity of these agencies needs to be restricted to the real police as in Quebec.

Anonymous said...

For anyone who has not seen the links Amanda founds some links about crisis nurseries - what a great idea.

http://www.sbcc.ca/cn.htm

http://www.kidskottage.org/

A thousands times better of an idea then taking children to broker them to infertile couples, gay couples and anyone who "wants" a child. Instead help the family instead of allowing the children to be victimized for others.

Anonymous said...

Even the Toronto Sun gets it! In case you missed it, here's the lead editorial today:

May 1, 2006
EDITORIAL: Give this watchdog more bite

Ever since he was appointed Ontario Ombudsman a year ago, Andre Marin has been making trouble for Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government.

And that’s good, because that’s his job. Marin investigates cases where citizens receive poor service from the province, just as the auditor reports on fiscal mismanagement. Beyond dealing with individual complaints, Marin has increasingly been taking on cases where he sees a system-wide or “systemic” failure of government. Thus far he’s exposed:

- Bureaucratic bungling which forced parents of severely disabled children to give them up to children’s aid societies.

- A shocking failure to update the screening of newborn babies for diseases, a situation that could easily have been fixed for $2.4 million.

- Arbitrary and secretive conduct by Ontario’s Municipal Property Assessment Corp. in setting property assessments. These assessments directly impact on how much property tax people pay.

Such rulings haven’t made Marin popular with the government, even though he was chosen for the job by an all-party committee and says most of the problems he’s uncovered started before the Grits took office.

Now he’s worried the powers of his office are being curtailed. He notes a law passed recently by the Liberals establishing a civilian review process for complaints about the police contains a specific clause keeping the agency out of his jurisdiction.

Ontario, Marin says, is also lagging behind other provinces which empower their ombudsmen to probe municipalities, universities, school boards and hospitals — the “MUSH” sector which accounts for 80% of provincial spending — as well as children’s aid societies, which receive $1.5 billion annually.

Soon after he was appointed to his job by the government, a committee of senior civil servants recommended his entire office be scrapped as a cost-saving measure. Bad idea.

As Ontario’s ombudsman and in his previous jobs as the federal military ombudsman and head of Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, which probes the use of police force, Marin has shown himself to be a tough, compassionate defender of ordinary citizens.

We agree with him that his office should be given the same jurisdictional authority as the auditor.

Marin says he doesn’t know what the government is afraid of, given that he only has the power to report on and publicize his findings. Neither do we.

Anonymous said...

Yes what are they afraid of?

Who took kidnapped the children out of the Toronto area schools held them hostage, to get the mother. Is this how we handle immigrations issues now as well?? disgusting, was the CAS involved? remove frighten children from schools, lock them up???

Look at the streets all over the USA, one inhuman congressman, told Larry King, stop feeding the children in schools deny them an education, starve them out. WHAT sounds like extreme child abuse to me. What a nice world we are living in, what nice people do our children have for role models.
The government traumatizes children daily, they don't care about Jeffery or dare I say Matthew Reid and the others that have
been murdered in care. They really don't care.

CAS is not about child protection its about jobs,and money, the only see OUR children as future dollars and making money on them now is a good business its exploitation,its total insanity, and its time parents spoke up, for those that cannot, and said STOP. Child protection has not ever, produced a generation that has done better. The Crown wards abused neglected in care, are living on the streets, the children they take tonight will they fair better,unlikely. Oversight, please. This is the broken promises leader ship of Ontario, the last lot thrown out for mass corruption, Air Bus before that,a bunch of actors playing politics, children would do a better job of it by grade 4. A culture of meanness. The seeds of a genocide. If its very illegal for who ever took the children from the schools this week, why does CAS do it all the time, are they above the law. they seem to think so.


What are they afraid of indeed.

Anonymous said...

Girl accused in killing of an Alberta family transferred to Calgary

Canadian Press

Medicine Hat, Alta. — A 12-year-old girl accused of killing a Medicine Hat family is being transferred to a Calgary facility so she can attend school.

The girl appeared briefly today in Medicine Hat youth court, where her case was put over until June 2.

With her hair covering much of her face, the girl showed no emotion as she peered at bystanders in the courtroom.

Jeremy Allan Steinke, 23, and the girl, who cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, are charged with three counts of first-degree murder.

Police found the bodies of a 42-year-old man, his 48-year-old wife and their eight-year-old son at a Medicine Hat home on April 23.

When she is not at court in Medicine Hat, the girl will live at the Calgary young offenders centre so she can take courses and attend other programs.

ANOTHER FOSTER CHILD CHARGED WITH MURDER, SHE IS ONLY 12, WHERE WAS THE SOCIAL WORKER, WHY IS THIS CHILD DATING AT ALL? NEVER MIND A MUCH OLDER MAN.
IS IT A RESULT OF YEARS OF ABUSE, FROM FOSTER FAMILYS. DID THEY ABUSE HER,?
WHAT CAUSES KIDS IN CARE TO KILL?
the 3 year old in Wellands murder, was also a teenage girl.
Why is it not in the press that this is a foster child? to much has happened? but it was leaked, now ageny covering it up. Where were they?

Anonymous said...

With all due respect it is the fault of infertile couples that this filthy industry is in motion, as their DEMAND supplies the market. They are the one's buying the babies, they are the one's hunting the babies, and they are the one's financing them. While in yesteryears some who adopted from CAS may not have known about the coercion todays infertiles WILLINGLY hire such people to literally hunt down a baby. They are NOT innocent, they are the problem. One does not hire a baby broker to hunt down a baby - that alone is sick. I know people who are infertile who are literally disgusted with others that do this, and they agree it is a filthy industry. Infertiles choose to do this and they can think for themselves.

These people are wacko as well - who the hell buys a baby and pretends that it is theirs? The mentally ill sell children, and the mentally ill buy them too.

Anonymous said...

Holding therapy is child abuse - and it is another sick experiment by infertile couples to FORCE children to pretend that they are just like them. Babies and children do not bond to strangers -this therapy has killed children and it should be banned. These people are wacko and nutjobs for doing this - and then therapy is just another layer of abuse on the child that they have captured for whatever reason.

Anonymous said...

Living with infertile strangers who participate in various experiments to convince a child that they are their own - in a twisted ownership mentality is very disturbing. They even have "holding therapy" to abuse the child into living in a make believe world where the natural family becomes invisible and the adopters remain in power and control. It is devious, it is sick and it happens too much.

The abuse in foster care and adoption was bad enough for decades now these people are murdering them.

Anonymous said...

Adopted parents do and have killed or harmed children they could not handle.

I AGREE - and foster parents kill the child as well as they cannot handle them because THEY ARE NOT THEIR CHILDREN. Setting up a system with the lie that someone else's child is your own is insain. Strangers are not going to interact with someone else's child the way they would with their own -the child is not like them, and never will be - but the expectation is that they will be just like them. How can Johnny be just like the adopters at the age of 4 let alone an infant. The whole thing is ridiculous - foster care and adoption is not for children and it never has been. It is an industry for others.

Anonymous said...

I hope to God that Jeffrey's siblings are not living with nutjobs that expect them to be "just like them", not after all they have been through.

Anonymous said...

I am unsure where you got info that the 12 year old is foster child. According to the news tonight (CBC) there will be a special court hearing to determine who will be the guardian of this 12 year old now that her parents are dead.

As you may not know CAS is the guardian of children while in foster care. Obviously if she had a guardian they wouldnt need to appoint one.

Nowhere is it written that this was a foster child and the facts point otherwise.

Anonymous said...

Girl in vegetative state reported to improve
DSS says it has no plan to remove feeding tube
By Patricia Wen, Globe Staff | January 19, 2006

A day after the state's highest court ruled that the Department of Social Services could withdraw life support from a brain-damaged girl, the agency said yesterday that Haleigh Poutre might be emerging from her vegetative state.

DSS also said it has no immediate plans to remove her feeding tube.

''There has been a change in her condition," said a DSS spokeswoman, Denise Monteiro. ''The vegetative state may not be a total vegetative state."

Monteiro said Haleigh is breathing on her own, without the ventilator she has depended on for four months. Monteiro also said that doctors at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield elicited responses from Haleigh during tests performed yesterday.

They will begin more medical tests today to determine her neurological activity. Further tests, Monteiro said, could show whether Haleigh is going to be ''a miracle child."

Monteiro said that doctors did not tell DSS, which has custody of Haleigh, that her condition had changed until yesterday afternoon. She also said the agency's decision to seek court approval to remove life support was based on the ''best diagnosis that we thought we had at the time."

Monteiro declined to give further details about the condition of Haleigh, an 11-year-old Westfield girl who had been on breathing and feeding tubes since she suffered a beating last September, allegedly by her adoptive mother and stepfather.

Last fall, doctors described Haleigh as being in a persistent vegetative state and ''virtually brain dead," district court records said. Physicians said her brain stem was severely injured, leaving her unable to think or feel and in an ''irreversible coma," according to an opinion Tuesday by the Supreme Judicial Court.

Many neurologists say it is rare for a patient with severe brain-stem injuries to fully recover from a persistent vegetative state that lasts for more than a month. Sometimes, patients can partially recover, such as showing increasing responsiveness to touch by frowning or moving their hand, said Dr. Steve Williams, chief of rehabilitation medicine at Boston Medical Center.

But rarely do these patients fully recover so they can communicate, feed themselves, and live ordinary lives, he said.

He added, however, that the recoveries, when they happen, are more likely with children than adults. ''There's more plasticity to their brain," he said. ''There's potentially other areas of the brain that can take over."

Allison Avrett, Haleigh's biological mother, said yesterday that she saw improvements in a hospital visit last week, but was convinced by doctors and DSS workers that hand movements that she had seen were involuntary.

When Avrett visited Haleigh yesterday morning, Avrett said she again observed movement that caused her to reconsider her previous view that Haleigh was better off if allowed to die.

Avrett said she cannot give any more details about Haleigh, because the DSS has told her not to discuss the case.

John Gamelli, a family friend from Westfield, said he was told by Avrett yesterday that Haleigh was able to respond to commands, such as releasing an object from her hand when she was asked.

Gamelli said he is holding back from celebrating this as a sign that Haleigh will fully recover.

But he expressed frustration that DSS, which acknowledges missing signs over the past few years that Haleigh was being abused, had now possibly made the wrong call about the removal of life-support systems.

''Right now, things just don't make sense," he said.

In the Western Massachusetts town where Haleigh was raised, some had compared her case to that of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who was on life support for 15 years before a court ordered her feeding tube removed last spring. She died 13 days later at the age of 41. Schiavo was deemed by doctors to be in a persistent vegetative state, breathing on her own with her eyes open, but unconscious. Her parents, who sought to keep her alive, had insisted she sometimes responded to stimulation. Her husband said she would have wanted her feeding tube removed.

Before yesterday's disclosures, Haleigh was thought to have more serious brain damage than Schiavo, in part because she was not breathing on her own. Haleigh was brought unconscious to Noble Hospital in Westfield last Sept. 11.

Afterward, doctors diagnosed traumatic brain injuries and many bruises in various stages of healing. In the past few years, the DSS had received more than a dozen complaints from people whom the agency has declined to name, saying Haleigh was being neglected or abused, but social workers said many of the injuries were self-inflicted or childhood mishaps.

On Sept. 20, Holli and Jason Strickland, the girl's adoptive mother and stepfather, were arrested on child abuse charges. The adoptive mother was released two days later, and within hours, was found dead with her grandmother. Police continue to investigate the deaths, but say it seems to be a murder-suicide.

In October, DSS officials, saying that Haleigh's medical condition was hopeless, won a juvenile court order to have her ventilator and feeding tube removed. Jason Strickland, who could face murder charges if Haleigh dies, filed a motion to keep her on life support.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Judicial Court rejected Strickland's claim to be a ''de facto" parent, saying it was ''unthinkable" to give a say to someone who allegedly helped put Haleigh in a coma. The justices also gave DSS authority to remove Haleigh's breathing and feeding tubes.

Jack Egan, a Springfield lawyer for the girl's stepfather, said yesterday's medical news confirms their view that DSS was too hasty in determining that Haleigh's condition was irreversible. He noted that DSS asked the courts to withdraw life support after Haleigh had been in the hospital for less than a month.

Patricia Wen can be reached at wen@globe.com.

Anonymous said...

Foster Mom Charged for Abuse of ChildFoster Mom Charged with Child Endangerment and Aggravated Assault
By Chad Pradelli
April 8, 2006 - Charges have been filed against 36-year-old Dawn Walker, the foster mother of a 9-year-old runaway who sought shelter with her biological mother.

This little girl has lived a very tough life. In and out of foster care, in and out of schools, and now she is alleging her foster mother beat her with a baseball bat over homework.
The foster mother, Dawn Walker, has been charged with child endangerment and aggravated assault

According to police, the little girl ran away from Walker to her biological mom.

When the 9-year-old didn't show up for after school care at Andrew Hamilton Elementary, her Walker went running to police for help. She sobbed in front of our cameras, pleading for the 9-year-old to come home, but police say she fled for a reason. Fearing abuse at the hands of her foster mom.

Her biological mom, who initially told police she didn't know where her daughter was, says her daughter has severe bruises to her legs and arms. Police say the girl says she was beaten with a baseball bat.

Physically the little girl is going to be okay. Sources tell Action News that she is now in the hands of the Department of Human Services.

(Copyright 2006 by Action News. All Rights Reserved.)

Anonymous said...

And another foster child death in Ontario as well

Kenora Daily Miner and News, Kenora, ONIncentive to treat Mother Earth well, Date: 2006-04-20 ... Sandy Lake woman gets four years for killing foster child, Date: 2005-08-15 ...
www.kenoradailyminerandnews.com/ search_results.php/story.php?id=135971 - 582k

Anonymous said...

Attrocious adoptions bad enough in the past the new wave of adopters now murder instead of just abuse......

http://www.bastards.org/library/harsh.htm

Anonymous said...

A well said letter WHICH IS THE TRUTH. People adopt simply because they want to - checks are poor at best, and children are being bought and sold. Rickie was just one of a number of children KILLED by their adopters. Society clings to the myth that strangers are safer and they worship stranger and foster adoption. The whole thing is sick. The brokers have had a field day with lies, and the victims have been ignored.
More of those who were fostered and adopted need to speak out, and families who had their children stolen. "In the best interest of the child". What a total crock that is.

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060320/OPINION01/603200305/1008



Monday, March 20, 2006
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Letters

Adopted foster child's death provides lessons

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Don't fear intact families

Thank you to Richard Wexler for his column on the tragic and unnecessary death of adoptee Ricky Holland, another casualty of the adoption/foster care industry ("'Family last' policy may have killed Ricky," March 8).

Somehow, our country has developed a hatred and fear of the natural biological family and, at the same time, a near worship of adoption. This makes no sense. The majority of people who adopt children are simply people who wished to have biological children but were unable to. They are not superior people.

Heritage is not replaceable: Families are not interchangeable and children should remain in their natural biological families whenever possible.

K. M. Kottmeier

Parker, Colo.

Anonymous said...

Let's ship them out though right Minister Chambers - and let's get an army of private baby brokers that sell children for a LIVING to "screen" the infertile couples, gay couples, and anyone that wants a child? Can those in the disneyland fairytale that children are happy to be raised with strangers be "fit" to screen them? Can anyone so out of touch with reality as to think that severing children from their families, identities, siblings, and histories really be a good idea to adopt kids out? Do you want to be brokered over the Internet?

Anonymous said...

And the motto is "adoption is the price of a car, it could be a luxury sedan, or a compact model". Gee with such heartfelt dignity to children we are expected to trust this? Trust a private baby broker, trust former and current CAS workers who are also so called practitioners???

What are they exactly practicing here people? DESTRUCTION, LIES and giving children to anyone that wants them.

Anonymous said...

Trust those with an "in" with the CAS? Wow now that I can sleep at night comfortably knowing that someone who has an "in" with the CAS, and who is in the private adoption business is going to be in charge of the crown wards I feel better - give me a break.

Anonymous said...

Listen to the freak therapist in the story of Candace and I quote "These infants grow into cunning, dangerous children, Cline says. Some lie about everything and seem to have no conscience, he says."

HOW IS A NORMAL CHILD expected to live with TOTAL STRANGERS and be re-birthed into their family? These people are so delusional and insain that hunt down children and use them in a make believe game of they are the real family that it is the best example of mental illness out there. It is insain. Maybe Candace did not want to pretend that these stranger people were her family and protested as she knew she had a Mother and family. But, the infertiles did not like them existing and wanted them to be invisible thus choking and smothering the child to death.

Anonymous said...

In foster care they give strangers all the support that they should be giving to the family. They tie things up in court, they make demands on the family that are unrealistic, they set them up, they lie, and they do all that they can to take the child. The younger the better.

Before they had a lot of help for domestic violence they would only ever take the baby to be adopted to strangers and would leave the mother and older siblings to rot in poverty and despair. Now is that child protection? Why just the babe - because that is what their market wanted.

Anonymous said...

The CAS take children into care and after months of depriving the child of parental contact, or the so called supervised access visits, that they make difficult as they can for parents to travel to, or change without notice, tell the child mom and dad don't care. and then use it in court, the child is no longer bonded with the family, this is a bonus to whom???
NOT THE CHILD.

EXACTLY it is a bonus to the potential adopters and they too are not innocent in this. They know how to manipulate and to make the family the enemy as well to take someone else's child.

Anonymous said...

Suit filed against sex offender, children's aid
CTV.ca News Staff

A multimillion-dollar lawsuit has been filed against a now-deceased Ontario repeat sex offender, and the Peel Children's Aid Society.

The suit was filed by a father who alleges his son was sexually abused by Douglas Moore while under the care of the Peel Children's Aid Society, in Brampton, just north of Toronto. He is suing the society and the foster parents for $8 million.

Moore, 36, was a convicted pedophile and is suspected in the murders of three young men. He killed himself in a Milton, Ont., jail on April 2, 2004.

The father alleges the society and the foster parents knew, or should have known, that Moore was a high-risk sexual offender who should not have been allowed near children.

The boy became a ward of the society at age 12 and lived with foster parents between November 2001 and August 2003, before being returned to his father. The suit alleges that Moore was a friend of the foster parents and had regular contact with the boy when he was in their care.

During the two years in foster care, the boy "was repeatedly exposed to and sexually assaulted and physically abused by Douglas Moore," the lawsuit alleges.

It goes on to allege that when Moore was visiting the family, he would play with the children "and lure them to various areas of the property where he would forcibly confine and sexually assault the foster children, including the plaintiff."

While Moore was never actually put in charge of any kids from the Children's Aid Society, the suit claims he went out of his way to befriend at least three separate sets of foster parents for the sole purpose of molesting the children, CFTO's John Lancaster reported.

Paul Miller, a lawyer representing the family, says the boy's life has been completely ruined.

None of the allegations have been proven in court. The father's name is being withheld to protect the identity of his son.

The Peel Children's Aid Society says it hasn't been served with the suit and can't comment.

Moore had a lengthy record of sexual offences dating back two decades. He was arrested again in March 2004, in connection with alleged sexual assaults of three children who were wards of the Peel Children's Aid Society. Before police could lay charges, Moore hung himself.

Moore was also the prime suspect in the deaths of Robert Grewal and Giuseppe (Joseph) Manchisi. As well, he was suspected in the death of Rene Charlebois, 15.

Grewal of Mississauga and Manchisi of Milton, Ont., were last seen on Nov. 12, 2003. Grewal's remains were discovered on Nov. 15, 2003, near Montreal. Remains believed to be those of Manchisi were discovered in April, about 25 kilometres from where Grewal's remains were found.

The remains of Charlebois, 15, were found in a landfill north of Toronto in March. He had been missing since December 2003.

Police suspect that all three were murdered by Moore in Mississauga shortly after their disappearances.

Moore's common-law wife, 30-year-old Sandra Martin, has been charged with two counts of being an accessory after the fact in the deaths of Manchisi and Grewal. A 14-year-old boy faces the same charges.

Anonymous said...

On the website Adopters Who Abuse and Kill

http://www.amfor.net/KillerAdopters/

There is a huge difference - the killers are NOT related to the victim as was the case with Jeffrey.

Anonymous said...

Despite the fact that research shows babies and children to be traumatized by being taken from their families the CAS continues to do this daily and often for poor reasons. Despite the fact that slavery ended in the late 1800's private baby brokers are allowed to sell children in Ontario. Despite the fact that Jeffrey Baldwin died in one of the most horrific cases of abuse in Canada the CCAS refuses to take responsibility.

There is a lot to do - and having the Ombudsman have oversight is just one step.

Anonymous said...

On the website Adopters Who Abuse and Kill they do have a very common theme with the Toronto Catholic Children's Aid Soceity though - most of the children who were murdered on the website were brokered by religious adoption agencies - does that ring a bell here? When we have agencies that HATE PARENTS AS THEY ARE NOT MARRIED and for that reason alone the solution is to dump the child and give them to people who are married - hence the murderers of Jeffrey. Is marriage a total and absolute assurance of safety? Certainly not - which is why so many people who were unmarried have had their children STOLEN to provide married strangers with a product. The whole system is based on this very thing.

It was the past, and it is the present. Should religious intolerance be a formula for child protection? Hey if you think the Toronto CCAS is bad, we have not even got into the Hamilton CCAS which is just as bad as the other.

All agencies have huge problems but the Catholic one's above all seem to be the worst of the worst.

Anonymous said...

To the poster that is questioning education about shaken baby syndrome I don't berate the CAS for trying to educate the public about this - actually it is a good thing that they do. In fact there have been cases where people have killed babies by shaking them. However, it is almost always someone not related to the baby that killed them in the end.
Very often it was a boyfriend of the mother.

Fathers need to be more involved in this, and their families as well.

Anonymous said...

For anyone reading this blog - do study and read the articles of other children who were killed - but do note that almost always the child was killed by a "non-relative". In cases other then foster/adoption where the Mom had custody it is the boyfriend very often.

Fathers need more rights, and mothers need more education into how to detect a stranger abuser before they enter the home of someone struggling only to abuse the partners child in the end.

Anonymous said...

And for that matter fathers as well need to be aware of the signs of a stranger abuser.

Anonymous said...

One of the number one signs of an abuser is jealousy.

Anonymous said...

The most important one though is being jealous of your child, and the relationship that you have with them.

Any common theme here with adoption and foster care as well?

I think so!

Anonymous said...

Those who adopt and foster are superior they say "because they screen them - and they know don't they? The CAS knows above all?"

I don't think so.

Strangers are 1000 times more abusive.

Anonymous said...

Write your MPs now, let Harper know what is going on. Ask for an inquiry, write your MPPS and please write your local papers, and Support
the Ombudsman, and NDP Andrea Horwath Bill.

We could blog till the end of dawn, and be just as guilty, for not doing all we can to stop the abuse of children and family's in the name of so called child protection.
It is our collective responsibility.

After Foster Care, Canada Court Watch , doctors and the advocates,
Citizens for morality, parents, children and those that understand this is what it is, a system that is out of control and damaging many.

We can and should get organized.

Anonymous said...

As far as the immigrant children's case, the Teachers' association made the plea to apprehend these children after school. It made the other children feel awful. Maybe they are worried that these other children will now see what "Canada" really is.

If one does not see it, one can pretend that it does not exist.

Anonymous said...

In recent years, Shaken Baby Syndrome has been discredited by leading publications such as the British Journal of Medicine, as well as a number of credible researchers. Readers who look into this syndrome may be surprised very surprised by how questionable it is.

Anonymous said...

US News


Girl in kiddy porn found in foster home
May 15, 2005, 5:21 GMT


TORONTO, ON, Canada (UPI) -- Investigators have tracked down a girl whose picture turned up on Web sites dealing in child pornography.

CNN reports that the girl is in a foster home in Pennsylvania, and her adoptive father, who allegedly photographed her in hotel rooms, is in prison on an unrelated charge.

The investigation began in Toronto when European authorities notified Sgt. Paul Gillespie of the sex crimes unit. While police were handicapped because they could not publicize the photo of a child victim, they eventually discovered that some of the pictures had been taken in a resort hotel at Walt Disney World.

Investigators from Florida and Toronto working together traced another girl shown in some of the pictures.

Copyright 2005 by United Press International

Anonymous said...

FOSTER DAD FOUND GUILTY IN SEX CRIME
A NORTH Vancouver foster parent was jailed six months on Nov. 3 for molesting two boys in his care in the early 1970s.

By Anna Marie D'Angelo

News Reporter

Joseph John Comeau, 61, of Vancouver, pleaded guilty to committing acts of gross indecency against two brothers between Oct. 9, 1972 and March 21, 1974 in North Vancouver.

"I had asked for a sentence of up to one year incarceration plus probation," said Crown lawyer Ron Kockx on Wednesday.

Kockx declined to share details of the case, suggesting the News obtain a transcript of North Vancouver provincial court Judge Doug Moss' decision.

Kockx said the younger of the two brothers died in June at age 35.

The North Vancouver boys were approximately age 14 and 13 at the time they were molested in Comeau's home in the 1200-block of East 27th Street in North Vancouver District.

Comeau and his wife were foster parents, according to the North Vancouver RCMP.

The specific criminal allegations against Comeau involved fondling and oral sex.

The younger brother was 33 when he went to the North Vancouver RCMP in September 1993 to make a statement about his treatment at the hands of his foster parent.

The man died about four months before his foster parent was sentenced for molesting him.

The charges against Comeau were laid one year ago. Ten charges covering incidents allegedly involving both boys to 1980 were originally laid. Police said Comeau had contact with the boys after they had been his foster children.

Social Services spokesman Michael Edge said on Wednesday that children are placed in foster homes after social services social workers investigate reports of abuse or neglect of youngsters in their homes.

"If the child is in immediate danger, we would remove the child from the home and place the child in a foster home," said Edge from Victoria.

Edge said children have interaction with social workers while in foster homes.

To press time, Edge was determining if information concerning the duration of Comeau's foster parenting role in North Vancouver was available. Edge said the identity of foster parents is usually confidential.

The surviving brother, no longer living in North Vancouver, was unavailable for comment.

Anonymous said...

WE DECLARE the natural family holds fixed characteristics rooted in human nature. The complementary nature of men and women is rooted in the psychological and physical differences between the sexes. The love of parents for their children, also rooted in human nature, uniquely qualifies parents to rear their own young. Children, for their part, innately long for a direct bond with their parents in whom they place their trust. Parents and their children constitute a unique natural community that is necessary to human spiritual, moral and intellectual development; and

WE DECLARE that the family is the first social unit, and it holds primacy over all man made communities, economic entities and government; and recognize as inviolable the rights of families, parents and children to protection from state intrusion; and

WE DECLARE that policies which undermine the family erode the bedrock of society, thereby undermining the very source of their own authority. Such policies include:

This is the Harper MPs people write them. and ask for an inquiry into all CAS pratices. Bill 210 could be struck down by the PM if we really take action and NOW.

Anonymous said...

From the Toronto Star today - a must read I think for the Ministry......

Young victim urges clean-up of online porn
Adopted at 5 for sex exploitation

Toronto police sought help in case
May 4, 2006. 01:00 AM


A child porn victim who was identified after Toronto police made photos taken by her abuser public, urged the U.S. Congress to crack down on Internet pornography.

Reading from prepared testimony, Masha Allen, a Russian-born 13-year-old, revealed to a House of Representatives subcommittee yesterday the horrible pain behind her experiences as a victim of online child porn.

Matthew Mancuso, a divorced engineer from Pittsburgh, adopted Masha from a Russian orphanage in 1998 when she was 5 years old.

Investigators say Mancuso took hundreds of pictures of Masha partially clothed or naked in a variety of humiliating poses, and uploaded at least 200 to the Internet. They have been traded and sold by pedophiles ever since.

Masha told the congressional subcommittee at its fourth such hearing this year that her horror isn't over. "Because Matthew put my pictures on the Internet, the abuse is still going on," she told legislators.

"You have to do something about the Internet," she wrote. "Matthew found the adoption agency on the Internet. They let him look at my pictures from Russia on the Internet even though they didn't really know anything about him.

"Matthew put my pictures on the Internet after he got me. People are still downloading them even though he has been in prison for two years."

Mancuso, who on his adoption forms requested a 5-year-old girl with blonde hair and blue eyes, raped Masha that first night home and regularly after that for the next five years. He limited her food so that she would remain slight and look younger.

Law enforcement officials believe 80 per cent of the pedophiles under investigation around the world have in their collections at least one picture of Masha.

The case made headlines in February 2005 when Toronto police asked the public for tips on the identity of the girl in the photos.

Investigators erased her image from the photos but posted the backgrounds, which included an elevator, a fountain and a bed in a hotel. Two Toronto-area tipsters identified the locale of some of the pictures as a Walt Disney World Resort hotel room in Orlando, Fla.

The tip eventually led U.S. authorities to Mancuso, now 47, who was already serving time in Pennsylvania. He has since been moved to a federal prison hospital in Massachusetts that manages sexual predators.

Masha was readopted and lives in Georgia. Congress has introduced legislation dubbed "Masha's Law" that would triple to $200,000 the penalty for those who download child pornography.


the star's news services

Anonymous said...

What the Minister is proposing in posting pictures of crown wards on the Internet is no different from what happened to Masha. Sex predators can peruse the pictures and pick out their victim. Do we really think that those adopting for the purposes of this will be stopped from "screening". I don't think so with the merry band wagon of adoption being spewed by the brokers.

Adoption is a fairytale to these brokers, a wonderful thing - so wonderful to them that their minds do not contemplate predators - adoption is glorious, safe, fantastic - forever families?

The potential adopters PAP's are super hero's to them. The whole thing is a nightmare. Disrespecting children to the degree that they disrespect them by glorifying their loss - and by a focus on adopters and potential one's is myopic at best. They have tunnel vision where adoption seems to be the magic Band-Aid for all social ill's. It is also not just a nightmare, it is absolutely ridiculous.

Many of the crown wards should be returned to their families, instead of being pawns for other people's problems.

Anonymous said...

Does anyone else think it not just a tad dangerous to deem people as being safe and better simply as they foster or adopt? Why such a super hero mentality here? The family is the enemy and strangers are safe?

Anonymous said...

When we elevate people to such a super hero realm we make it a haven for abuse. It is no different from the predator priests - priests are safe aren't they, they do not abuse children, they are "better"?

Anonymous said...

Let's all move to BC!
New child watchdog coming soon
MetroValley Newspaper Group
Tue 02 May 2006
Page: 0030
Section: Chilliwack Progress - Community
Byline:
A new representative for children with the same status as B.C.'s auditor general and ombudsman will likely be in place by the end of May, Premier Gordon Campbell says.

A transition team headed by the deputy attorney general has been appointed to implement the recommendations of retired judge Ted Hughes, who blasted the government's handling of child protection in a report presented in early April.

As the legislature resumed sitting this week, Campbell said staff are working "around the clock" to set up an all-party committee that will choose the new child representative, and oversee its work.

"The opposition said they wanted to see this legislation move forward this session, with all respecful haste if you want, they'd like to get it done," Campbell said. "So I think there's a good opportunity for us to pass it during this session."

Hughes traced the history of child advocates appointed by the B.C. government, and agreed that there was duplication in the system when the B.C. Liberal government began its core services review in 2001. But imposing budget cuts while at the same time trying to reorganize the ministry into regional child welfare agencies was a mistake, Hughes said.

Opposition critics had their first chance Monday to question the government about the report. Campbell refused NDP demands that he apologize for the loss of more than 900 child death review files, and what Hughes termed a "revolving door" of ministers and senior bureaucrats.

The number of B.C. children in government care has been declining in recent years, down to about 9,000 in 2004. But nearly half of those children are aboriginal, and their numbers have continued to increase. The government has pledged to go ahead with plans to set up aboriginal child care agencies around the province, despite the death of 19-month-old Sherry Charlie in Port Alberni after a mishandled placement by an aboriginal agency.

The government intends to implement all 62 of Hughes' recommendations, and has budgeted an extra $100 million to increase social worker staff and other services to the ministry. A new deputy minister was hired from South Africa to oversee the establishment of regional and aboriginal child care services.

The new representative for children will replace the existing child and youth officer, who reports to the attorney-general. Hughes said having the representative report annually to an all-party committee of the legislature would help take the politics out of child protection issues.

Copyright 2006 Chilliwack Progress

Anonymous said...

It is wonderful to know that BC is progressing. What is Ontario doing? Making deals with baby brokers, adopting legal clauses by seasoned defense attorneys, and running for cover. The government needs to know that this is indeed NOT about politics it is about safety. Removing large numbers of children for frivilous reasons and shipping them all over the earth where social workers have files that they cannot oversee is a large reason why there is so much abuse going on. Focus on the actual cases of child abuse, and stop the social cleansing destruction of families for "at risk" idealogies that are comparable to Leave It To Beaver.

Moreover, stop catering to a business of providing strangers with other people's children. The NDP and their bill needs to pass considering the disaster of child protection. Ontario should look at BC for a number of different things, and reasons.

Anonymous said...

BC is a different animal , there are huge social problems in BC. Vancouver, is a city you cant miss the sad addicts on the street, all of the inner cities parks and school yards, are full of used needles and condoms, and homeless.
Gordon Campbell is a nut, they cut all services to the core.
Housing is not affordable, but only for the very rich, and getting worse.
A beautiful place, but very sad neglected social problems. There are 9 attempts, some successful child abductions a day ( average according to crime statistics) The dead over dosed youth they find on the streets in the morning never make news anymore.
The goal of child protection in BC never changed from Family unification, they don't have foster homes, there is no place to put children if they are REALLY abused.
I do agree that family unification should always be the goal, and children should remain with families, social workers in BC spend a great deal of time flying babies to grandparents that live outside of the province, they actually have a deal with one of the airlines.

There are group hells, full of very young children, to the very dangerous damaged teens, it truly is not better in BC. If your child is apprehended, they are much more likely to be lost in the system, or killed.

There was notice about Bill 210, where was all the protect to it before it passed, I have no vested interest I am an adoptive parent, OPEN and not like the Minister will tell people this bill will provide open adoption, I do agree it should always be the last resort, and the child should be placed with family.

Very few children are true orphans.
I DID not support this bill, and actively wrote, and spoke about it before its passing.
If you want over sight, get out and be active, what is really needed in Ontario and all the provinces is a Royal Commission of Inquiry, ask for it at the federal level.

Anyone with half a brain understands what is going on, it is NOT all about finding children for infertiles, many children will remain in care, to keep the business going, its a massive business.Child Protection, has very little to do with children, its those that profit off them. And it has brain washed so many people into believing, its about helping children.

Think of the jobs that would be lost,if REAL child abuse stopped today, and One should truly wish, all REAL cases of abuse and neglect would.

This industry comes up with more and more reason to find children in need of protection, look at what risk is consider to be, an ill parent, emotional abuse, can be to much TV, the messy house, was originally a dangerous environment, live wires and the like. Today ( even ask the foster families,) its dust on an object you may have forgotten about on the fridge.
The have actually taken children once they have gotten into a home, and used any kind of excuse they can find.
Dave Brown a now retired Ottawa Citizen reporter did a story on the father that had laundry piled on a bed, the laundry was clean and he was dressing the children for school from it, BIG DEAL, did the children need protection from clean cloths???????

They look for reasons, to find your child in need, this is why they will never tell you what they are concerned about before they get into the house, or put them in writing, ask the lawyers, they build a case and make it up as the go along, if you get angry well there ya go, you have an anger management problem, and who in there right mind would not be pissed off.

So the psychologist who is ALWAYS in bed with CAS like all the so called SCAN and Child and youth protection teams, and Child abuse teams in children's hospitals, ( also used to help cover the hospital and doctors, ass) in Ham. children's hospital the doctor sits on the board of directors of the CCAS, conflict, they deny, but can be proven, and has been given to MPPs.

Its business, and its ugly, yet the have come up with great slogans like , we all know the term dysfunctional family, well people we are all dysfunctional at some level, were human, were not infallible.
the best interest crap the weakest argument made in a court. to err on the side of caution, SURE ask a surgeon to err on the side of caution and remove one of my lungs, in case I get lung cancer from second hand smoke in the work place, this is truly how much sense Maybe at risk of neglect makes.

Its no different then a great add campaign, Pepsi, Coke, should hire there folks. Watch the Corporation Michael Morres flick, its CAS the hospitals all of it, they are large corporations and if they were people they would be consider psychopaths. self interested really sick, and capable of anything to protect there business.
the government does know, at least the smarter MPs and MPPs, they are not all that bright after all.

The family court lawyers do know, those that have left CAS agencies, to work on the side of parents know, and they do not want it to end.

Court is a waltz that is very lucrative. Hit the local court pub, the lawyers hang out in, hear the stories, and both sides joking about the crap that happens.

The psychologist drove this, (spanking,) all the way to the Supreme court, please, people CHILDREN are dying of Aids, starving, and here in Canada we take spanking to the Supreme court!

The feminist model is a huge driving force, it is now to be included in child protection, but it always has.
Children need working moms only, and no fathers, this is a man hating organization as well, and they get so screwed in family courts, and have for years, children do need fathers, and MOST fathers can take care of children, on their own just as well if not better in some situations as moms can. Its best to have both in my opinion, and the CAS separates families everyday.

Two lawyers and one for the children. if child abuse ended, lawyers and most of are politician including the Premier are lawyers, would be strapped to find another lucrative way to spend there day.

Why mediation? because the goal is to now adopt the children, and the courts are backlogged, and will be needed for the adoptions, and a few of the judges are fed up.

And they want they babys, child I think 8 and over are to go to mediation. Not so adoptable.

There is a womens story I will never forget E Klein, they took her baby, but her older child they gave back. IT makes no sence at all.

ITs retired judges reporters should speak with. Some honourable lawyers and there are SOME, have written about the scam. What's Wrong With Children Rights, and Richard Wexler, who help write the Acts, are both eye opening reads.

Canada Court Watch is not out there playing games,they also know what's going on, read there site, and support this worthy cause.

There are huge organizations in the States, National Child abuse Defence and resource centre,
they work with doctors, lawyers and experts all day everyday. Swamped, from both sides of the boarder and further, WHY, because this is a scam. a racket. And it should be torn down. At least they are finally getting very mainstream media to listen, people watch Montel, they watch Oprah. We need to do the same.
come out of the shawdows and speak, write, and end the abuse by the protectors.

Anonymous said...

To the last poster, again yes it is infertile couples that are fueling this industry. People that can have children do not go to baby brokers to buy them, they do not go to the CAS to find a child, and they are not involved with this mess. I agree in that the system needs to be totally reformed but infertile couples support, fund and promote the CAS and the baby brokers in the Province of Ontario. To suggest that they are not responsible is a myth. They want products and the industry provides them. All of the baby brokers in this Province are linked to infertility networks? If the connection is not obvious and valid then why are they in bed together?

Yes we should promote family preservation. The current brokers in this Province see any type of adoption as being wonderful, they have compared children to the price of a car, and they are living in a strange bubble while they actively HUNT down children.

If infertile couples want to help to end this then STOP going to baby brokers to buy children. They are the clients of the brokers and therefore they are DIRECTLY responsible for this whole thing. The day they speak out against buying children will be the day they are not linked to this ongoing cycle of family destruction. So far what are they doing - they are buying babies from all over the place.

They supply a demand, and the CAS and brokers supply a product.

If the clients stopped buying the industry would dry up as far as cases like that of Erika that had her baby taken for someone else.

Furthermore check out How To Adopt Night and discover how many infertile couples attend this?

You are totally right fathers needs to be more involved hugely in this, and they do hate fathers. If men are involved again that impedes the infertile couples from getting their product.

You are right in that it is not entirely their fault either - it is like you said the fault of the CAS as well to keep this business going.

You know in yesteryears some may have adopted honestly not knowing this huge scam, however today one should know better then to hire a baby broker to capture an infant, or to plead with the CAS for an infant given what is now known. Today's infertiles in this Province feel "entitled" to other peoples children so much so that they hire brokers to hunt them down and coerce women, and they attend workshops with titles like How To Find a Child.

Anonymous said...

Open adoption in this Province is going to be abused, and manipulated in the exact and same way that closed adoption was abused and manipulated. They are doing the same thing, they have just changed the terminology to sound more attractive - neatly packaged in a mountain of lies. While there are some who actually do respect the mother of the child and the family, if one respected them really why would they be involved in open adoption to start with? They could support a family, they could support a single mother. From what is known about open adoption very few adopters even stick to this - once they get the baby they are gone.

And in the cases that I know of in an open adoption it was a LONG TERM PROBLEM to a short term situation. The mothers were not incapable of taking care of their children, they were in a desperate financial state - and who comes along to sing the praises of adoption - baby brokers from hell who represent infertile couples hunting down babies.

A few people have also noted cases that they know of where a family member can and does want to take a child in a guardianship where the family raises the child within it -yet the babies are in foster care waiting for the stranger adoption.

The infertility industry is the grease that keeps the machine working.

The CAS has a focus on this in too many cases to this day, rather then on actual child protection. As long as we have people such as Erika in this day and age the CAS are still up to their own tricks. While it is true that the child captured provides their income, it is indeed true that the child captured supplies a product.

If this was not the case then Bruce Rivers of the Toronto CAS would never have contemplated getting into the business of selling Chinese babies via the Toronto CAS. That this was considered after the brutal murder of Randal Dooley - where the Toronto CAS failed to protect a child in dire need of protection then I would not be wrong here. Why would a child protection agency entertain brokering Chinese babies? Why in the hell would a Canadian child protection agency especially be interested in brokering Chinese babies considering the mess of child welfare in the Province of Ontario. That alone simply again confirms who their clients really are.

Why would the director be interested in supplying Chinese babies to infertile couples, which has nothing what so ever to do with child protection at all?

Anonymous said...

And THANK GOD THIS HIDEOUS
plan did not work - this was an article about this perverse plan as below followed by an article about little Randal Dooley another beautiful child who was tortured and murdered - in his case it was a step-mother from hell.



Children's Aid Society to run Chinese Adoptions
Leslie Papp and Jim Rankin
Toronto Star
Sunday January 13, 2002


Amid concern over placing Canadian Children

In a dramatic departure from its existing service, the CAS of Toronto is moving ahead on a one-stop centre where CAS staff would run adoptions from China in addition to finding homes for local children.
The public agency's governing board decided Thursday to enter the
controversial world of international adoption despite concern from
critics that the CAS was straying from a mandate to serve local children.

"We're moving ahead", Toronto CAS exec director Bruce Rivers said
yesterday. "It's something we believe needs to be done".

The agency is formally applying to the Ministry of Community and Social Services for a licence to handle orphans from China with plans to expand into adoptions from other countries after the centre has opening likely in April.

"This will result in better service for children - in Toronto and
elsewhere", Rivers said in an interview.

Ontarians wanting children currently face a bewildering number of
adoption possibilities. The province's run 52 CAS's run local
adoptions, at little or no cost to parents; several private agencies
handle domestic adoptions - that is, providing babies for a fee - and Ontario has 20 private agencies licensed to handle international adoptions, which can cost $35,000 or more.

Would-be parents often don't know where to turn, or which type of
adoption would best suit them, Rivers said. "There's a great deal of
confusion".

Having one centre provide both local and foreign children would cut
through the chaos and give people clear choices, said Nancy Dale,
director of adoption services at the Toronto CAS.

"It allows people to come to one place to learn about adoption and make informed decisions', she said. "Our goal is really to bring people in and educate them'. No taxpayers' dollars would be used to run the centre's international operation, said Rivers, adding that people
adopting abroad would be charged a fee 'typical of fees charged
elsewhere'.

Exact dollar amounts haven't been set, but Dale said would-be parents adopting from China might expect to pay $25,000 to $30,000, including travel and other expenses. China was chosen "as a starting point" because adoptions there are reliable and well-regulated, she said.

Prospective parents are in a good position to know what to expect.
Rivers stressed that the Toronto CAS would run its foreign adoption on a non-profit basis, adding that the service isn't meant as a moneymaker for the agency.

Critics remain unconvinced about the wisdom of going abroad. "To me, it looks like (CAS officials) are worried about meeting the needs of kids", said Judy Grove, head of the Adoption Council of Canada,
an unbrella organization for adoption groups. "I'm worried this might detract from (CAS) efforts on behalf of the children of Ontario, who are their prime mandate."

Martha Maslen, Executive Director of Children's Bridge, an Ottawa-based adoption agency handling abour 250 Chinese orphans a year, questioned the expertise of CAS staff.

"I am actually quite honestly, perplexed as to why they want to take
this on", Maslen said. "This would be, presumably a means of bringing money into the agency."

Rivers said he knew of no other CAS in the buisiness of international adoption. The planned adoption centre will be run at the Toronto house owned by the agency and where the adoption department is already based. The CAS currently employs 10 people to handle local adoptions and more staff will be hired to handle orphans from China.

" It's not yet clear how many additional adoption workers will be needed," Rivers said.

Dan Miles, spokesperson for the Ministry of Community and Social Services, said the licence application from the Toronto CAS will be treated the same way as that of any private agency seeking to run adoptions abroad, even though the CAS receives public funding.

"There are some specific details they need to fill in. There is a strict licensing process to follow, and we're following it with the Toronto CAS like any other agency".

"We're still awaiting information with respect to staffing, qualifications and arrangements in China," he said. When that data arrives, the
ministry will "evaluate it like we will any other application".



The ruined life of Randal, barely 7
Father, stepmother on trial after boy dies of brain injury

Christie Blatchford
National Post

Tuesday, April 16, 2002

Randal Dooley


National Post columnist Christie Blatchford has followed the murder trial of Randal Dooley almost since it began on January 15, 2002. This column was originally printed on Jan. 16.

TORONTO - Every case of child abuse is the worst.

Each has its distinguishing features -- baby Sara died in her little car chair, left there so long that after death the blood pooled on her back in the pattern of the seat; Shanay was dipped in boiling water such that all her skin peeled off; the infant Jordan starved -- so that they do not, ever, blend one into the other.

Yet even so, with the bar on loathsome raised so very high, what happened to Randal Dooley was particularly memorable.

I think it is because he was just-turned-seven when he died. Randal was old enough to feel shame and he was lucky enough, in his first six years, to have known kindness. Taken together, these two facts would have meant that though the cause of his death was acute brain injury, his brave heart would have been utterly broken.

Until he was six, Randal lived in his native Jamaica, with his lovely auntie Beatrice and his older-by-a-year brother Teego, his paternal grandma and a passel of relatives at the family "yard," as Jamaicans call such a homestead, and there he would have played under the warm sun and only ever felt a hand raised against him when, on the way home, he dawdled too long and was late and Beatrice gave him a swipe in her firm, no-nonsense way.

Ten months before he and Teego came to Toronto to join his dad, who had left for Canada when the boys were a year and two years old respectively, and his dad's new and newly pregnant wife, Randal's most pressing medical problems were a mild allergic reaction to the mosquito bites on his wiry frame and a dry patch of ringworm on his scalp.

Less than a year later, by September of 1998, he had become the ruin on the autopsy table -- a gaunt boy, his body covered with an astonishing array of welts and bruises and scratches and clear U-shaped marks, and underneath his poor skin, a litany of internal damage usually seen in children only when they have been struck by a car and which included four separate brain injuries, 14 fractured ribs, a lacerated liver, and, in his tummy, a tooth.

How he got to the stainless-steel table was yesterday detailed by prosecutor Rita Zaied on the opening day of the second-degree murder trial of the two significant adults in the final part of Randal's life -- his 36-year-old dad, Tony Dooley, and his 30-year-old stepmother, Marcia Dooley.

What follows is some of what Ms. Zaied told the jurors.

Within two months of the boys arriving in Canada, Randal's Grade 1 teacher noticed that one day, when he'd lost a mitten, he was absolutely frantic about finding it, saying that if he didn't, he would get a licking from his mother. When Marcia Dooley showed up the next day, she was angry about the mitten, and the teacher thought Randal was frightened of her.

By the end of that same month, Randal had suffered a badly broken elbow -- from either a fall on the ice or a daycare accident, his stepmother variously said -- and was in such pain that he was prescribed codeine after his surgery.

In April, the teacher saw Randal place his head on his desk, as though something were wrong. When she went to check his elbow, she noticed welts on his arms, and promptly took him to the school vice-principal. Together, they looked at his back, and saw more than 25 marks there, and called Toronto Police.

They investigated, but all Ms. Zaied said of the results was that there were no charges laid and that the case was kept open. The teacher, and the school, kept a careful watch over Randal, but saw no other injuries on him.

In April of 1998, Mrs. Dooley gave birth to her son Tyreek, and the next month, Mr. Dooley returned to Toronto from the United States, where he had been almost since his boys had arrived from Jamaica. The school year ended, and in late summer, the family, now numbering five, moved to larger quarters in the east end of the city; the good teacher, and the boys' old school, were effectively out of Randal and Teego's lives.

Teego was registered, albeit late, at the new school. Mr. Dooley was asked there whether he had other children to register; he said yes, but that his other son was in Jamaica, though in fact, Randal never returned there.

After Randal's death, Mr. Dooley told police that he was afraid to register Randal because, in late August, he had "flogged" him with a belt, and was afraid of Children's Aid involvement.

About this time, Ms. Zaied told the jurors, Marcia Dooley began to complain in earnest to friends that Randal was "pooing and peeing in his clothes," that he once hid a bag of feces in the closet, and that she was fed up with him peeing the bed and vomiting.

Randal never made it to the new school. He never made it to any doctor but once, months before.

A neighbour saw him once pushing the baby in his carriage with his stepmother, stop from apparent exhaustion, and be berated by her. Another time, this neighbour heard "an adult male say, 'Son, you would not have had to get that if you had eaten your food!' " in an angry voice.

Teego, Ms. Zaied said, told the police after Randal's death that Marcia punished Randal for peeing and pooing in his pants, and for vomiting; that she hit him with her hands and fists and feet and elbows and objects; that she forced him to eat his vomit.

By Tony and Marcia Dooley's own accounts to police, on the last full day of Randal's life -- he was found dead by firemen early on Sept. 25, 1998, on the lower bunk bed after his dad had called 911 to report his son had committed suicide -- the little boy vomited at least five times (once hiding in his closet, once into his hands), wet and pooed himself, and was told by his stepmother to clean up his messes and change into the pull-up pants that are meant for babies and that if he was going to be sick, why couldn't he do it in the toilet.

Teego, who was all of eight then, came home from school for lunch, made Randal and himself some Chef Boy-ar-dee, and told Marcia at one point that Randal was sitting up, but sleeping and vomiting in his sleep.

At another point, in the evening, Marcia put Randal in the bathtub, ran cold water into it, and had Teego bring her some ice.

Both Tony and Marcia told the police, later, that Randal had been perfectly normal.

Neither one of them bothered to go with the firemen to find out how he was; Tony, in fact, was on the phone and was mightily annoyed when the fire captain interrupted him to talk about Randal.

Expert witnesses, prosecutor Zaied said, will testify that Randal's incontinence could have been caused by his brain injuries, or by simple regression as a result of his fear.

His fine teacher found Randal to be bright, to have a ready smile, and said that in class, he was "like a sponge, just soaking up everything." It is difficult to imagine that he did not also soak up the terror, and degradation, of his last months.

NOTE PEOPLE WERE PURELY OUTRAGED THAT RIVERS WOULD CONSIDER BROKERING CHINESE BABIES AFTER once again the CAS failed another child.

Anonymous said...

perhaps some of us should start signing the blog, it is no doubt being monitored by CAS or Ministry.
with the names on the petitions, how much longer can they deny this is more then a public relations problem with CAS and CCAS, with the huge numbers of apprehensions people have become aware of what is going on.
There are books written by experts that have left, there are far too many children in care, the foster families get crapped on as well, the really bad ones, no one seems to care about till a child dies.

Write the supporters, write the CEO of the steel company in Hamilton Defasco, that has also partnered with Mc Master health science, how strange a major polluter partnering with Health Care. and giving 250,000 to CAS. They could have spent that money on a worthy charity, like clean up the harbour, they helped pollute, so children would really have a safer place to live and play.

We need strategic planning,
letters to the supporters and educate them, the doctors and lawyers should take on that role, I have heard from so many of them that CAS does more harm to a child , and ruins the family. Get busy and write.
If your having problems or have had,CAS expernace
people want to speak with you,
so we have to find a way of contacting.

If you have documented it, have court files, voice messages, video and tape it will help.
A class action suit , perhaps.
Canada Court Watch, After Foster Care, Dufferin Voca, Citizens for Morality, and the Foster Parents groups, Amanda Reid, to name a few.
Mothers that have had there babies stolen, the First Nations, they have so many children still in care. If your tired of the horror, of what this has done to children, of what they do to parents, it is again, our collective responsibility to change it. And we can!

Anonymous said...

And in the case of Randal Dooley what should the Toronto CAS have done? Certainly intervene, certainly remove him from the step-mother from hell - but remove into what? A series of eight or nine foster homes? Or a "forever family" where the child was expected to forget his brother, his aunt, and his entire family and history to play make believe that he was the child for an infertile couple? Really he should have been removed, and his mother and family should have been notified, and they should have been able to bring the child back to a family that loved him, and that he had the right to remain with.

It was not the fault of his mother any more then Jeffrey would be the fault of his relatives that did not see him during his torture. But to CAS the entire family is a write-off for someone else's abuse. Guilt by association is absurd. They certainly could have acted. How in the hell can criss-cross belt beating welts NOT be child abuse, yet a mother with depression and a messy house is an abuser? The ineptitude of these agencies is simply incredible. And they could have taken the time to investigate this properly. They have huge case loads because they have too many in care for stupid reasons that are not about child protection what so ever.

Anonymous said...

.OK we know the story's we can agree to disagree, but we need to stop posting and get active. If you were so opposed to Bill 210 why did you NOT go speak about it.
What causes infertility? its not just STDs, low sperm counts are a result of environmental toxins. Science has known that for over 20 years.

Not every person is out to harm a mother, most still have no IDEA, its not in the PRESS. CAS horror of apprehending children from single mothers, is not mainstream media, if it was it would be helpful.
I did adopt a child, I did not know,
I had no clue, like so many others,
my child's natural mother can see , call, e-mail , she rarely does, I hunt her down. And she is a relative. And knows I wanted her to be part of the child's life, FOR the child. As it is I agree the best thing for a child. not some memory book, or teddy bear, but to feel always that she is wanted was not given up or taken away. I am on your side so don't attack me, but there are cases of natural moms that don't want to be reached.

I do know couples, that have adopted, privately, children bridge, and so forth, others though the CAS, and believe me they do NOT KNOW, many have lost a baby, and the last thing they would want to do, if feel they are raising a child a mother some where else is grieving for, then of course there are people that could care less.
BUT how can you be part of the solution and change this, this is what we need to do now, as I can not turn my back on Ms Klein's story, or so many others, I cannot turn my back on the horror of what children in care have to go though, what becomes of them, the innocent parents torn to hell, because of the agencies, the moms accused of MSP a so called disorder that has no scientific merit, the parents wrongly charged with killing an infant, that died of SIDs, or any number of things,
I do this because I cannot NOT do it.
How can you help? Please lets get going before more children are taken, and more mothers will grieve

Anonymous said...

How the hell did Bruce Rivers come up with the idea it would help protect more children???? by going into the aboard adoption business, what on earth does it have to do with child protection is RIGHT, and he should have been canned the moment he mentioned it.

In a dramatic departure from its existing service, the CAS of Toronto is moving ahead on a one-stop centre where CAS staff would run adoptions from China in addition to finding homes for local children.
The public agency's governing board decided Thursday to enter the
controversial world of international adoption despite concern from
critics that the CAS was straying from a mandate to serve local children.

"We're moving ahead", Toronto CAS exec director Bruce Rivers said
yesterday. "It's something we believe needs to be done".

The agency is formally applying to the Ministry of Community and Social Services for a licence to handle orphans from China with plans to expand into adoptions from other countries after the centre has opening likely in April.

"This will result in better service for children - in Toronto and
elsewhere", Rivers said in an interview.

How does it better service children?

And the fucking arrogance of " we are moving ahead"
the province needs to NEEDS to stop funding all CAS and CCAS agency's NOW, or they are going to get royally sued. Along with the agency's.
Bill 210 was passed without a recorded vote, WHY?

And on the Ministers web site, adoption was there before the Bill passed. it was all set up, I thought sorry, this was a democratic country, how stupid of me, is that why we are now at war and no longer peace keepers, as well to help other country be more like us totally undemocratic.
Why deal with the boarder issue, Bush should just over throw the Mexican government and call it a new State, then come up here and do the same thing, Harper could his new VP.
But will we be allowed to sing the American anthem in French???

its more corrupt by the day,
Truly why on earth was Bruce Rivers not fired for this, money making greed, child trafficking ordeal, Women and Children are being sold into prostitution by the thousands in the US. Its worse then slavery, and the government is doing nothing there.Child porn rings scare the shit out of every parent alive, yet the Toronto CCAS had porn in the office, many say, but few of us want to believe that the agency's are part are also part of the child pornographic rings. The case of the doctor in Ancaster with the foster child he raped, he did not even go to jail. And was caught raping her.
Anyone that tells you I am a child advocate and believes CAS crap run.

After what happened in the US with the so called Safe families adoption crap, and seeing apprehension sky rocket, child abuse in care sky rocket and more children were killed by adopting parents?? Because people with out a biological bond to the child are always more likely to harm the child.
if your pregnant have your baby at home, home school and use alternative medicine, like so many foster parents do, and so many ex social workers do as well, now I know why.

we are going ahead with this , what happened Bruce, the CAS is use to getting its way always, thats how they got the risk levels dropped that meant they could steal more children, and told everyone you must report maybe anything at all, and so much more, this Bill is for big bucks, why not spend the money and help the family, it will save us all a great deal more in the end, and perhaps save the childs life.

Anonymous said...

further more tell the truth there are not really orphans in China, it was the one child rule, and the child prized was the male baby. Join Feed the children, and save some lives, or some other worth while cause, go to Africa and drop off 35 grand, instead of picking up a baby, that will save hundreds of them.
Where are people values, has morals, ethics, democratic, tolerance, integrity, humanity, justice, dignity, all words we want children to understand and put into pratice , but how on earth can we teach children to be moral citizens , when no one cares.
Should we not be teaching them its a dog eat dog world. If Dalton steals your lunch money grad a few buddy's and kick him in the balls at the end of the day, off the school grounds, and if you don't like your teacher, tell her or him to eat it, your going ahead with what you want to do regardless.
If you want something be prepared to lie, cheat, steal, like the government, and the NGOs do, if you want to survive, it will be the survival of the fittest, so screw teaching children ethics, teach them how to kick ass,and not give a hoot about humanity, and touchy feeling things like feelings emotions are for wimps. sounds like the real world, what the heck am I doing reminding my child to respect others point of views,
what delayed gratification forget it.
I should ask Bruce Rivers, how he became so arrogant, and ignorant.
Perhaps he grew up in care.

Anonymous said...

There have been many posts of this site regarding organizing a protest rally against CAS. I wonder if readers are aware of this Mothers Day rally information posted on Dufferin VOCA:

Rally Against CAS
May 5, 2006

Wendy Babcock, an advocate for Toronto's prostitutes, sends us the announcement below. Sex-trade work is another activity that while legal, is persecuted by Children's Aid.

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TAKE BACK MOTHER'S DAY



MARCH AND PROTEST
May 14th 2006 at 15 Huntley Street at 2:00pm

For most Canadians, Mother's Day is a time when families honor their mother's hard work. But for many of low income families find that on Mother's Day, peace and joy is in very short supply, especially now that more than 30,000 of their youngsters languish in foster homes.

We did not lose our children because of abuse, rather we lost our children because of poverty, lack of affordable adequate housing, being single, being young, having a child with special needs, being in recovery from substance abuse issues, having survived an abusive partner, or having worked in the Adult Entertainment Industry.

Silenced for decades by shame and guilt, we suffered alone with our grief, believing that we were the only ones. Now we find that we are not alone. Mother's Day began as a day to honor the public activism of mothers. It began in 1870 because mother's declared that they would not lose their children as casualties of war.

On Sunday May 14th 2006, lets "Take Back Mother's Day" by joining with Mother's across Toronto as we rally in front of the Children's Aid Society at 15 Huntley Street at 2:00pm to demand:

* 40% increase in social assistance rates
* The creation of more housing geared to low income families
* Build more daycare spaces for low income families
* End to the clawback of child tax benefits
* End the discrimination against mother's who work in the Adult Entertainment Industry
* End the apprehension of children because their mother has a disability
* That the city of Toronto create family orientated treatment centres

Since the Mike Harris cutbacks to social assistance payments more and more mother's are in precarious financial circumstances often finding themselves unable to afford their hydro, gas, telephone and other necessities. By not being able to afford these necessities the Children's Aid Society can intervene and remove the child, citing "neglect".

Cutbacks in social programs — particularly in the area of housing — have led to shortages of affordable housing. A recent study by the Children's Aid Society of Toronto found that in the year 2000, housing was a factor in one in five cases where children were taken in care — a dramatic 60% increase over a similar study in 1992. They also found that lack of adequate housing caused a delay in the return of children to their parents in more than 11% of cases.

In cases where their children are taken into care, parents lose their child benefits forcing them to move into smaller apartments or rooms inadequate for living with their children. This creates a catch 22 system where in order for a mother to get her children back she must obtain proper living arrangements that she cannot afford without custody of her children. Thus, it becomes extremely difficult for low income mother's to get their children back once their children are taken into care. Imagine instead a system that worked in the best interest of the children and their mother's instead of a system that perpetrates a cycle of poverty and foster care.

Women with disabilities may find themselves under the scrutiny of Children's Aid Society by virtue of their disability alone. Once scrutinized, it may be difficult to remove oneself from the child protection system. In some cases, women have contacted the Children's Aid Society for support and assistance with parenting, only to find themselves the subject of an investigation. Other women are reported to the authority during pregnancy and have to fight to prevent the removal of their newborn from their care solely because the authority believes their disability prevents them from being able to parent. Other women, perhaps because of vulnerabilities caused by disability (a tendency to defer to authority, for instance), enter into what they believe to be "voluntary" agreements with Children's Aid Society only to find those voluntary arrangements used against them later by the same officials.

Many women experiencing substance abuse issues or mood disorders are often hesitant to seek treatment as they fear that in doing so they may lose their children.

Sex workers (dancers, escorts, dominants, phone sex operators), are also at risk of losing their children due to their profession. Even though it is NOT illegal to be a sex worker in Canada, the Children's Aid workers have discretionary powers for apprehending children of women working in the sex industry. This means that if a CAS worker objects to the mother's profession based on their own personal moral values, her children can be apprehended and taken into care regardless of whether they've experienced any actual abuse.

Furthermore, the number of children who have been taken into temporary custody as a result of witnessing their mother's being assaulted increased by at least 870% (no that is not a typo) between 1993-1998. With limited income supports, affordable regulated childcare, affordable housing, and emergency shelters operating at full capacity, there are few options for women who are being assaulted and abused, leaving them and their children at risk of continued violence, poverty and involvement with the Children's Aid Society. Thus, the shortages in affordable housing and emergency shelters are closely linked to the number of children who are victims of prolonged violence and involvement with the Children's Aid Society.

THIS MOTHER'S DAY LETS STAND UP FOR WOMEN AND THEIR CHILDREN AND

TAKE BACK MOTHER'S DAY!

For more information please contact info@takebackmothersday.com

Anonymous said...

How would you like these two CAS employees transporting you children after CAS maliciously abducted them. Please note CAS refuses to divulge how long these people worked for them - would it surprise anyone if the annual mandatory background checks that were required never occurred?

(Halifax Chronicle)

Children's Aid Society bars two workers after drug, gun arrests

By DAN ARSENAULT Crime Reporter
MAY 5, 2006

Two women have been suspended from
working with the Children’s Aid Society of Halifax after being arrested on gun and drug
charges Monday.
Shannon Johnson, 28, and Melody Husbands, 25, were arrested with two men at an Ardwell Avenue address in Spryfield early Monday morning and were told Tuesday they won’t be
working for Children’s Aid at least until their legal issue is resolved.
"We heard about it late Monday and responded immediately in terms of letting the service providers know that they were off our list," Barbara Williams, the acting co-ordinator of family and adolescent services with the society, said Thursday.
She wouldn’t say how long the two
independent contractors had been doing work for the society. Their duties involved ferrying children who had been removed from their
parents’ home to and from visits with them. According to a society release issued Thursday, service contractors are screened annually
through a police check, a scan of the child abuse registry, references and other steps. At their arraignment in Halifax provincial court Monday, Ms. Johnson and Ms. Husbands told the court of their work and were granted an amendment to their release conditions to allow
them out of their houses to do occasional work between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. As well, they were given permission for the same reason to have incidental contact with each other. The women were arrested at about 2 a.m. at an address Ms. Johnson shares with co-accused
Trevor Miller, 26, court records show. Ms. Husbands’ address is listed as Tamarack Drive in Cowie Hill. Harold Patton, 27, of Connor
Lane in Halifax was also arrested. All four were charged with possessing a weapon and drugs.
Halifax Regional Police say they seized a sawed-off shotgun, a large amount of marijuana, smaller quantities of morphine and
cocaine, hundreds of ecstasy pills and thousands of dollars in cash.
Mr. Miller was remanded and the other three are free with conditions until all four return to court May 15 to plead to the charges.

Anonymous said...

Halifax Regional Police say they seized a sawed-off shotgun, a large amount of marijuana, smaller quantities of morphine and cocaine, hundreds of ecstasy pills and thousands of dollars in cash.

No surprise to me that the "child protectors" would entrust children's lives to such thugs.

Anonymous said...

To the Thursday, May 04, 2006 8:48:55 PM poster

First I find it odd that you would know if I went to speak about Bill 210 as you do not know me? Those who are infertile and who are demanding babies are indeed to blame and are part of this whole cycle. I do not be-grudge one for being infertile. I do however, be-grudge those who allege they do not know that it is immoral to buy a child for $35,000 a head. And yes these people do not care period. If they were moral they would not be buying babies. There are wonderful groups and organizations that help people such as Unicef, World Vision, Ryan’s Well and others dedicated to helping in other countries. Those buying babies actively choose to take one child, and to leave the existing deplorable conditions in other countries in the same mess after adopting the child for their own benefit.

And what you are posting really does not make sense here - you said you adopted a child that you did not know, yet are related to the mother - and claim that you have to hunt them down? Doesn't make sense to me.

As to what I have done in regards to this the answer is plenty.

Really you have answered something in the email though - you said that you know people who have adopted after the death of a child - so is the adoption for the couple or the child?, and is it sain or fair to expect another child to heal a couple who has lost their own baby? How sad for instance it would be for Jeffrey’s siblings to be put into such a position if they were adopted by people like this. They have so much grief, and expecting them to be a cure for someone else is not in their best interest. The focus of the foster and adoption industry is not about children, nor has it ever been.

I think in this day and age that people do know, as I know people who are infertile who will not in this lifetime buy a child period, and they certainly will not hire someone to capture someone else's child.

There have been articles in the media about what is going on in China and all the brokers or those who facilitate this can do is to defend the whole thing. It is a driven market. Children’s Bridge has done nothing to stop this what so ever.

I agree that infertility can be caused by many things, but adoption is being caused by infertility - it is quite a cycle really.

And as for those who have and do speak out about this whole thing there are only 2 groups that continually attack us 1) adoptive parents now or 2) potential adoptive parents, and ditto for foster parents with a few exceptions. As well those that facilitate adoptions are nine times out of ten adopters themselves. The people who have been fighting to overhaul the system are not anonymous people – they have been advocating for years in this mess.

And almost always when we start speaking the truth we are shot down by adopters – in this email alone you have basically accused me of doing absolutely nothing about this problem not knowing me, further you are basically saying to stop posting on this blog – why? And truly, I don’t think we do know the stories. We haven’t even got started yet. I agree with you though in that the groups that you cite are doing a good job, and we do need an inquiry.
Finally I think the rally on Mothers Day really speaks to the myth that these mothers do not care – that is an ancient myth designed to keep those who adopt in power, and the family silent and invisible. That too worked for decades, but several people are talking about what they have experienced with the CAS. Overall it has been a nightmare of unbelievable pain.

I agree with you in that people should be encouraged to stop this system from destroying others - but lumping those who benefit from the system in with those who want it stopped hardly makes sense to me.

Anonymous said...

In truth I think there are people that foster and adopt who are good people as well, but overall the system has been about coercion, oppression and taking children for a number of reasons 1) social cleansing 2) to save tax dollars rather then supporting people and 3) sadly to provide products for others.

I think only when no one in a family can raise a child that someone else be given that privelage - but if that happens it too needs to be changed from the current system.

The needless increase in care is a repeat of an older disaster that overall has been a nightmare for those involved.

Anonymous said...

In truth I think there are people that foster and adopt who are good people as well, but overall the system has been about coercion, oppression and taking children for a number of reasons 1) social cleansing 2) to save tax dollars rather then supporting people and 3) sadly to provide products for others.

I think only when no one in a family can raise a child that someone else be given that privelage - but if that happens it too needs to be changed from the current system.

The needless increase in care is a repeat of an older disaster that overall has been a nightmare for those involved.

Anonymous said...

The story about the Halifax workers is very disturbing. One has to question what the kids in care were exposed to - were they given drugs? Were the abused by those people.

It seems that if the CAS likes you - you are exempt from everything human, but if they do not like you the total enemy of the state, and the agency.

It is no suprise that Jeffrey was given to abusers where the CCAS never looked back. Their arrogance in the screening process is really unprecedented and based on personal judgements rather then investigative techniques. The CCAS hated Jeffrey's parents and gave him and the siblings to people who were safe to them - for one reason they were not his parents. This is the exact formula that has been used for decades.

The original child welfare laws in Ontario are based on patriarchal laws from the late 1800's and early 1900's - they are at best discriminatory. The system is an archaic mess that has had little revision over the years.

Anonymous said...

To the poster about the Mothers Day rally BRAVO!!!

I do imagine a system where they actually help people. The CAS both today and in the past punishes those who are in poverty by removing their child as the ultimate slap on the wrist so to speak. Instead they pay strangers to foster children which is absolutely ridiculous. If these agencies valued children they would know that one does not wish to be raised by strangers.

Anonymous said...

The other problem with the CAS is that they too have infertile social workers and others that want children - they also take children for themselves.

Anonymous said...

Child Welfare is also a global problem. In this case the social workers also were not bright enough to know something was wrong here!


Prison sentence for adoptive father
Published: 30th March 2006 18:56 CET

The father of an adopted three year old boy who died of blood poisoning and pneumonia was sentenced to six months in prison for grievous bodily harm by Jönköping's district court.

The three year old adoptee died on the 8th January having been with his new family in the Jönköping area for six months. He had a number of infected sores, which had led to necrosis. The parents never took him to see a doctor.


Related Articles
Smoking Swedish nurses forced to changed clothes
3rd June 2005

The 31 year old father was acquitted of the charge of assault for pinching the boy's penis.

According to prosecutor, Stefan Edwardson, the father and mother were equally responsible for what happened to the boy. Both were charged with manslaughter as well as grievous bodily harm.

The court decided that both the father and mother, by not seeking medical advice, caused the boy's injuries by negligence. They knowingly exposed him to serious risks, according to the judgement.

The parents should have realised that the boy's condition could deteriorate. However, the court didn't consider that it was self-evident that the parents should have known that the boy's life was in danger. Therefore, they weren't convicted of manslaughter.

The court made the point that the mother's negative experiences of the health service could have contributed to their failure to seek medical advice.

The sentencing of the 29 year old mother has been delayed whilst she undergoes psychiatric assessment. The court, however, has already stated that there's convincing evidence that she's guilty of grievous bodily harm.

Both parents deny doing anything criminal. They say that they didn't realise that the sores could lead to such serious consequences. They also claim that the boy never complained that he was in pain. They opted to dress the sores themselves even after large areas of skin fell off one of the boy's feet. He died a week later.

According to the parents, he didn't feely poorly until the day before he died, but several doctors testified that the boy's injuries were so serious that he must have been in pain and felt unwell. An infection specialist testified for the parents and said that it was difficult for the layman to detect signs of blood poisoning and that death can come quickly.

Social services paid a house visit to the family only three weeks before the boy died and didn't find anything out of place.

The mother is also charged with assault for allegedly forcing the boy to lick up his own urine. She denies the charge.

The prosecutor asked for a sentence of 12 to 18 months in his closing speech for failing to see that the boy received medical treatment.

The parents were released from custody pending the court decision as there was not considered any danger that they would flee.



Andy Butterworth

Anonymous said...

Child-abuse case inspires bill
Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Feb 10, 2006 by KYLE HENLEY THE GAZETTE
DENVER - A Colorado Springs child-abuse case was the driving force behind a bill that advanced Thursday in a House committee.

House Bill 1151 by Rep. Lynn Hefley, R-Colorado Springs, deals with emotional abuse of a child, which is currently a misdemeanor. The bill won unanimous approval in the House Judiciary Committee.

HB1151 would make emotional abuse of a child a felony for anyone who is convicted of the crime a second time.

"This stems from a very heinous child-abuse case we had in El Paso County, where a child was basically treated like an animal," said John Newsome, 4th Judicial District attorney. "The result of that was a misdemeanor prosecution, which upset the community but is what the law called for."

HB1151 stems from a case in which an El Paso County boy was forced by his adoptive parents to live for five years in a tiny, windowless space beneath the stairs. The boy was also forced to masturbate in front of his siblings, eat meals on the floor and wear a dog collar around his neck.

The boy's adoptive mother was sentenced to two years in the El Paso County jail, the maximum allowed under the misdemeanor charges. His adoptive father was sentenced to four years in jail, but only because police were able to charge him with an unrelated felony.

"They were unable to properly punish the perpetrators," Hefley said. "By doing HB1151, even though it is not for a first offense, it gives the tools and sets the stage for utilization by the district attorney."

HB1151 would allow secondtime offenders to be charged with several different levels of a felony, depending on the circumstances. The bottom line, though, is that bumping the charges from a misdemeanor to a felony would mean significant jail time and potential fines up to $1 million.

Also Thursday in the House Judiciary Committee, members voted 9- 2 to approve House Bill 1092 by Rep. Dave Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs.

That measure makes it a felony for anyone to possess child pornography, an act that now is a misdemeanor.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 1-303-837-0613 or kyle.henley@gazette.com

Copyright 2006

Anonymous said...

WZZM13 ONLINE - ABC TELEVISON for ALL OF WEST MICHIGAN

Ricky Holland's Adoptive Father Wants Police Statements Thrown Out

Matt Campbell


Created: 2/16/2006 6:10:00 PM
Updated: 2/16/2006 8:58:59 PM


Mason - The attorney for a man accused of killing his adoptive son wants his client's statements to police thrown out.

Tim Holland is charged with open murder in the death of seven year old Ricky Holland.

The boy disappeared last July. His body was found last month.

Tim Holland's statements to investigators, released this week, described how his wife Lisa killed Ricky with a hammer.

Lisa Holland has told investigators her husband was responsible for the boy's murder.

Governor Jennifer Granholm today promised an investigation into how Ricky Holland was left with the family, despite repeated reports of abuse.


Web Editor: Matt Campbell, Producer

Anonymous said...

Florida Supreme Court Oral Arguments
Wednesday, December 8, 1999
Arrive early. Times & order of appearance are tentative and subject to change with no notice. Cases may be postponed due to exigent circumstances.
Case Time Facts & Issues Place of Origin
Gary Herzfeld v. Frank Herzfeld
No. 95,054

View briefs in Acrobat format by clicking the case number(s) here
9:00 In 1988 at age 13, Frank Herzfeld was placed as a foster child with Gary Herzfeld, who adopted him 3 years later. In 1997 Frank sued his adoptive father on claims stemming from alleged sexual molestation. The adoptive father moved to dismiss the suit based on the common law doctrine of parental immunity, which prohibited children from suing parents. The trial court agreed, but the Third District Court reversed. Dade County
Statewide impact

Anonymous said...

An Instance of "a System Gone Awry"
When Cameron Kerley was eight years old he witnessed his father being beaten to death. Cameron and three sisters were apprehended by the Children's Aid Society and placed in foster homes. His mother died two years later as a result of heavy drinking.

Cameron was placed for adoption with Dick Kerley, a bachelor who had previously adopted another Aboriginal boy. Cameron soon began to display social problems, skipping school and getting into trouble with the law.

When he was 19 years of age he murdered his adopted father with a baseball bat. Cameron pleaded guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with no eligibility for parole for 15 years. After being sentenced, Cameron alleged that he had been sexually abused by his adoptive father since shortly after he was placed.

Cameron's appeal for a reduced sentence in January 1985 was denied, but his request to be returned to Manitoba to serve his sentence was granted with the consent of the Canadian government.

Source: Review Committee on Indian and Metis Adoptions and Placements, No Quiet Place: Final Report to the Honourable Muriel Smith, Minister of Community Services (Winnipeg: Manitoba Community Services, 1985), p. 246.

Anonymous said...

R. c J. M. [2005] J. Q No. 109, Quebec, Athabaska, Jan.14/05, Judge Labbé (Our translation)

Facts: The accused, a pig farmer, and his wife adopted a 4-year-old boy from Thailand in 2001 but the wife rejected the boy. This caused tension and the relationship between the couple deteriorated. The 50-year-old husband began disciplining the child by subjecting him to cold baths, beating with a stick, hitting in the face, forcing him to eat his vomit, smearing him with excrement because he soiled himself and locking him in the pigpen where he was sprayed with cold water. The father sought assistance from the Quebec Adoption Bureau and the Protection de la jeunesse but the ill treatment continued for about 2 years. He also sought marital counseling. The couple separated. The father again approached protection de la jeunesse, the child was removed, and the father charged with assault. The child was later returned to his care.

Anonymous said...

Couple Is Charged With Abuse Of an Adopted 5-Year-Old Girl


*Please Note: Archive articles do not include photos, charts or graphics. More information. January 1, 2005, Saturday
By CHARLES V. BAGLI (NYT); Metropolitan Desk
Late Edition - Final, Section B, Page 5, Column 5, 375 words
DISPLAYING FIRST 50 OF 375 WORDS -A 5-year-old girl weighing 21 pounds and showing signs of abuse was in stable condition yesterday, at the Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune, N.J., the day after the couple who had adopted her were arrested on charges of assault and child endangerment. The girl was taken Wednesday from...

Anonymous said...

‘All-star’ foster dad charged in rape
By Kevin Rothstein
Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - Updated: 12:14 AM EST

A foster father feted by DSS as an “all-star” dad is facing charges he raped his 13-year-old foster daughter, authorities said.

The Springfield man was turned in by his wife and allegedly confessed to police that he had a sexual relationship with the girl. Chris Duhart is facing statutory...

Anonymous said...

Maybe the baby was crying for their mother - but the foster mother could not handle that and killed her instead?

Foster mother charged with striking, shaking 7-week-old
By Amy Doolittle
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 28, 2005


A 7-week-old child is in intensive care after his foster mother repeatedly slapped, shook and dropped him, the U.S. Attorney's Office said yesterday.
Authorities charged Tanya Jenkins, of the unit block of Bass Circle in Southeast, with first-degree cruelty to children after she acknowledged what she had done to try to quiet the child.
Miss Jenkins was arrested Tuesday by Metropolitan Police Department officers and is expected to appear this morning before D.C. Superior Court Judge Wendell Gardner Jr.
Miss Jenkins said she dropped the child six or seven times while trying to change him or after giving him a bath and that she shook him numerous times, according to court documents.
However, she said that each time she dropped the child, "it was by accident," according to the documents.
In the interview with police, Miss Jenkins said she shook and struck the child out of frustration "because he would not stop crying."
Police could not give the women's age.
Sources with Child and Family Services Agency, under the condition of anonymity, said Miss Jenkins had attempted to return the infant to the agency.
"The woman came back and told people in the agency that the baby cried all the time, and she couldn't get any sleep," the sources said.
The child had been in Miss Jenkins' care since Sept. 12, about three days after he was born. She told police that all of the incidents occurred in October.
The infant is at Children's Hospital. Court documents show the infant has multiple injuries that are consistent with shaken baby syndrome -- including hemorrhaging and swelling of the brain.
He also has a skull fracture and bruising under one of his eyes.
The sources said he is not expected to live through the week.
"If true, it's unacceptable by anyone's definition," said D.C. Council member Adrian M. Fenty, Ward 4 Democrat and chairman of the Committee on Human Services. "Immediate action needs to be taken against the employees of [the agency] who would've encouraged the mom to take the baby back."

Anonymous said...

Foster mother charged with sex offences
By Les Kennedy
October 24, 2005 - 2:35PM

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A foster mother allegedly repeatedly raped a teenage girl placed in her care almost 12 years ago.

Police say the woman, 56, committed the offences when the girl was 14 and living in her foster care on the Far North Coast.

Lismore police arrested the woman on Friday and charged her with 14 sex offences upon a juvenile.

Seven of the charges laid by police were for sexual intercourse with a juvenile.

The woman was also charged with six counts of indecent assault upon the girl and one count of committing an act of indecency upon the child.

The offences are alleged to have occurred between May and November 1983.

The woman is expected to appear before Lismore Local Court later today.

Anonymous said...

THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING


Foster mother charged in death of boy, 4
Prosecutors say he was beaten
By John Ellement and Patricia Wen, Globe Staff | July 1, 2005

Nearly four months after a young boy died, his 24-year-old foster mother was arrested yesterday on charges of beating him to death and failing to obtain medical attention when his life was clearly in jeopardy.

Boston police arrested Corinne N. Stephen on a charge of second-degree murder in the death of 4-year-old Dontel Jeffers on March 6. Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said she is accused of abusing the child repeatedly and inflicting two severe blows, at least one of which caused fatal internal injuries. She is also accused of using a telephone cord to tie him up.

Conely said he does not have evidence to support a first-degree murder charge, which requires proof of premeditation or ''extreme atrocity or cruelty."

Conley said that a grand jury will continue to investigate, however, and that there is a possibility that more charges could be filed against Stephen and that others may be charged.

''This is far from over," Conley said during a press conference yesterday. ''The road ahead remains long, but at its end is justice for the boy and his family. And we will get there."

Stephen, who was in police custody, was scheduled to be arraigned this morning in Dorchester District Court. Her lawyer, Carl N. Donaldson, declined to comment last night.

''I never, ever, ever try my client's case in the press," he said.

Relatives reacted with relief and anger at news that authorities had concluded that Dontel's death was the result of beatings.

''I told them so," said Agatha Jeffers, the boy's grandmother, in a phone interview. ''He would not just die so. He was not sick. He was a healthy boy."

The grandmother, who had fought for custody of the boy, questioned why it took prosecutors nearly four months to figure out why Dontel died. She said that when she and other relatives viewed the boy's bruised body at the medical examiner's office before his autopsy, they could see that he had been beaten.

''Why did it take so long?" she asked.

After the foster mother drove Dontel to Caritas Carney Hospital, investigators kept open the possibility that a rambunctious boy had died from accidental injuries. The foster mother said the child had been jumping on the bed and hit his head on the radiator the day before.

But as the weeks passed, suspicions about the foster mother's inconsistent accounts grew, authorities said. At first she was allowed to keep caring for her own 2-year-old son, but within two weeks, he was removed and taken into the care of the state Department of Social Services, DSS officials said.

Soon thereafter, prosecutors began receiving the final autopsy results and convened a grand jury.

Law enforcement officials said they looked into one person's account that the boy was being beaten as punishment for wetting his bed. But prosecutors have been unable to substantiate that contention as the motive in the alleged beatings, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.

Prosecutors said the foster mother is charged with second-degree murder because ''a reasonable person" in her position should have known her acts had a strong possibility of inflicting fatal injury.

Prosecutors now contend the boy may have already been dead when Stephen brought him to the hospital. They are declining to say specifically where they believe the foster mother struck the boy, and they refused to release the autopsy results, citing the need to keep some medical information confidential so it does not influence the testimony of other witnesses.

Prosecutors said Dontel had a bruise under his left eye; fingernail marks on his forehead, neck, and hands; and bruises on his arms. The law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said one of the assaults ruptured the boy's intestine, causing a severe internal infection that contributed to his death.

Harry Spence, the commissioner of the state Department of Social Services, the agency responsible for placing Dontel in the foster mother's home, was on vacation and could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Susan Getman, deputy commissioner of DSS, said the agency continues to probe Dontel's death.

''We will never forget this child," Getman said. ''Our hearts are breaking as they began to break in early March."

DSS officials have long said they had no basis to suspect that Stephen would hurt a child. Since she graduated form Madison Park Technical Vocational High School in 1999, she had worked steadily as a foster mother for the state or for private agencies. She had eight previous placements prior to caring for Dontel, and there were no signs that she was a threat to a child's safety, they said.

When she was assigned to care for Dontel, she was working for Massachusetts Mentor, a private contractor used by DSS. Massachusetts Mentor provides ''therapeutic" foster parents, who are trained to give one-on-one care to a child who needs a higher level of supervision.

Denise Monteiro, DSS spokeswoman, said her agency's investigation has not shown that Stephen had had any problems with her foster children.

During most of his life, Dontel had been cared for primarily by his father, Elary Jeffers.

But in October, Elary Jeffers was deported to his native Caribbean island, Nevis, after police discovered an outstanding deportation order. That immigration order surfaced when the father was charged with domestic violence against his girlfriend.

After Elary Jeffers was deported, Agatha Jeffers and the boy's mother, Christal Claiborne, fought for custody.

A judge awarded custody to Claiborne, who had had infrequent visits with the boy.

Within months, Dontel was pulled from her home; DSS alleged that she was neglecting him because she was abusing drugs.

In November, the boy was brought to Bridge Home, a residential center in Dorchester where children are evaluated for problems associated with child abuse or neglect.

After Dontel spent about three months there, DSS officials concluded that he should go to a therapeutic foster home and denied Agatha Jeffers's request to care for him.

State officials said the grandmother was rejected because they thought that she could not provide the level of care needed and that her home had some outstanding safety issues, including lead paint.

Upon hearing the news of the arrest last night, Elary Jeffers, in a phone interview from Nevis, said he was pleased, , but added, ''It still can't bring back my son."



© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Anonymous said...

National Coalition for Child Protection Reform / 53 Skyhill Road (Suite 202) / Alexandria, Va., 22314 / info@nccpr.org / www.nccpr.org
THEY "ERRED ON THE SIDE OF THE CHILD"
SOME CASE HISTORIES

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Opponents of family preservation have a lot of great applause lines. They are for "child protection," they say. They are for "children's rights," they say. They are for "putting children first instead of families first," they say. And over and over again, they tell us they are just “erring on the side of the child.”

But in the name of "child protection" children have been beaten. In the name of "children's rights" children have been raped. And in the name of "erring on the side of the child," children have been murdered. These are the stories of some of those children:


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Sara Eyerman of northern California was nineteen-months-old, child protective services was concerned that she wasn't growing fast enough. So they "erred on the side of the child" and placed Sara in a "specialized" foster home.

About six weeks later, Sara began running a 105 degree fever. But the "specialists" in the specialized foster home decided it was o.k. to wait two days before taking her to a doctor. On the way to the doctor's office, Sara Eyerman died of viral pneumonia.

"She should have been in the hospital two days earlier when she had a 104.8 [degree] temperature," said Sara's mother, Angie. "When she was home, she went to the emergency room if her temperature got over 101. I didn't care if they laughed at me when I got there or not. One time I took her when she was cutting a tooth ... I kept her alive for a year and seven months. They had her for six weeks and three days and she died."[1]


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Authorities in New York City thought Caprice Reid wasn't being properly supervised by her mother. So they decided to "put the child first" and put the child in foster care. They made a "child focused" decision. They "erred on the side of the child." Eleven months after placement in her third foster home, Caprice Reid, then age four, was dead.

Death did not come quickly. She was starved. She was dehydrated. And her body was covered with bruises. Police say she was tied to a chair and beaten with a stick for four days until she could no longer walk.

The foster home was licensed by one of the scores of private agencies that handle foster care for the city in the midst of a sudden shortage of foster home beds caused by the city's decision to effectively abandon family preservation. The home was licensed even though another agency had found the home unfit just a few months earlier.

About a week before she died, Caprice Reid's mother saw her daughter for the last time. The little girl clung to her mother's neck and said "Don't go, Mommy. I love you."[2]


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China Marie Davis was placed in foster care in Arizona when she was a little over a year old. Someone decided to "put the child first" and take her from her parents. They made a "child focused" decision. They "erred on the side of the child."

Ten months later, China Marie Davis' autopsy revealed two broken collarbones, a broken left arm, a broken right rib, two fractures of the left upper arm, a fracture of the right upper arm, broken left wrist, a broken left hand, a broken left forearm, a broken right wrist, a broken right forearm, fractures of both thigh bones and a compression fracture of the spine.

No one suspected anything because her foster mother always dressed her in such pretty outfits.[3]


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Somebody "erred on the side of the child" and placed Corey Greer of Treasure Island, Florida, in a foster home that would later be described by police as "filthy and overcrowded." The home was licensed for four children. By the time Corey Greer died in his crib of dehydration, 12 were living there. The foster mother was convicted of manslaughter and third degree murder.

Corey Greer might have survived the overcrowding, if only he had been white. According to a witness at the foster mother's trial, the foster mother said that touching black children "just gives me the willies." According to the witness, the foster mother referred to Corey Greer as "a big black blob."[4]


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Tina Ponce thought she was doing the right thing. She was suffering from bipolar disorder and couldn’t take care of her children. She also was too poor to get the help that a middle class family can count on. So she did the only thing she could think of: She asked the State of California to keep her children in foster care until she got better. Rather than provide Ponce with mental health services, the state “put the children first.” They made a “child-focused decision.” They “erred on the side of the child,” and gladly threw the children into foster care. “I had five kids, I was alone, I didn’t have any money, Ponce said. “I thought it would be a temporary thing. I didn’t think they would be in the system that long or it would be that hard to get them back.”

But when Ponce was better, she found it was much harder to get her children back than to get the state to take them. One day, while Ponce still was jumping through hoop after hoop in order to get her children back, she saw a television news story about a little girl who died after being left in her foster mother’s car in 100 degree heat.

It was her three-year-old daughter, Maryah.

“Even in my confusion, I never jeopardized my children’s safety or health,” Ponce said. “If I had them, this wouldn’t have happened. I thought I was doing the right thing by putting them in foster care.” [5]




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When child protective services took four-year-old Jamie Mayne from his father, they never bothered to tell his mother, Marie Panos, who was not living with the man. The mother was never accused of abusing or neglecting the boy. But after she found out about the removal two days later and offered to care for him, authorities in California refused. They decided to make a “child focused” decision, to “put the child first,” to “err on the side of the child” by placing Jamie with a stranger.

"I went up to them to get my children, and they said they’re in the system now and I had to do a case plan in order to get my kids back,” Panos said.

But a jury in Visalia, California found that while Panos was working on her “case plan,” Jamie was being tortured and murdered by his foster mother. He died of a collapsed heart, a ruptured small bowel and an abdominal hemorrhage. There were more than 40 bruises on his body. “It’s hard because I can’t pick him up and kiss him,” Panos said at the foster mother’s trial. “All I have is a headstone to look at instead of his beautiful face.”[6]




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Authorities in Massachusetts decided to "put the child first" and take seven-year-old Michelle Walton away from her parents. They made a "child focused" decision. They "erred on the side of the child."

Three years later, the body of Michelle Walton was found in the dirty hallway of her foster home, under 380 pounds of Sheetrock. Her foster mother says it was an accident. But a judge found that it was murder. And he found that Michelle was chronically sexually abused during her time in "care."

No one has been charged. According to the Boston Globe, Michelle's mother "heads to work every day with a worn Peanuts knapsack on her back crammed with her daughter's autopsy report and assorted other documents that chronicle her death and proffers them to most anyone interested. Not many are.

"'I carry 'em because it makes it easier for my sanity ... It helps me from going insane. Or maybe it just keeps her alive a little bit longer.''[7]


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Of course most foster parents don't harm the children in their care -- but most birth parents don't either. The case against family preservation has been fueled by "horror stories." It's important to remember that there are horror stories in foster care -- and family preservation has the better track record.

More examples of the harm of “erring on the side of the child” can be found in Issue Paper 6.


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1. Kent Pollock, "The Child Protectors: Innocent Suffer in War to Protect," Sacramento Bee, August 3, 1986, p.1 Back to Text.

2. Rachel Swarns, "Agency Was Warned About Foster Mother Charged in Girl's Death," The New York Times, July 2, 1997, p.B3; Michelle McPhee et. al., "Two Charged in Foster Death" New York Daily News, July 2, 1997, p.17 Back to Text.

3. Clint Williams and Norm Parish, "Few Grown-Ups Wanted to Bother With China Marie Davis," The Arizona Republic, April 9, 1994, p.A1 Back to Text.

4. Diana Smith, "Foster Baby's Death Spurs Corrective Action by State," Associated Press Dec. 8, 1985, "Race Issue Raised in Baby's Death," United Press International, Oct. 22, 1986," Woman Faces Seven Years in Foster Child's Death," Associated Press, June 13, 1988. Back to Text.

5. Rachel Tuinstra, “Tot’s Family Still Dazed,” The (Riverside, CA) Press Enterprise, July 6, 2001, p.B1 Back to Text.

6. Jennifer M. Fitzenberger, “Visalia woman gets life for death of 4-year-old foster son,” Fresno Bee, Sept. 12, 2001, p.B1; Jennifer M. Fitzenberger,” Convicted foster mom’s ‘a good mother,’” Fresno Bee, May 24, 2001, p.A1 Back to Text.

7. Sally Jacobs, "Who Killed Michelle Walton?" The Boston Globe, December 10, 1995, p.1. Back to Text.

http://www.nccpr.org/newissues/3.html

Anonymous said...

Sad that one of the children had to be murdered before the idiot social workers would consider reuniting the Mom with her kids............

Published March 29, 2006

Foster parent charged in child's injury

Beating with wooden back scratcher leaves 2-year-old girl severely hurt.

Matt Wagner
News-Leader

A Fordland woman has been charged with felony child abuse for allegedly beating her 2-year-old foster daughter so severely with a wooden back scratcher that the girl's skull was fractured in three places.
Carle G. Shane, 61, was fostering Kaylee Ward and her two siblings — a 3-year-old brother and 10-month-old sister — when the alleged abuse occurred earlier this month, said Lisa Echartea, Kaylee's biological mother.

Echartea said the incident happened just weeks after she requested that the Children's Division of the Missouri Department of Social Services move her children to a new foster home.

A DSS spokeswoman said Tuesday there's no record that a formal request was ever made.

Kaylee was admitted to Cox South hospital on March 11 and spent several days in the Intensive Care Unit, Echartea said. The toddler was taken to St. Louis Children's Hospital on Tuesday morning, family members said.

A Christian County sheriff's deputy who examined the toddler March 11 said the girl had several bruises on her arms, legs, feet, hands and head, according to court records.

Shane told the deputy she hit the child on the arms and legs with a broken, wooden back scratcher and that she knew the toddler should have gone to the hospital as early as March 8, records show.

Echartea said a doctor told her March 12 that her daughter had suffered a massive stroke six to 12 hours before arriving at the hospital and a severe head injury 12 to 20 hours before she was admitted.

Shane never explained to authorities why she beat Kaylee with the back scratcher, said Capt. Jeremy Whitehill of the Christian County Sheriff's Department.

The longtime foster mother was arrested Tuesday at Cox North hospital and is being held without bond in the Christian County Jail. Shane is thought to be a threat to herself and others, said Christian County Prosecutor Ron Cleek.

FIRST SIGNS

Echartea said she knew something was terribly amiss when she called Shane's house the evening of March 11 to check on her children as severe weather blanketed the Ozarks.

A woman who answered the phone asked if Echartea was a paramedic who was having difficulty finding the residence, Echartea said.

Then Shane took hold of the phone, told Echartea she could not talk and hung up.

Echartea frantically called her Children's Division caseworker and drove to each of Springfield's hospitals — twice — fearing that one of her children had been hurt. She said officials at each hospital told her none of the children had been admitted.

Echartea's caseworker called about 10:45 p.m. to tell her Kaylee was at Cox South with unexplained injuries. At the hospital, the hysterical Echartea wasn't immediately allowed to see her daughter.

"I stood in the emergency room for almost an hour trembling, almost in tears," she said. "I wanted to know what was going on with my baby."

Echartea said Christian County sheriff's deputies at the hospital asked her if she was high on drugs and if she'd consent to a urinalysis. Deputies reminded her that Kaylee was still in protective custody.

She said she told the officers she would do whatever was necessary to see her daughter.

Once she was allowed to see Kaylee, Echartea said the sight of her swollen, comatose child was so overwhelming she cried almost continuously through the night.

"I wigged out," she said. "Her head was swollen. She had blood in the back of her eyes. She looked like she was dead."

Doctors told Echartea her daughter probably wouldn't live, and that, if she did, she'd likely end up in an institution.

Echartea said she cried so much in the hospital that her eyes were swollen shut, prompting a doctor to send her to the emergency room. She had a staphylococcus bacteria infection and was admitted for treatment.

In an interview from her seventh-floor room last week, Echartea expressed her disdain for the Children's Division but praised her caseworker's dedication.

"They should have moved my children when I asked them," she said.

FOSTERING SINCE THE '70S

Carle Shane and her husband have fostered 47 children since their home was first licensed by the state in the early 1970s, said DSS spokeswoman Deb Scott.

The Shanes briefly moved away but returned in the late 1980s and were repeatedly relicensed as a foster home every two years as required, she added.

"Christian County staff were shocked that a child was injured to this extent in this foster family," Scott said. "(The caseworker) is devastated because he couldn't foresee this type of thing happening."

Scott said Kaylee's siblings were removed from the foster home but wouldn't say where they are now.

The couple's foster care license has been suspended and will be revoked if the allegations against Carle Shane are proven, Scott explained.

The Children's Division is working with law enforcement, and an outside executive staff member will review the entire case file, she said.

There are no signs that the foster mother harmed any of the children she cared for, Scott said, but she did mention that Kaylee suffered a broken ankle in December.

Echartea said she requested her children be transferred to a different foster home after the injury, which Scott said was ruled accidental by Children's Division investigators.

Echartea had voiced concerns about the foster care, including how her children were dressed, but she never formally requested a new foster home, said Scott, who expressed sympathy for the victim and her family members.

"We're extremely sorry that something like this could happen in a foster home we thought was a safe place."

Scott said DSS officials were "ecstatic" to hear that Kaylee had shown significant improvement in recent days.

Echartea said her daughter recognizes family members and has talked with them. And on Tuesday, the little girl was moving her right leg despite the lingering threat of paralysis, her mother said.

"It's a miracle," Echartea said. "(The doctors) said the most she would ever do is blink her eyes and breathe."

REMOVED IN SEPTEMBER '05

The Children's Division removed Echartea's four children — she also has a 14-year-old daughter — from her Ozark home in September 2005 after a hotline report of unattended children playing outside.

She said a filthy house and a small quantity of marijuana found inside were cited as reasons for removal.

Echartea said she knows she's partly responsible for what has happened to her daughter, a girl born with a double cleft lip and double cleft palate who turned 2 in January.

"I screwed up, but I was doing everything the court asked me to," she said. "You would not imagine the hours I've cried, because — in a certain way — I've caused this for my children."

She added: "But in the same circumstances, they took responsibility for my children."

Echartea's sister, Grace Grobe of Chicago, said Echartea does not deserve what happened.

"She made some poor choices, but no one should have to pay for their mistakes like this," Grobe said.

Scott with DSS said Children's Division officials have every intention of reunifying Echartea with her children.

"They're doing everything they can to bring this family back together," she said.

Anonymous said...

Plight of foster child generates conflicting accounts
By Amy Doolittle
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 29, 2005


A 7-week-old foster child remains in critical condition four days after his foster mother was arrested and charged with repeatedly slapping, shaking and dropping him. He is not expected to live through the weekend, officials said yesterday.
As the child struggles, Child and Family Services Agency officials and sources are giving varied accounts of what happened this month in the Bass Circle apartment in Southeast that the infant shared with foster mother Tonya Jenkins, her 3-year-old son, Jeremiah, and her boyfriend.
Sources with access to the agency files, said Miss Jenkins, 37, attempted to return the infant to the agency in the days before he was hospitalized, but a case worker convinced her to keep the child.
"The infant was brought back because [the agency] didn't have a placement," the source said. "They begged her to take the infant back."
The source also said Miss Jenkins called the agency three times Tuesday to report problems with the child. She said on the third call that the child had stopped breathing and social workers advised her to call 911, the source said. Miss Jenkins was arrested that day and charged with first-degree cruelty to children, a felony.
Agency officials yesterday refuted claims that Miss Jenkins called numerous times or tried to return the infant, named Rafael.
"There is nothing in the record to indicate that she asked us to remove the child," said Brenda Donald Walker, the agency's outgoing director, who on Monday will become deputy mayor for Children, Youth, Families and Elders. "We went out and did visits and subsequent visits and had phone conversations with her and workers input all the information. ...The only time she called with concerns was when she called and said the baby wasn't breathing."
Mindy Good, an agency spokeswoman, gave a different version, saying Miss Jenkins never called the agency and went straight to the police.
"We got a call from the police that they were at the hospital where they had a child in very, very critical condition and, medically, it was looking like an abuse situation," she said. "The foster mother called the ambulance."
Miss Jenkins has been registered as a foster parent since March. She received her first child, an infant girl, shortly after being approved. She kept the infant for a short time before returning her to the agency, saying she was unable to keep her because of personal medical problems.
Miss Jenkins told police she dropped Rafael six or seven times accidently and acknowledged slapping him six or seven times and shaking him repeatedly out of frustration after he would not stop crying, according to the U.S. District Attorney's Office.
She also is charged with child neglect involving Jeremiah, her biological child, who has special needs. The agency took him into custody after Miss Jenkins' arrest. Rafael was given to Miss Jenkins after being removed from an abusive home, sources said. They also said he was addicted at birth to crack cocaine and would not stop crying because he was going through drug withdraw.
Miss Jenkins is scheduled to appear in court Monday on the child-neglect charge.

Anonymous said...

Foster Mother Indicted

MIAMI, March 16, 2005
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(AP) A woman who was supposed to be taking care of Rilya Wilson, the 4-year-old foster child whose disappearance three years ago scandalized Florida's child-protection agency, was indicted Wednesday on charges of murdering the little girl.

Geralyn Graham was also charged with kidnapping and aggravated assault. No body has been found, prosecutors said.

"Our grand jury has heard the facts and determined that Rilya's disappearance was the result of an act of violence and has indicted the child's former caretaker," State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said.

Rilya's story became known three years ago when it was discovered that she was not living at the home she shared with Graham and another woman, Pamela Graham. The Grahams claimed a state social worker had taken the child in early 2001 for medical testing and never returned with the girl, who was 4 when she was last seen.

The girl's disappearance had gone unnoticed by the Florida Department of Children & Families for months. The scandal led to a major shakeup at the agency, as well as a search for the girl.

Prosecutors said they believe that the girl was dead by the time her disappearance was discovered.

Anonymous said...

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HUMAN RIGHTS MAGAZINE






Holding Foster Care Agencies Responsible for Abuse and Neglect

By Carolyn A. Kubitschek

We have all heard some version of the story.

For half his life, 8-year-old Marcus Smith has had to wear a helmet . . . . to protect his brain, which has only the healed skin of his scalp to protect the right side of his head. . . . When he was four, Marcus was beaten unconscious, his skull smashed like an eggshell, leaving his brain bruised and permanently damaged. . . . This would have been more than enough for city authorities to crash down doors to get the perpetrator, except for one thing: Marcus was a foster child at the time, taken from his mother and entrusted to the care of the city. Bob Port, From Foster Care to Courts, N.Y. DAILY NEWS, Feb. 20, 2001, at 24.

The blows that crushed Marcus’s skull were allegedly inflicted by a teenage son of Marcus’s foster mother. The foster care agency that oversaw Marcus’s care had ignored complaints from the boy’s mother and grandmother. Indeed, as the newspaper noted, “even as [Marcus] lay in intensive care with a shattered skull, caseworkers submitted an internal report saying he was in good health.” Id.

When the government removes children from parents it claims are abusive, neglectful, or unfit, at a minimum the government must place the children in safer environments than those they left. In many cases, this does not happen. Throughout our country, foster children are placed in homes and institutions where they suffer horrendous abuse and neglect, and sometimes even death, at the hands of their purported protectors. See, e.g., Glenn E. Rice, Former Foster Mother Sentenced to Five Years Probation in Girl’s Death, KANSAS CITY STAR, Jan. 24, 2003, at B1; Richard Lezin Jones & Leslie Kaufman, Foster Care Secrecy Magnifies Suffering in New Jersey Cases, N.Y. TIMES, May 4, 2003, at A1.

“I know that there are good foster families out there, OK?” a former foster child said. “But I also know that every foster kid that I have ever talked to, including myself, has been abused in foster homes.” Frontline: Failure to Protect—A National Dialogue (PBS television broadcast, Feb. 6, 2003), available at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/fostercare/etc/script2.html#dialogue. In New Jersey, the system has deteriorated to the point that Marsha Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children’s Rights, Inc., concluded that “it is now a documented fact that no child is safe today in [the state’s] foster care.” Patterson, Special Unit of DYFS Is Called Failure, N.J. STAR LEDGER, May 23, 2003.

Our nation’s most vulnerable children deserve better. Having been removed from their homes and families—and often from their neighborhoods, friends, schools, and religious institutions—they are helpless and at the mercy of the agencies that are charged with providing substitute care. All too often, foster care agencies fail at their job. Government social workers also habitually fall short. Some children languish for years in abusive situations while the officials charged with protecting them either do not know what is going on or choose to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, and write no evil in the case file.

Placing foster children in abusive homes is appalling. Failing to protect them, so that the abuse continues, is inexcusable. It is also unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that people who are in government custody have a constitutional right to safe conditions during confinement and protection from injuries inflicted by others. The Court has extended its ruling to prisoners, suspects in jail awaiting trial, and involuntarily hospitalized mental patients. The Court has not yet decided whether foster children have the same right to protection as prisoners, criminal suspects, and mental patients. However, nine federal judicial circuits have ruled that foster children, who are innocent of any wrongdoing, are at least entitled to the same constitutional protections, in terms of safe conditions of confinement, as convicted felons. See Doe v. N.Y. City Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 649 F.2d 134 (2d Cir. 1981); Nicini v. Morra, 212 F.3d 798 (3d Cir. 2000); Hernandez v. Texas Dep’t of Protective & Regulatory Servs., 380 F.3d 872 (5th Cir. 2004); Meador v. Cabinet for Human Res., 902 F.2d 474 (6th Cir. 1990); K.H. by Murphy v. Morgan, 914 F.2d 846 (7th Cir. 1990); Norfleet v. Ark. Dep’t of Human Servs., 989 F.2d 289 (8th Cir. 1993); Miller v. Gammie, 335 F.3d 889 (9th Cir. 2003); Yvonne L. v. N.M. Dep’t of Human Servs., 959 F.2d 883 (10th Cir. 1992); Taylor v. Ledbetter, 818 F.2d 791 (11th Cir. 1987). When foster care agencies fail to provide those protections, they may be held liable.

The constitutional rulings have provided some redress for abused foster children. They may sue under 42 U.S.C. section 1983 to obtain compensation from the agencies that have wronged them. Importantly, the Constitution, as the supreme law of the land, trumps all state statutes and case law that might give full or partial sovereign immunity to government agencies or employees, or that might impose procedural prerequisites on children asserting claims against state or local governments. However, the law falls far short of providing a remedy for comprehensive damages for all abused foster children. Numerous hurdles remain for an abused foster child.

First, in states that provide foster care directly through a statewide program, the government agencies themselves are immune from suit in federal court under the Eleventh Amendment. (Where foster care is provided by counties or other local governments—as in New York, California, and some other states—the Eleventh Amendment does not prohibit lawsuits.) In all states, agency employees and officials may still be sued, however.

Second, in all lawsuits under 42 U.S.C. section 1983, the standard of liability is much higher than the negligence standard of tort law. Foster care agencies, officials, and employees will not be held to account unless their behavior exhibits “deliberate indifference” to a risk of harm to the foster children. Doe v. N.Y. City Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 649 F.2d 134. This heightened standard of liability has been exploited by careless foster care agencies to avoid legal consequences of their careless mistakes.

A third problem for abused foster children seeking legal recourse is the issue of proximate cause. As in tort law, defendants are responsible for the consequences of only those injuries that they cause. Foster care agencies and staff do not normally abuse foster children directly. The abuse is usually inflicted by foster parents and family members, or other foster children in the household. The courts have held that foster care agencies will be liable for abuse inflicted by foster parents when the agencies’ behavior was a “substantial factor” leading to the abuse. Id. If the chain of causation is found to be too attenuated, however, the agency will escape liability.

Finally, 42 U.S.C. section 1983 contains its own defense. All defendants can potentially claim the defense of qualified immunity and avoid paying damages if their actions or omissions violated a law that was not clearly established at the time, or if their actions or omissions were objectively reasonable, as determined by the judge (not the jury). While agencies themselves cannot claim qualified immunity, their employees can, and the employees have avoided compensating abused foster children by using that defense. See Camp v. Gregory, 67 F.3d 1286 (7th Cir. 1995).

Despite all the hurdles, many abused foster children can and do obtain compensation. Three years after his injury, Marcus has twice undergone surgery on his skull. A permanent plate has replaced his helmet and, except for the large scars on his head, Marcus looks like any other child. He is doing well in his special education class at school. When he turns eighteen, he will begin to receive a monthly annuity out of the $1.25 million settlement of his lawsuit for the abuse he suffered in foster care. That sum in theory replaces the salary that Marcus will unfortunately never be able to earn.


Carolyn A. Kubitschek is a partner in Lansner and Kubitschek in New York City and an adjunct professor at Cardozo Law School. She served as the attorney in Doe v. N.Y. City Department of Social Services.


Contact information:
Section of Individual Rights & Responsibilities
American Bar Association, 740 15th Street, NW
Washington, DC, 20005
phone: (202) 662-1030
fax: (202) 662-1032
irr@abanet.org

Anonymous said...

Grand Jury Indicts Adoptive Mother On First-Degree Murder Charges
Preliminary Autopsy: Tight Bindings Killed 4-Year-Old Sean Paddock

POSTED: 7:50 am EST March 13, 2006
UPDATED: 7:25 pm EST March 13, 2006

JOHNSTON COUNTY, N.C. -- Exactly what happened last month inside a Johnston County farmhouse that led to death of a 4-year-old boy is still unclear, but a grand jury decided Monday that it amounted to first-degree murder.

Lynn Paddock was arrested Feb. 26 and charged with murder in connection with the death of her adopted son, Sean who was found unresponsive in his bed early that morning.

Investigators later said that Paddock wrapped the boy so tightly in a blanket that he suffocated. They said the bindings were for punishment, but declined to elaborate on why they believe Sean was being punished. They also wouldn't say whether the boy had ever been disciplined before in that way.

Paddock had originally been charged with second-degree murder, but Johnston County District Attorney Tom Lock said he asked the grand jury to indict Paddock on first-degree charges because the abusive nature of the death was "so extreme."

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determined in a preliminary autopsy report that there was abusive trauma, but that the blows didn't cause Sean's death. It was tight bindings that killed him.

"Basically, this was torture, and that's why we sought the first-degree murder charge," Lock said.

Lynn Paddock's lawyer, Michael Reece, said he did not believe his client had any intention to kill Sean.

Potentially, this case could be a death penalty case, but Lock said he did not think there are aggravating circumstances to make a case for capital punishment.

Lynn Paddock and her husband, Johnny Paddock, had six adopted children at their rural Johnston County home, including Sean's biological brother and sister. Lynn Paddock also faces felony child abuse charges after serious bruising was found on their bodies, as well.

Johnny Paddock has not been charged in the case, but investigators tell WRAL that is still a possibility.

Anonymous said...

No One Heard Our Cries for Help
By James Knight, 20

I am a 20-year-old male who practically grew up in foster care. I went into the system at the age of 7. My four siblings and I lived in an abusive foster home, yet no one heard our cries for help.

The foster mother who eventually adopted us was an emotionally unstable woman who disliked children, but was still given a license to provide and care for them. She often told us that she took us in for the money. She always said she couldn’t care less about us, as long as her bills were paid.

She beat us with any object she could get her hands on, and she never had mercy for our faces. She beat us with a thick cowhide belt which she slit into seven strips. She called the belt “Mr. Brown.” My siblings and I had welts on our bare skin for days due to the beatings. We were also beaten with pots and pans, a wooden brush, hangers, broomsticks and her fists.

Every time we yelled at the top of our voices for help, our foster mother turned up the radio so no one could hear our cries.

A stray dog should not have been placed in the care of my adoptive mother. There were many nights we went to bed hungry. She felt we didn’t deserve to eat because we were “bad.” I believed the harsh words she said because she was
an adult.

No matter how much we begged and pleaded to the foster care system, police officers and the Child Abuse Registry Hotline, no one reached out to help us. For example, when I was 11 or 12 years old I called the hotline and a man assured me they would look into my case.

I felt relieved, knowing I was not alone. A social worker arrived the next day. My adoptive mother denied the abuse.

The social worker then asked us – in her presence – if we were being abused. Since we were terrified of our adoptive mother, of course we said no.

The case was immediately dismissed. We felt helpless and trapped because we had nobody to turn to.

When we ran away from home, a police officer took us back and said, “You kids have it made living here. This is a clean home with plenty of food in the refrigerator, and a loving mother to provide for your needs. You kids are crazy not wanting to stay here.” As soon as the officer left, the beatings continued where they had left off.

My adoptive mother was a totally different person in the presence of the police. She would put on an act that looked so natural. She would give the police coffee and donuts and then she would show them her immaculate house – that my siblings and I had cleaned.

The naked eye can be very deceiving. You can see things you only want to see. While riding in the back seat of the police car, I heard the officers mumble, “Damn, we gotta go through all this paperwork from these kids’ nonsense.” I strongly believe the officer felt his job would be easier if he ignored our pleas for help.

People must realize children are terrified of telling someone that they’re being abused. I went to school many days with cuts and bruises on my face. My teachers often asked what happened, and I would always say I fell or tripped over my shoelaces. I was afraid no one would believe I was being abused.

I eventually left the abuse by refusing to go back home, and when I was 14 I was finally signed into a new placement. My siblings stayed years longer with my adoptive mother.

Based on my experiences, I feel there’s a great need for the foster care system to make drastic changes:

• Child care workers should talk to children outside of the home when there is a suspicion of abuse. A child is more comfortable revealing abuse away from adults. My siblings and I couldn’t reveal the abuse in front of our adoptive mother. Also, interview the children separately. They won’t feel pressure from a sibling to hide the abuse.

• Social workers and child care workers should make surprise visits to check on allegations of abuse. Letting the person know you’re coming by isn’t an effective way to investigate the home.

• Screen foster parents more thoroughly. My adoptive mother should never have been approved as a foster parent.

• Increase the budget for foster care. A lack of well-trained and well-paid social workers and caseworkers in the system will only lead to more children being abused.

This story was very painful to write because it brought back so many horrible memories, but I have to keep in mind how lucky and thankful I am to be alive and well. I see myself as a survivor, not a victim. I wish a lot of other children could feel the same way.

© 2002, Foster Care Youth United, Youth Communication/New York Center. www.youthcomm.org.

Anonymous said...

Although the newly formed Child and Family Service Review Board has been established as a type of oversight body designed to ensure the adequacy of the services of Ontario's Children's Aid Society's, this body continues to lack any real jurisdictional powers over the CAS. I have recently been made aware by the Child and Family Services Review Board that even after a hearing of their panel that includes a finding that the CAS has provided substandard care, the Review Board can only make a "recommendation" to the Society. There is still no onus on Children's Aid Society's in Ontario to comply with any recommendation or directive of the Child and Family Services Board. In addition, local Children's Aid Society's have cleaverly acquired a new tactic in order to avoid accountabilty. The Child and Family Services Review Board cannot hear matters that are before the courts. Acordingly, local Children's Aid Society's can now ensure matters remain "before the courts" in contravention of "the Rules of Law" under the guise of "in the best interest of the child" in order that they are never held accountable for professional misconduct or unethical practice while a child is under the age of 16 or in some cases 18. There is currently a matter involving the daughter of a Police Officer who has battered an abused his child for years. The involved Children's Aid Society continues to leave the child in the care and custody of this police officer despite countless dsiclosures by the child that she has been battered and abused by this officer and his current wife, (who, by the way, is a supervisor with a local Children's Aid Society). It appears that local Children's Aid Society's do not even possess a protocol that deals with child victims of Police Perpetrated Domestic Violence. I have been informed that it is the job of the local Police Service to arrest and charge CAS employees for criminal negligence if a child continues to be neglected and battered while in the care of, or under the supervison of, the Children's Aid Society. It will be interesting to see who gets arrested in this case. Will it be the Police Officer who beat his daughter, or the Supervisor with the Children's Aid Society who watched the Police Officer beat his daughter and did nothing...or will it be the Children's Aid Society Worker assigned to the case that is denying the officer is an abuser despite the child disclosing she is being exposed to physical violence, humiliation, emotional degradation, police corruption, pornogrpahy and cocaine..."Never stop fighting for your daughter!." "Whatever you do, do not let this one go!"

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