Keeash's body was found in one of Thunder Bay's waterways, after she'd been last seen at a nearby park, drinking with friends. Police informed her family she had died by suicide, said Keeash's uncle Tyson Matawapit. But her mother, Pearl Keeash, never believed them.
OIPRD previously reviewed Wabasse's death, and the deaths of six other First Nations youth who'd travelled to Thunder Bay for high school between 2000 and 2011. Jethro Anderson, Reggie Bushie, Robyn Harper, Kyle Morrisseau, Paul Panacheese and Curran Strang all drowned.
Systemic racism throughout the Thunder Bay police force has compromised the investigation of the sudden deaths of Indigenous people, a scathing and unprecedented review has found.
Thunder Bay police's efforts have been so inadequate, it should re-investigate at least nine cases, said the the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, an Ontario police watchdog, in its 208-page report, Broken Trust, released Wednesday.
"The serious inadequacies and premature conclusions in TBPS investigations are at least in part because of racial stereotyping," said OIPRD's Gerry McNeilly.
"Officers repeatedly relied on generalized notions of how Indigenous people likely came to their deaths and acted based on those biases. The investigations were too often handled differently because the deceased was Indigenous."
Investigators also lacked experience, failing to find out autopsy results, understand their significance or know what was in their own investigation file, including other reports filed by patrol officers, and they weren't properly supervised, McNeilly found. Thunder Bay police also doesn't have a major crimes unit, meaning investigators don't always receive the proper training on how to handle serious cases.
Thunder Bay police said in a statement it will review all the recommendations in the coming days and that it will be "of great value" in building trust with Indigenous communities.
"We acknowledge that there are systemic barriers in policing that must be addressed," said police Chief Sylvie Hauth. "With help from this report, the service continues to work towards bias-free policing."
Statement from the Chief of Police. https://t.co/7Mq0R24ai9
— Thunder Bay Police (@tbpsmedia) December 12, 2018
OIPRD looked at 37 Thunder Bay police investigations, including the deaths of Stacy DeBungee, 41, in 2015, and Josiah Begg, 14, and Tammy Keeash, 17, in 2017. For years, Indigenous leaders had raised concerns about the way police handled cases involving sudden deaths and disappearances of Indigenous people, many in their teens.
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Award winning, journalist and author Tanya Talaga is known for her investigative reporting for the Toronto Star where she often focuses on Indigenous issues.
Most recently, Talaga released the national bestseller, ‘Seven Fallen Feathers. Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City.”
The book focuses on seven Indigenous youth who died in Thunder Bay, Ontario while attending high school hundreds of kilometres away from their families. An Inquest into the deaths wrapped up in 2016 and produced 145 recommendations.
Months later, two more youth would be pulled from waterways in Thunder Bay.
Talaga joins host Dennis Ward to discuss her novel, the ongoing deaths of Indigenous youth in Thunder Bay and why it is not just a Thunder Bay problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Frtel_zOLU
Unmarked graves of children from residential school found beneath RV park..
Campers have for years parked their RVs at the Turtle Crossing campground along the Assiniboine River in Manitoba, without knowing that it’s situated on the site of unmarked graves of more than 50 Indigenous children who died at the Brandon Residential School.
But Anne Lindsay, a researcher and former archivist with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba, has spent nearly 10 years looking for and trying to identify the bodies. So far, she has identified children ranging in age from 7 to 16, dating back to the early 1900s.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that more than 3,200 children in total died at residential schools, where more than 150,000 Indigenous children were sent from 1883 to 1998 as part of a program of forced assimilation.
According to the Commission’s report, child abuse was “institutionalized” at residential schools and the entire system represented an attempt at “cultural genocide.”
Among its 94 calls to action was one to determine how -- and how many -- children died at residential schools and to determine where they are buried.
But some say that, so far, all they’ve seen is apathy.
“We hear from residential school survivors who tell you of these things happening, of mass graves existing, and everybody always denies that those stories are true,” said Arlen Dumas, the grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs. “Well, here’s one example…there will be more.”
Lindsay found the unmarked graves by using an old, hand drawn map made by a former student of the Brandon Residential School.
Current campground proprietor Mark Kovatch, who is the third owner of Turtle Crossing, told CTV News that he had no idea his property held a burial ground. He said that he is co-operating with the City of Brandon and a local First Nation to uncover the grave site.
“Their preference was to repatriate the bodies up to the site of the old residential school and to try and have a memorial up there,” he said.
Harshly disciplined and poorly nourished, children at residential schools often died from illnesses such as tuberculosis, pneumonia or influenza. But others died from the hard labour they were forced to endure or died by suicide. Twelve children died after the Cross Lake school in Manitoba burned down in 1930.
“They operated equipment, which in the early 1900s was far less safe than farm equipment we know today,” Lindsay said. “They were also just physically run down from the amount of labour they were doing.”
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission report said that “the failure to establish and enforce adequate standards, coupled with the failure to adequately fund the schools, resulted in unnecessarily high death rates at residential schools.”
The work of Lindsay and others in trying to identify the thousands of children who died at the schools is a difficult one, in part because governments and churches have not always been forthcoming with relevant documents or have provided documents in poor quality.
Compounding the problem is that school officials routinely failed to report the deaths to authorities, choosing instead to bury the children in unidentified cemeteries on school grounds rather than to send them home to their families. For nearly one-third of the deaths, no effort was made to record the name of the student who died. In even more cases, they did not record the cause of death.
A meeting is scheduled in September to discuss next steps. Dumas hopes that Indigenous families -- long excluded from conversations surrounding the deaths of Indigenous children at residential schools -- will be invited.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/unmarked-graves-of-children-from-residential-school-found-beneath-rv-park-1.4076698
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'This is somebody’s young kid': The unmarked graves of Brandon’s residential school.
The small cemetery just north of the school has a cairn listing 11 students, but Katherine Nichols had heard whispers in the community about unmarked graves, and how they weren’t well-kept. She was certain there were secrets to be revealed.
Growing up, Katherine Nichols went past the Brandon Indian Residential School everyday in her school bus, but she had no idea what it was. After the school was torn down in 2000, and her parents took her to see the ruins, all she knew was that it was a school for aboriginal children.
It wasn’t until she took a first-year Native Studies course at university that she learned about the residential school system — Canadian history’s “sad chapter.”
And so when choosing a topic for her master’s thesis at the University of Manitoba, the budding forensic anthropologist was drawn back to the Brandon school, which operated from 1895 to 1972. She wanted to see if she could unravel its darkest secrets — and document all the students who had died or gone missing and where they were buried.
The small cemetery just north of the school has a cairn listing 11 students, but Nichols had heard whispers in the community about unmarked graves, and how they weren’t well-kept. She was certain there were secrets to be revealed.
She would be right.
After combing through reams of records in libraries and archives, and surveying swaths of the school’s property using ground-penetrating radar and aerial drones, Nichols recently published her findings: she uncovered the names of 70 students who died while attending the school and believes all of them are likely buried in or near the property — mostly in unmarked graves.
“In Western society, it is often assumed that our dead will be brought home,” Nichols wrote. “However, almost all of the parents of the children who attended and died at the (school) were not afforded this basic human right.”
Vincent Tacan, chief of the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation, which owns the land, said it’s good to finally get some certainty about how many bodies are buried there. It goes to show, he said, how the school’s administrators seemed to make little effort to return children to their families or bury them properly.
“With the list of names we’ve managed to get as a result of Katherine’s work, it’ll be helpful in obtaining closure for some folks,” he said.
Tacan said his mother attended the school, and often tells the story of a “little Eskimo boy” — not older than three — who was brought to the school and cared for by the female students. One day, the boy, nicknamed “Jimmy Snow,” went missing and no one came looking for him.
“This is somebody’s young kid,” he said. “For all we know, he could still be on the site somewhere.”
Nichols’ research mirrors the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has spent years compiling stories and records related to the 150,000 aboriginal children who, over a century, were sent to 140 church-run residential schools, where they faced disease, malnutrition, and abuse.
One of the commission’s goals was to identify the students who died while attending the government-funded schools — as of last year, there were 4,100 reported cases — and locate where they were buried.
The commission will release its final report within weeks.
Set up in the late 1870s, residential schools were designed to, in the words of one government official, “get rid of the Indian problem” through aggressive assimilation. Students, some of whom were placed in schools against parents’ wishes and taken away in large cattle trucks, were not allowed to speak their language or practice their culture.
Death and disease, overcrowding and malnourishment were rampant, said Ry Moran, director of the Winnipeg-based National Research Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, which will house all the records collected by the commission.
Often, students were buried at their school, but their parents couldn’t get to them, he said. “Their parents never had the ability to say goodbye because they may live 600 kilometres away.”
Untold numbers also died after being sent away to sanatoriums or hospitals. The lack of systematic record-keeping of student deaths meant many families did not know where their loved ones were buried.
The Brandon Indian Residential School, run first by the Methodist Church and then the United Church, was no different.
Built near the Assiniboine River and next to an experimental farm, the school’s location was chosen for its proximity to a settler community, where, in the words of one government official, the white population could “save them from relapsing into ignorance and barbarianism.”
Students, brought from as far as Alberta and Quebec, were forced to work in the school’s barns, agricultural operations and vegetable gardens. Some girls also worked as domestic servants for the school’s principals.
A handful of the school’s survivors shared with Nichols stories of physical and sexual abuse. One story “broke my heart and left me with no words, except to say that I was sorry for what had happened,” she wrote.
Substandard diets and “appallingly inhumane nutritional experimentation” also contributed to student deaths, Nichols wrote.
Nichols’ attempts to retrieve death and burial records or cemetery maps often proved frustrating, however. Records were either missing or inaccessible or didn’t sync up.
In 1905, the Department of Indian Affairs’ annual report noted five deaths at the school, while the Methodist Church records showed three. Only nine deaths were registered with the Manitoba Vital Statistics Agency during the school’s 77-year run.
Diane Haglund, a retired United Church archivist in Manitoba who served as Nichols’ mentor, had encountered the same challenges years ago when a couple from northern Manitoba asked for help finding the remains of their daughter. Haglund worked with a provincial archaeologist to try to help the desperate couple but came up empty.
“For First Nations folks, tracing that genealogy, that ancestry, and knowing where their dead are buried, it’s extremely difficult,” she said. “You just can’t get the record in the way that the rest of us, relatively easily, can.”
But the records Nichols did find suggest more students are buried at or near the school than was previously thought.
Correspondence from the school’s principal confirmed that the school had operated a cemetery just south of the school, near the river, from 1895 to about 1912. Separate records showed that 51 students died at the school between 1895 and 1911. Thus, it is “very plausible” they were buried at this location, Nichols wrote.
Today, the site is occupied by a private campground. There are no gravestones or markers, just a fenced area containing a small monument with a plaque that reads “Indian Children Burial Ground.” Nichols was denied permission to do forensic work on the property because the landowner was under the impression it was only a “memorial garden,” not a cemetery.
Nichols had better luck getting access to the school’s second cemetery — the one north of the school with the cairn listing 11 names.
Records unearthed by Nichols indicate there may actually be 26 individuals, who died from 1912 to 1957, buried there — not all of them students.
That finding is buttressed by some of her fieldwork. Nichols got permission to survey the site using electromagnetic ground conductivity equipment and ground-penetrating radar, which can detect anomalies beneath the surface. The survey work supported the potential existence of 24 to 26 graves, she said.
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Further, interviews with three of the school’s survivors strongly suggested three more bodies were buried directly behind the school, Nichols wrote. They remembered going out to hang the laundry and being told by the matron not to go into a treed area because of three student graves.
Recently, the school’s ruins were cleared away. The long-term vision for the site is to turn it into a healing lodge, Tacan said.
Moran said the research started by Nichols and the commission must continue: there is a lot of work still to be done. “Locating the graves, understanding which children attended the schools and then never returned, is a huge research task.”
Nichols is certain the 70 students’ names she uncovered do not represent all those who died at the school. She said she cannot imagine what it’s like not knowing where your own child is buried.
“It’s a sense of not having any closure, the sense of unknowing. People can’t move on without knowing where their loved ones are buried, where they ended up and what happened to them.”
National Post
• Email: dquan@postmedia.com
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-secret-graves-of-brandon-residential-school-773123
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From 2001 to 2011, seven Indigenous high school students died in Thunder Bay, and most of them were found in the rivers surrounding Lake Superior. The Agenda welcomes Tanya Talaga, whose book, "Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City," explores the circumstances that led to their deaths and the tumultuous history of Indigenous people in Thunder Bay.
https://youtu.be/YAgSQjIXxs4
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The Fifth Estate
Published on Sep 20, 2016
For aboriginal kids from reserves in northern Ontario, a high school diploma is a ticket to a better future. But a shocking number of these students have ended up dead before graduation.
The fifth estate's Gillian Findlay presents an extremely up-close and personal look inside the native secondary education program in Thunder Bay, Ont., where seven students have tragically died in the past ten years. Five of the victims died apparent alcohol related deaths -- their bodies were pulled from local rivers amid swirling suspicions and rumours about what pushed them over the edge. Another two teens suffered troubling and unexpected deaths that have left lingering questions.
Filmed by a local crew with close connections to the community, with unprecedented access, the fifth estate takes viewers inside the school halls, the homes where the kids are billeted, the mall where they hang out, and onto the dark streets where their dedicated teachers and mentors run nightly patrols in a desperate bid to try and get them all home safe.
Original broadcast date : November 2, 2011.
https://youtu.be/SUa55wxnshg
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Year-2 report into 7 Indigenous youth inquest recommendations shows progress, report finds
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/seven-youth-inquest-year-two-report-1.5024621
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Deaths of 7 Indigenous students in Thunder Bay the responsibility of all Canadians: author.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/tanya-talaga-author-seven-fallen-feathers-1.4408984
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Thunder Bay Police Services Board
Investigation - FINAL REPORT Senator Murray Sinclair, Lead Investigator
Submitted to: Linda Lamoureux Executive Chair Safety, Licensing, Appeals and Standard Tribunals Ontario November 1, 2018
https://slasto-tsapno.gov.on.ca/ocpc-ccop/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2018/12/TBPSB_Investigation_Final_Report_-_EN-FINAL-1.pdf
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"No standard of care," former Ontario child advocate says of foster care system in call for overhaul.
Investigation into 3 Thunder Bay homes run by Toronto company found 'horrific' conditions Matt Prokopchuk · CBC News · Posted: May 02, 2019.
Ontario's former child and youth advocate is making another call for the province to overhaul how it manages and legislates the child welfare system in the wake of an investigation into the conditions at three now-closed foster care homes in Thunder Bay.
The investigation, launched in 2016, found that the homes, run by Johnson Children's Services, were unsanitary and inadequate, and that staff assigned by the company to them were at the very least least ill-equipped and not properly trained to provide care to young people with serious mental health issues and complex needs.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/irwin-elman-thunder-bay-report-1.5118815
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Only 10 Youth out of the nearly 16 000 children in care will have say in coroner’s review of group and foster home safety.
Young people will play a key role in determining how to prevent more youths from dying while in the care of group homes and foster homes.
Ontario’s chief coroner, Dirk Huyer, is putting together a team of up to 10 youths with experience in the child protection and mental health systems to inform a panel of experts probing the deaths of 11 young people in residential care over the past three years.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/02/06/youth-will-have-say-in-coroners-review-of-group-and-foster-home-safety.html
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Chief coroner reviewing children in care, fire safety in Indigenous communities
Review of 11 deaths of children in care expected to be completed this summer and study of fire deaths in Indigenous communities likely to take a year.
https://www.tbnewswatch.com/local-news/chief-coroner-reviewing-children-in-care-fire-safety-in-indigenous-communities-828777
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Foster homes investigated 7 times within a year but Ontario didn’t close them until Tammy Keeash died: court documents.
Nation to Nation, National News | November 15, 2018 by Nation to Nation.
https://aptnnews.ca/2018/11/15/foster-homes-investigated-7-times-within-a-year-but-ontario-didnt-close-them-until-tammy-keeash-died-court-documents/
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Dilico alleges in its statement of defence firing Rusnak was with cause after it learned of the child placed in the home of a sex offender.
Dilico said Rusnak was the supervisor who approved the child’s placement.
“(Rusnak) … ought to have known of the presence of the sex-offender if she had done routine checks required of her,” Dilico wrote.
A meeting was held on Nov. 15, 2016 to discuss her “shortcomings” on the file. Following that meeting Rusnak went on short-term medical leave.
Dilico also said Rusnak had been previously placed on administrative leave pending an investigation into a death of a child in May 2014.
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A foster child under the protection of an Indigenous child welfare agency was placed in the home of a registered sex offender with “pedophilic tendencies” according to court documents in Thunder Bay.
APTN News is unaware of the child’s age, gender or how long the child was placed in the sex offender’s home.
What is known is that the child began displaying “sexualized behaviours inconsistent with that child’s age” during a “routine” visit in the fall of 2016.
This sparked an internal investigation at the agency and less than a month later the manager of family services was fired.
It’s now playing out in a Thunder Bay court after Diane Rusnak filed a wrongful dismissal lawsuit in February 2017 against Dilico Anishinabek Family Care.
The case has yet to reach trial, according to documents, but a pre-trial conference was scheduled for May 22.
Dilico’s lawyer, Derek Noyes, wouldn’t comment when contacted by APTN.
Rusnak now works as a program supervisor with the ministry of Children, Community and Social Services based in Thunder Bay according to the Ontario government’s directory of employees and her Linkedin account.
APTN also tried to reach Rusnak through her government-issued work email, which she forwarded to her lawyer, Warren Mouck.
Mouck wrote APTN saying Rusnak wouldn’t be commenting on the case. APTN followed up by calling Mouck who hung up when pressed for answers to the allegations.
In Rusnak’s statement of claim, she alleges her dismissal on Dec. 12, 2016 was because she complained of being bullied and harassed at Dilico where she was worked for 12 years beginning as a social worker and eventually rising to the rank of manager of family services.
Rusnak alleges her bullying complaints were ignored and is entitled to more than $550,000 in damages. She is also seeking a reference letter.
“The Plaintiff is highly qualified and dedicated to the field of child and family welfare. She holds two bachelor degrees in psychology and social work respectively, and is in the process of obtaining her master’s degree in social work,” says the claim.
“The plaintiff submits she was wrongfully dismissed following 12 years of faithful service.”
“During a review of the child’s file, significant deficiencies were noted in (Rusnak’s) work,” said Dilico.
Rusnak was suspended, while other employees involved were fired, because Dilico believed her previous work history suggested room for improvement.
“However, following her return to work after her suspension, (Rusnak) would respond to any discipline or criticism of her work, including constructive criticism, with unfounded allegations of harassment, and would later comment that she did nothing wrong in regards to the deceased child’s file,” alleges Dilico.
Rusnak’s statement of claim alleges an October 2015 performance review found she “exceeds expectations” in her position.
The status of the child is unknown to APTN or if police ever investigated.
The allegations made in the documents filed in court have not been proven.
Dilico operates as a child welfare agency under the authority of the Ontario government and has juridiction of all Indigenous children subject to child protection services in Thunder Bay.
kjackson@aptn.ca
https://aptnnews.ca/2019/05/23/foster-child-placed-in-home-of-registered-sex-offender-in-thunder-bay-court-documents/
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Church, a survivor of human trafficking, told a conference in North Bay Tuesday that human trafficking, in reality, is a lot different than the way it’s portrayed in the movies and on television where someone is kidnapped and taken.
A woman that has dedicated her life to fighting human trafficking says it's still not something people want to talk about.
Karly Church is now a crisis intervention counsellor with Victim Services in the Durham Region.
"It's not a pretty conversation," she told CKAT. "So I truly believe telling my story will help other people."
Church, a survivor of human trafficking, told a conference in North Bay Tuesday that human trafficking, in reality, is a lot different than the way it’s portrayed in the movies and on television where someone is kidnapped and taken.
"I went through something that was quite negative in my life and I believe I can turn that into a positive."
That's why Church brought her message to North Bay. She says girls don't know what they are getting into.
"When I was being trafficked I had absolutely no idea that that was what was happening to me, so I'm a big believer that education is power."
She wonders if someone like her had come to her high school to speak that perhaps she could have avoided the situation.
“People are lured into the sex trade with the promise of a future or the promise of being taken care of by somebody. Somebody looks at someone’s vulnerabilities and the needs that are not being met and begins to meet those needs,” she says.
Church says nearly two-thirds of all human trafficking cases in Canada are in Ontario, and communities near highways like North Bay are especially vulnerable.
She spoke at the Faith Speaks Out event, a collaboration of community organizations, faith leaders and the OPP within the District of Nipissing.
https://www.baytoday.ca/local-news/people-are-lured-into-the-sex-trade-with-the-promise-of-a-future-says-counsellor-1478843
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Ontario portrayed as pedophile paradise in U.S. ruse to capture predators
A website set up by Homeland Security promoted the bogus firm Precious Treasure Holiday Co., which promised to arrange illegal encounters in Ontario for pedophiles. October 10, 2011.
U.S. authorities have defended their online portrayal of Ontario as a haven for child-sex tourism, saying the ploy helped them catch four predators.
A controversial website set up by the Department of Homeland Security promoted the bogus firm Precious Treasure Holiday Co., which promised to arrange illegal encounters in Ontario for pedophiles.
Four people — two Germans and two Americans — fell for the sophisticated ruse and signed up for a trip.
A pamphlet
that came with the website offered one night hotel accommodations in Canada and travel under the guise of “boyfriend and girlfriend going to gamble at casino.”
The pamphlet said transportation to Cleveland, meals and “condoms, lube, etc. . . ” were not included in the travel package.
But it was the use of Canada as a safe haven for sex tourism that raised questions about how the country was portrayed in the sting.
“Canada made for a more plausible scenario,” Brian Moskowitz, the special agent in charge of the investigation, told Postmedia News shortly after the indictments were announced.
“It was never our intent to take anyone to Canada and no children were involved. It was merely part of a scenario that we built.”
He said that Canada wasn’t used in the scenario over any perceived weaknesses or legal vulnerability.
Canadian authorities, such as those in Windsor, across the river from the Detroit offices of Homeland Security where Moskowitz is based, are alerted whenever such a sting is underway to prevent them from wasting resources on chasing the American operation, he said.
Homeland Security first set up the website in 2009. It remained online in several reincarnations until it was finally outed in March as a government sting by The Smoking Gun website.
“Sex tourism is a scourge and must be combated with every available resource,” Moskowitz said in a release when the convictions were announced in early September.
“These cases show international borders are no longer a hindrance for predators.”
The two German men convicted in the sting paid up to $1,600 to have sex with girls and boys between the ages of 10 and 13. One, a 49-year-old doctor from Stuttgart, was allegedly found with lingerie, sex toys, bondage ropes, straps, a mask, lubricant, 17 condoms as well as four stuffed unicorns and a paint-by-number set, Homeland Security said.
Two Ohio men also pleaded guilty to sex trafficking offences and possession of child pornography as a result of the sting. In one case, a 38-year-old man tried to organize a sexual encounter with an eight-year-old girl. In the other case, a 25-year-old man wasn’t legally allowed to enter Canada because he was on parole for a molestation conviction, Homeland Security said.
https://nationalpost.com/news/ontario-portrayed-as-pedophile-paradise-in-u-s-ruse-to-capture-predators
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2011: Soft-porn writing teacher resigns from watchdog.
The former head of the discipline committee of the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT) is facing professional misconduct charges for his role in co-authoring a sexually explicit novel for teens.
Jacques Tremblay resigned his position as chair of the OCT’s disciplinary committee, a position that involves overseeing sexual assault cases, in 2011 after his part in writing a soft porn novel titled “The Sexteens and the Fake Goddess” was exposed in a Toronto Star investigation.
The book “is a lurid tale of striptease, breast fondling, bum grabbing, orgasms, drugs and blackmail,” reported the Star’s Kevin Donovan in the exposé.
The cover of the book depicts the backs of a boy and a girl naked from the waist up looking at a silhouette of the CN Tower.
The other authors of the book are identified as Tremblay’s wife, Marie-Ange Gagnon, and Frederic Tremblay.
Following Jacques Tremblay’s resignation the OCT launched an investigation into the situation, although the teachers’ watchdog had earlier maintained that Tremblay’s writing did “not have an impact on his ability to act in the public interest.”
Tremblay himself had argued that his book was “entirely separate” from his work at the College and service to the public, saying the book was meant to “empower teenagers, to encourage them to be strong and resist or avoid peer pressure.”
However, in an article on his website Tremblay says the purpose of his novel is to help teens “find their inner voice” which will affect their “future sex life” because “having higher self-esteem below the belt leads to better sex.”
He also warns teens that having negative attitudes about sex could have a “direct impact on orgasm.”
https://mychristiandaily.com/teen-sex-novel-lands-former-ontario-teachers-disciplinary-head-in-hot-water/
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Ontario’s top teacher watchdog has quit.
Jacques Tremblay, who the Star reported was a writer of soft porn replete with questionable administrator-teacher-student conduct, resigned Tuesday. He was the chairperson for five years of the Ontario College of Teachers’ disciplinary panel, which sits in judgment on hundreds of teachers accused of misconduct.
In the novel, main character Leila Montana is introduced as a “young teen” just starting high school. She is also joining a group called the Sexteens’ Select Society.
As she awaits initiation into this mysterious alliance, the book describes her appearance as follows: “Her half-open shirt divulges the roundness of her gorgeous bosom. Leila’s particularly short skirt exposes her barely fleshy buttocks.”
There are several other detailed references throughout the book about the bodies of Leila and other girls.
Taking an oath to the mysterious society, Leila promises to “develop my teenage life at my own rhythm inspired by the aphrodisiac cult, which is based on the power of love and the emancipation of my sexuality.”
On the day after the initiation, “Leila wakes up and feels a new energy swelling within her. . . . Despite her efforts, however, Leila can’t remember what really happened. She is peaceful and undisturbed by this lapse of memory. Meanwhile, Leila feels a very light, but quite pleasant, tingling on her upper right buttock.”
(Nothing at all creepy about this is there and everything about this little scenario is perfectly normal, right?)
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Date rape drugs facts: It’s Not Just Roofies Anymore.
Date rape drugs are drugs used to assist in a sexual assault, which is any type of sexual activity a person does not agree to.
These drugs can affect you very quickly and cause victims to become weak, confused, and even pass out. You may not remember what happened while you were drugged.
The most common date rape drugs -- also called "club drugs" -- are flunitrazepam (Rohypnol), also called roofies; gamma hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), also called liquid ecstasy; and ketamine, also called Special K.
These drugs may come as pills, liquids, or powders.
Alcohol may also be considered a date rape drug because it affects judgment and behavior and can be used to help commit sexual assault.
The club drug "ecstasy" (MDMA) has also been used to commit sexual assault.
Protect yourself by not accepting drinks from others, not sharing drinks, watching your drink, and by avoiding creepy societies and having a non-drinking friend with you to make sure nothing happens.
If you suspect you have been exposed to a date rape drug or have been sexually assaulted, call 911 and get to an emergency room immediately.
Date rape drugs can also cause seizures and even death.
Adverse Effects of Club Drugs
Uncertainties about the sources, chemicals, and possible contaminants used to manufacture many club drugs make it extremely difficult to determine toxicity and associated medical consequences. Nonetheless, we do know that:
Coma and seizures can occur following use of GHB.
Combined use with other drugs such as alcohol can result in nausea and breathing difficulties. GHB and two of its precursors, gamma butyrolactone (GBL) and 1,4 butanediol (BD), have been involved in poisonings, overdoses, date rapes, and deaths.
Rohypnol may be lethal when mixed with alcohol and/or other CNS depressants.
Ketamine, in high doses, can cause impaired motor function, high blood pressure, and potentially fatal respiratory problems.
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/chairman-of-teachers-discipline-committee-resigns-over-blue-teen-novel
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2011/10/05/top_teacher_watchdog_who_wrote_porn_resigns.html
https://www.thespec.com/news-story/2221198-soft-porn-writing-teacher-resigns-from-watchdog/
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Child luring convictions may be overturned following Supreme Court case, lawyer says. By Michael Mui Star Vancouver Tues., March 19, 2019.
VANCOUVER—A large number of child sex-exploitation convictions across Canada could end up being overturned after the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Criminal Code provisions that made it easier to convict people of child luring, according to a lawyer who argued the case.
In the R. v. Morrison decision on Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down two areas of the country’s child-luring charge under Section 172 of the Criminal Code, impacting cases in which police officers pretend to be minors to catch suspected predators online.
Mark Halfyard, a lawyer who argued the Supreme Court of Canada case, said the result means similar child-luring cases could now be successfully challenged and potentially overturned, resulting in new trials for the previously convicted.
“On an individual, case-by-case basis, the Crown’s office is going to have to look at which ones should be reprosecuted,” Halfyard said.
“A person shouldn’t be standing out there, whoever they are, whatever their circumstances, convicted on the basis of an unconstitutional law.”
In undercover sting operations, officers approach child-luring suspects online, disclose that they are underage and see whether the suspect plays along.
Read more:
Police overwhelmed by rampant, ‘hidden evil’ of child exploitation online
B.C. privacy watchdog investigating 'Creep Catchers' who expose alleged sex predators
First of its kind report outlines sexual abuse against nearly 1,300 students in Canadian schools over past two decades.
Halfyard’s client, Douglas Morrison, was one of those suspects and was being investigated by an undercover officer pretending to be a 14-year-old. They exchanged conversations of a sexual nature over a few months in 2013, including making plans to meet and engage in sexual touching, but the meeting never happened. Morrison was arrested and charged with child luring but maintained that he thought he was speaking to an adult and that the conversation was sexual role-play.
The Criminal Code charge for child luring presumed a suspect understood they were dealing with a minor if that’s what they were told by a police officer, Halfyard said. The court ruled that this violates a suspect’s presumption of innocence, as the suspect is free to disbelieve such a claim.
Additionally, the accused had been obligated by law to show they took reasonable steps to verify the person they were dealing with was not a minor, or else be found guilty. The court ruled that it is the Crown’s job to prove guilt. The accused could argue he took reasonable steps to verify as part of a defence, and the Crown is free to refute that defence — but the lack of verification is not proof in and of itself that the accused believed the other party was underage.
“People that are still luring children, police still have the exact same tools to build a case against them, it just won’t be presumed in law — just because they throw an age at a person in chat conversations, that (the suspects) necessarily believe they’re talking to a child,” Halfyard said.
The Creep Catchers vigilante group, which conducts similar sting operations and films encounters with suspects who agree to meet, said the group is now reviewing the court decision.
“It’s not going to change the way we expose people. When it comes down to exposure, people who are watching or seeing who we’re exposing ... they don’t care about technicalities, they don’t care that this person said this first, or they have a defence, the bottom line is: they still came to meet,” said Nicole Hunter, a director of the Creep Catchers group.
“The whole point, the reason of why there is Creep Catchers, is because there isn’t enough charges in these stings, there isn’t enough investigations, there isn’t enough law enforcement out there to catch these guys. They may not be the ones raping children yet, but they’re still willing to come and meet them. That’s our whole point.”
Michael Mui is a Vancouver-based investigative reporter. Follow him on Twitter: @mui24hours
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2019/03/19/child-luring-convictions-may-be-overturned-following-supreme-court-case-lawyer-says.html
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Could you spot a pedophile? Here are the warning signs.
SOME child molesters jump out of bushes and molest your child on the way home from school.
But more likely, he is your friendly neighbor or attentive shopkeeper.
He could be a charming relative or the son of a friend who is all too willing to babysit your children.
The pedophile in your midst may be the schoolteacher, the bus driver, the youth worker or the lay preacher at your church.
The Australian Royal Commission into institutionalized child sex crimes, running since April, has entered a new round of hearings and a concurrent inquiry is continuing into child sex offences in the Catholic Church's NSW Hunter Valley diocese.
Child-related workers
While pedophiles can work anywhere, they do find ways to be around children as often as possible.
It may not be their principal profession, such as a teacher or priest, but a voluntary or weekend position as a sports coach, camp counsellor, school bus driver, daycare worker, Boy Scout leader, church or secular youth worker can provide the contact with children they need.
Some well-known pedophiles have placed themselves as teachers or leaders of artistic bodies such as dance schools, where they have surrounded themselves with adoring and aspiring performers.
Andrew Manners was a convicted pedophile who had committed offences against minors in Queensland in 1998. He was on parole and prohibited from working with children when he surfaced in 2002.
Manners turned up as a fill-in teacher at his mother's Scottish dance school, where he was spotted by an observant parole officer.
Former performing arts schoolteacher, Peter Gerard Boys, was also a band leader of the musical troupe the Marching Koalas in the NSW Hunter Valley region when, aged in his 40s, he began having a sexual relationship with four of his students.
He was convicted and sentenced to eight child sex offences against girls aged 10-16 years, and on his release from prison is believed to have subsequently married one of the girls who had come of age during his incarceration.
Watch out for teacher adoration beyond the bounds of a normal crush, accompanied by "secret" phone calls and special individual attention.
The every-man
When looking out for a child sex offender, don't be fooled by a person's appearance, outward respectability or importance in the community.
Pedophiles are almost always men, more often married adult males and they work in a very wide range of occupations, from unskilled work up to corporate executives.
What to look out for is someone who relates better to children than to adults, and has either very few adult friends or whose friends might also be sex offenders.
Signs to watch for: pedophiles usually prefer children in one specific age group, such as infants and toddlers, children between six and ten years old, or "tweens" and young teenagers up to the age of 16.
Pedophiles can be bisexual but more commonly will prefer children or the one gender, males or females.
https://www.news.com.au/national/could-you-spot-a-paedophile-here-are-the-warning-signs/news-story/a0502e8c3edd265972204ce6fb435982
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Ontario coroner finally finds ‘potential’ crime in review of foster care deaths...
Vulnerable children are being warehoused and forgotten.
A scathing report from Ontario’s coroner presses the provincial government to reform a child protection system that “repeatedly failed” youths who died while in care for decades.
The report describes a fragmented system with no means of monitoring quality of care, where ministry oversight is inadequate, caregivers lack training, and children are poorly supervised.
http://www.mcscs.jus.gov.on.ca/sites/default/files/content/mcscs/images/195633-19.jpg
“It is stunning to me how these children... are rendered invisible while they are alive and invisible in their death,” said Irwin Elman, Ontario’s advocate for children and youth. Between 90 and 120 children and youth connected to children’s aid die every year. (rendered invisible by the PDRC)
Between 2008/2012 natural causes was listed as the least likely way for a child in Ontario's care to die at 7% (only 15) out of the total deaths reviewed while "undetermined cause" was listed as the leading cause of death of children in Ontario's child protection system at 43% of the total deaths reviewed. The of the deaths were categorized as homicide, suicide and accidental.
43% equals 92 children out of just the deaths reviewed by the PDRC. 92 mystery deaths and like every other year no further action was taken to determine the cause...
Undetermined means those 92 had no pre-existing medical conditions and there was no reason for them to have died.
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Reasonable suspicion is a reasonable presumption that a crime has been, is being, or will be committed. It is a reasonable belief based on facts or circumstances and is informed by a police officer’s training and experience.
Reasonable suspicion is seen as more than a guess or hunch but less than probable cause.
Probable cause is the logical belief, supported by facts and circumstances, that a crime has been, is being, or will be committed.
The difference between the two terms is that probable cause means there is concrete evidence of a crime, whereas reasonable suspicion is open to broader interpretation.
Reasonable suspicion indicates that it appears that a crime has been committed; the phrase often is used to justify investigation into suspicious behavior when a crime may have been committed.
Under section 125 of the Child, Youth and Family Services Act every person who has reasonable grounds to suspect that a child is or may be in need of protection must promptly report the suspicion and the information upon which it is based to a Children’s Aid Society.
It is not necessary to be certain that a child is or may be in need of protection to make a report to a children’s aid society. “Reasonable grounds” refers to the information that an average person, using normal and honest judgment, would need in order to decide to report. This standard has been recognized by courts in Ontario as establishing a low threshold for reporting.
http://www.oacas.org/childrens-aid-child-protection/duty-to-report/
WHAT IS LOWER THAN REASONABLE GROUNDS FOR SUSPICION?
Simple suspicion is a lower threshold than reasonable grounds to suspect and is synonymous with a “gut feeling” or “hunch”. In other words, simple suspicion means that you have a feeling that something is unusual or suspicious, but do not have any facts.
Reasonable grounds to suspect is the required threshold in child protection legislation and is a step above simple suspicion, meaning that there is a possibility of government child care standards are not being met.
This means that you do not have to prove the facts that led to your suspicion. However, you do have the obligation to assess the facts that led to your determination of reasonable grounds to suspect the occurrence in front of a judge. The decision as to whether or not to grant a warrant and decide if a violation government child welfare standards has actually occurred should determined by a fair and impartial judicial system under the same rules of evidence used by most every other court in Canada.
Reasonable grounds to believe is a higher threshold than reasonable grounds to suspect and is more than what is required to conduct a investigation without delay. Reasonable grounds to believe means that there is a probability, supported by verified facts. In other words, there is enough evidence to support a reasonable and trained person to believe, not just suspect a child or children are at risk.
For example, law enforcement must reach reasonable grounds to believe that criminal activity has occurred before they can obtain judicial authorizations, including a production order..
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Racism Kept Thunder Bay Police From Fully Investigating Indigenous Deaths, Says Police Watchdog In Scathing Report.
An Ontario police watchdog said the force should re-do at least nine investigations.
By Samantha Beattie
Systemic racism throughout the Thunder Bay police force has compromised the investigation of the sudden deaths of Indigenous people, a scathing and unprecedented review has found.
Thunder Bay police's efforts have been so inadequate, it should re-investigate at least nine cases, said the the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, an Ontario police watchdog, in its 208-page report, Broken Trust, released Wednesday.
"The serious inadequacies and premature conclusions in TBPS investigations are at least in part because of racial stereotyping," said OIPRD's Gerry McNeilly.
"Officers repeatedly relied on generalized notions of how Indigenous people likely came to their deaths and acted based on those biases. (Bullshit.. These police officer were actively covering up murders in my opinion.) The investigations were too often handled differently because the deceased was Indigenous."
Investigators also lacked experience, failing to find out autopsy results, understand their significance or know what was in their own investigation file, including other reports filed by patrol officers, and they weren't properly supervised, McNeilly found. Thunder Bay police also doesn't have a major crimes unit, meaning investigators don't always receive the proper training on how to handle serious cases.
Thunder Bay police said in a statement it will review all the recommendations in the coming days and that it will be "of great value" in building trust with Indigenous communities.
"We acknowledge that there are systemic barriers in policing that must be addressed," said police Chief Sylvie Hauth. "With help from this report, the service continues to work towards bias-free policing."
Statement from the Chief of Police. https://t.co/7Mq0R24ai9
— Thunder Bay Police (@tbpsmedia) December 12, 2018
OIPRD looked at 37 Thunder Bay police investigations, including the deaths of Stacy DeBungee, 41, in 2015, and Josiah Begg, 14, and Tammy Keeash, 17, in 2017. For years, Indigenous leaders had raised concerns about the way police handled cases involving sudden deaths and disappearances of Indigenous people, many in their teens.
Keeash's body was found in one of Thunder Bay's waterways, after she'd been last seen at a nearby park, drinking with friends. Police informed her family she had died by suicide, said Keeash's uncle Tyson Matawapit. But her mother, Pearl Keeash, never believed them.
"I remember my late sister Pearl wanting answers, calling around, asking people questions on the streets about what they heard or seen about Tammy," Matawapit said from North Caribou Lake First Nation. "But she got very little answers. Everybody had their assumptions and ideas, but nobody knew exactly why or how Tammy died. It was frustrating.
"I just know that I can't trust any of the Thunder Bay police officers."
York Regional Police were called in to assist with the investigation. They found Keeash likely fell down an embankment into the river, suffered hypothermia and drowned, the review said. Her death does not appear to be one of the nine cases that OIPRD recommended should be re-investigated.
READ MORE HERE:
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/12/12/thunder-bay-police-racism_a_23616455/
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-report-finds-systemic-racism-at-police-service-in-thunder-bay-ont-2/
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CAN THE CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETIES OR PDRC BE TRUSTED?
An investigation into the deaths of children living in residential care, including seven Indigenous children, has found potential criminality according to Ontario’s chief coroner.
“There has been potentially involvement of police and potentially criminality in some of the cases we are reviewing,” Dr. Dirk Huyer told APTN News.
APTN asked if that involves the death of Kanina Sue Turtle, 15, who died by suicide inside her Sioux Lookout foster home Oct. 29, 2016, and is the subject of a recent APTN investigation.
Huyer wouldn’t say which of the cases he’s reviewing are involved. He did say his office hasn’t officially notified the police to investigate as of last week.
Huyer is leading what he’s calling an “expert panel” review of 11 deaths between Jan. 1 2014 and July 31, 2017 that occurred with children in protective services and living in residential care, like foster and group homes.
The review also includes homes operated by child welfare agencies, known as agency operated homes (AOH) that are staffed by a “live-in parent.”
Turtle was living in an AOH owned by Tikinagan Child and Family Services when she filmed her suicide. Despite being suicidal she was left alone for about 45 mins according to the video, which was recently reviewed by APTN.
Huyer met with the family of Turtle twice, including in January when he started making trips to the communities as part of the review.
While meeting with the family of Turtle in Poplar Hill First Nation he viewed, and obtained, two videos. One video was of her death, which he called “devastating” and an attempt from the day before on Oct. 28, 2016.
APTN has also reviewed that video. Turtle is by some trees when she attempts to hang herself holding her iPod.
Turtle didn’t say anything in the video of her death but APTN can report, for the first time, what she said in the video Oct. 28.
“I don’t know what to do anymore,” Turtle says. “I’m sorry for what … umm… I’m going to do.”
The video is just over a minute when she stops recording.
APTN has reported the family still questions, 16 months later, how Turtle could have been left alone so long when she was suicidal, and had been in hospital for self-harming at least twice in the nine days prior to her death.
Turtle’s mother Barbara Suggashie said she has never been told.
The Ontario government has also refused to say if any action was taken against the home. Tikinagan has refused to comment claiming privacy for the family.
Huyer also met with the family of Amy Owen during his trip to Poplar Hill. Owen, 13, died by suicide in an Ottawa group home April 17, 2017. APTN has previously reported that Owen was in the hospital multiple times in the weeks before her death inside the group home owned and operated by Mary Homes.
Mary Homes surrendered its license for that home after an investigation into Owen’s death. They own and operate several others in Ottawa.
Huyer said the expert panel review is something he thought about carefully and was triggered by an initial review of the deaths.
“We saw potential concerns about the service and the care that was provided to the youth … when they were in these care settings,” he said.
One example he provided was whether the children had the proper supervision, like 24-hour observation, known as one-to-one care. That’s when a worker is assigned to the child around the clock.
And whether the so-called care facilities met “the expectations that society … might have.”
Of the 11 deaths under review, seven were suicides, one homicide and all had a history of mental health challenges, according to the terms of reference provided by the coroner’s office.
The terms also further outlined the causes that sparked the review. They include potentially being placed in the wrong homes based on the children’s needs, training and qualifications of caregivers, availability of treatment, how children were placed in homes that had less requirements, like foster care compared to group homes, and the oversight provided by children’s aid societies.
It also found concerns with the Ministry of Children and Youth Services’ oversight of the placements.
Critics of the review have said the expert panel is essentially operating in the dark and an inquest into the deaths would put the deaths under public scrutiny.
It’s not lost on Huyer.
“I haven’t said we wouldn’t do an inquest into these cases but this is a step that allows us to look at things in greater depth with experts that have specific knowledge,” said Huyer.
He said the review allowed them to get started right away, while an inquest would take a number of years to get started.
It would also limit the scope.
“It allows us not to be narrowed down by the scope as much, because when you have an inquest there’s a lot of lawyers and they narrow it down,” said Huyer. “They define what we can look at, whereas the panel has a bit broader scope.”
He believes it will also allow him to potentially make recommendations to have immediate impact.
The report is expected to be complete by late spring or early summer and it will be made public said Huyer.
“It’s an important topic. I feel very strong about this. We have dedicated a significant amount of resources,” he said.
He said all files on each child, including hospital and police records, have been gathered since December. The coroner’s office is interviewing the families and all the information will be reviewed by a panel of seven experts.
The review will also hear from youth, care providers and agencies.
kjackson@aptn.ca
https://aptnnews.ca/2018/03/14/ontario-coroner-finds-potential-crime-review-foster-care-deaths/
::: the truth needs a coroner :::
Shocking conditions at now shuttered Thunder Bay foster homes detailed in child advocate’s final report
By Laurie Monsebraaten Social Justice Reporter
Sandro Contenta Feature Writer Tues., April 30, 2019.
Three Thunder Bay foster homes — closed by the province in 2017 after the death of a First Nations youth — had feces- and blood-stained floors, no working stove or food in the fridge, and were staffed by workers ill-equipped to handle the complex needs of youth in their care.
The shocking conditions are included in an investigative report by the office of Ontario’s Advocate for Children and Youth, which closed Tuesday as part of the Ford government’s “restoring trust, transparency and accountability” law. The office’s investigative role moves to the provincial ombudsman’s office May 1.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2019/04/30/shocking-conditions-at-now-shuttered-thunder-bay-foster-homes-detailed-in-child-advocates-final-report.html
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/irwin-elman-report-thunder-bay-1.5118129
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/irwin-elman-report-thunder-bay-1.5118129
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Cornwall sex abuse victims given large settlements
Published Thursday, June 10, 2010 12:20PM EDT ctvottawa.ca
Some victims of the Cornwall sex abuse scandal are receiving large financial settlements after decades of allegations that a cover-up of a pedophile ring existed in the eastern Ontario city, CTV Ottawa has learned.
The sex abuse scandal was uncovered in the early 1990s. A public inquiry ended in December 2009 after four years. The inquiry found the Catholic Church, police, the Ontario government and the legal system all failed to protect children from sexual predators.
Now, Ontario's attorney general has confirmed to CTV that several financial settlements have been reached with victims, and more lawsuits are outstanding.
The Project Truth inquiry into a pedophile ring cover-up and sex abuse allegations in Cornwall ended in December 2009.
Alleged victim Steve Parisien says the public has a right to know about large settlements paid out to sex abuse victims.
Although confidentiality agreements could mean taxpayers will never learn the true cost of the settlements, a former MPP predicts the payouts will total tens of millions of dollars.
"I would look at somewhere between $70-100 million," said Garry Guzzo, a former Conservative MPP who blew the whistle on the scandal and pushed for a public inquiry.
"It's a lot of money coming from very few taxpayers, and the people of the Catholic Church are taxpayers."
While sources have told CTV the payouts are in the millions, alleged victim Steve Parisien says some individuals are getting less than $20,000.
"I think parishioners and taxpayers have a right to know how much has been paid out," he said.
A lawyer representing dozens of the victims wouldn't reveal how much money was paid. However, he confirmed several settlements have been reached with the Catholic diocese, the Ontario government and other Catholic organizations. There are also several cases in the works against the Children's Aid Society.
Cornwall's Catholic Diocese says it has settled all 16 of the lawsuits against the Catholic Church. The last lawsuit was settled a few weeks ago.
Bishop Paul-Andre Durocher says the total payouts from those lawsuits amount to $1.2 million. He adds none of those settlements involved confidentiality agreements.
"There's no doubt in my mind that these victims deserve this money," said Guzzo.
"You know the confidentiality agreement - never going to trial, never allowing it to become public - there's an element of hush money."
Although Parisien hasn't received a settlement, he is hoping to get some compensation for his experience.
He says while no amount of money will change his life, it will help validate what he went through.
"Just for my loss of wages - that's all I seek. I don't want nothing else from these people, they've done enough damage. And they have to sleep with themselves at night."
With a report from CTV Ottawa's Catherine Lathem
https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/cornwall-sex-abuse-victims-given-large-settlements-1.521190
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2013: In leaked memo, Peel CAS staff asked to keep cases open to retain funding.
An internal memo from Peel Children’s Aid Society management asks staff not to close any ongoing cases during March, as part of a strategy to secure government funding.
According to the memo, when service volume is lower than projected, there is less money for the CAS.
An anonymous employee is troubled by the memo as it raises concerns about quotas and the impact on Peel families.
“Wrongly opening or leaving these files open can have a damaging impact on these clients’ lives. For example, some parents are separated from their kids, some parents have to take time off work to meet with us when their files should have been closed, and some parents are unable to return home because of a false abuse claim — and all of these cases leave these families in emotional limbo,” wrote the employee who would not reveal their identity for fear of retribution.
The employee said many workers are outraged over the memo, “because it is immoral and wrong to keep client cases open just to meet a quota. . . . There are far-reaching implications when you have a CAS record.”
Gene Colman, a Toronto family lawyer who handles cases involving CAS, said his office has been puzzled by the substantial increase in people calling because of CAS intervention in their families.
“I thought, ‘What’s going on, why are we getting so many calls?’ I wonder if it’s related. I don’t know,” he said not looking a gift horse in the mouth.
Though the CAS claimed the purpose of the memo wasn't to inflate numbers, between 2011 and 2013 the 46 (at that time) separate societies opened a combined total of 42 000 files or about 14 000 files per year, in 2014 - after the Peel Memo Leak - and launching a new government funded advertising campaign and reopening 20 000 previously closed files the societies opened a combined total of over 82 000 files to meet their funding goals that year as reported by the Toronto Star.
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/03/14/in_leaked_memo_peel_cas_staff_asked_to_keep_cases_open_to_retain_funding.html
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/03/15/province_in_talks_with_peel_childrens_aid_society_over_strategies_in_leaked_memo.html
http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/peel-cas-funding-shortfall-just-province-wide-tip-of-67-million-iceberg-1769188.htm
https://cupe.on.ca/archivedoc2283/
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Three CAS cases settled.
When it was filed in 2013, the civil suits totalled $14 million ($2.8 million per plaintiff).
Each plaintiff initially claimed $350,000 for pain and suffering, in addition to $1 million each for loss of future earnings and another $1 million for punitive damages. They sought $100,000 in future care costs, plus $100,000 for special damages and $250,000 for aggravated damages.
Two outstanding plaintiffs will be addressed shortly, Bonn said.
“We continue to work on those,” he said. “We intend to mediate those.”
The suit directed at the CAS also targets four former foster parents, two are now serving prison terms for sexual abuse of children placed in their care. A third convicted predator’s case is now before the Ontario Court of Appeal.
“Like most of these issues, they’re difficult all the way through and deal with unpleasant issues, but the fact that we’ve been able to reach some form of agreement means that each side is able to live with it at some level,” Bonn said Tuesday.
Bonn filed the claims on behalf of the five female plaintiffs, now in their late teens and early 20s.
“With litigation done, it would bring an end to this piece of their involvement with the CAS,” Bonn said.
All complainants listed claim the Prince Edward County CAS (PECCAS) is liable for the abuse each of them suffered while in the care of PECCAS.
The County society is now part of the newly-amalgamated Highland Shores Children’s Aid Society, which also spans the societies of Hastings and Northumberland counties.
Mark Kartusch, the society’s executive director, was also tight-lipped about the settlement.
“I can’t disclose any of the details,” he said Tuesday. “However, we do hope this helps these youths move forward.”
Kartusch wouldn’t go as far as viewing the settlements as a form of closure for the plaintiffs.
“How does one ever have closure?” he said. “We believe in these young people and their future and want to support them in that.”
Before the 2013 merger, PECCAS was subjected to an extensive government probe which revealed a bevy of damning findings.
The investigation led by the Ministry of Child and Youth Services in Dec. 2011 – following a rash of child sex abuse charges against County foster parents – showed the agency was rife with significant internal conflicts recklessly placing vulnerable children in homes not properly screened and some cases not screened at all for months.
Kartusch said the agency has found better footing since the findings triggered amalgamation.
“I think we’re moving forward but will not forget the past,” he said.
Some concerns linger.
“I’m concerned that this may cause people to lose confidence in fostering or foster families,” he said, adding few bad apples aren’t representative of the whole bunch.
The 2013 statement of claims alleged “PECCAS is responsible, in fact and in law, for its own negligence and breaches of its statutory and fiduciary duties as well as for the negligence and breaches of duty committed by its servants, agents and employees,” states the claim, a copy of which was obtained by The Intelligencer in April 2013.
Two of the former foster parents initially targeted in the claim were Walter Joseph Holm, 46, and his wife, Janet Holm, 49.
They pleaded guilty to several charges, including possession of child pornography, sexual assault and invitation to sexual touching and were sentenced in November 2011 to four- and three-year prison terms respectively.
Three of the five plaintiffs, now ages 21, 23, and 19, are linked to the Holms. It’s not known if they were the three of five now concluded.
Justice Geoff Griffin blasted the Holms for turning their home into a “sexual cult” while fostering 25 teenagers over the course of nine years.
The three plaintiffs further implied that PECCAS was “vicariously liable for the actions” of the Holms.
https://www.intelligencer.ca/2014/10/21/three-cas-cases-settled/wcm/3fd07287-3f2a-1755-7386-1c8c2353c943
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Also in 2013: PROJECT SPADE...
Toronto police’s Project Spade results in international child porn arrests
More than 300 people including doctors, teachers and law enforcement personnel charged.
An international child porn probe that started in Toronto is being credited with rescuing 386 children and the arrest of 348 people, including teachers, priests and law enforcement personnel.
The three-year investigation, dubbed Project Spade, began in October 2010 when undercover online officers made contact with a man who was sharing graphic images of children being sexually abused.
Police allege they traced the internet connection to a Toronto man who was running an “exploitation” movie production and distribution company.
“This company operated a website known as www.azovfilms.com where customers from around the world could place orders to have movies sent to them through the mail or through the internet,” Insp. Joanna Beaven-Desjardins told reporters during a Thursday, Nov. 14, morning news conference at police headquarters.
“Investigators believe many of these movies were consistent with the Canadian Criminal Code definition of child pornography. At this time, the Toronto Police Service sought the assistance of the United States Postal Inspection Service as it appeared many of the movies were being exported into the United States.”
On May 1, 2011, police executed numerous search warrants in Toronto, including the site of the production and distribution business in the west end of the city.
“Officers spent four days inside this business, cataloguing the thousands of movies, computers and other media located during their search,” said Beaven-Desjardins, who heads the child exploitation section of the sex crimes unit.
“At this time over 45 terabytes of information was seized from the business, and to give you some perspective this is equivalent to a stack of paper as tall as 1,500 CN Towers.”
Police also executed a search warrant at the home of the business’ owner/operator.
“It is alleged that officers located hundreds of thousands of images and videos detailing horrific sexual acts against very young children, some of the worst that they have ever viewed,” Beaven-Desjardins said.
Brian Way, 42, of Toronto faces 24 charges, including possessing child pornography, importing/exporting child pornography, possessing proceeds of crime, laundering proceeds of crime and three counts of selling/distributing child pornography. He has also been charged with instructing commission of offence for criminal organization, which is the first time in Canada the charge has been laid in relation to child pornography.
“It is alleged that Mr. Way’s company had revenues in excess of $4 million during the years he was operating,” Beaven-Desjardins said.
“It is also alleged that Mr. Way paid people to have children filmed in Eastern European countries in order to produce some of the movies that he would sell online.”
It took police months to determine who the customers were. The information was then sent to law enforcement agencies in more than 50 countries, resulting in a total of 348 arrests and the rescue of 386 children.
There were 50 arrests in Ontario, 58 in the rest of Canada, 76 in the U.S. and 164 in the rest of the world.
“Of concern to the investigators was the number of people that had close contact with children,” said Beaven-Desjardins.
“The arrests included 40 school teachers, nine doctors and nurses, 42 people who volunteered with children, six law enforcement personnel, nine pastors or priests and three foster parents.”
One man arrested in Canada was a retired school teacher who allegedly had more than 350,000 images and more than 9,000 videos of child sexual abuse.
“Some of these images were of children known to him, and he was also charged with sexually abusing a young child relative,” Beaven-Desjardins said.
The investigation is ongoing.
“There will be further arrests, and I would imagine there will be more children that will be saved because of it,” Beaven-Desjardins said.
Cybertip.ca, an online tip line for the reporting of sexual exploitation of children, received many complaints about the website that became the basis of Project Spade.
Beaven-Desjardins said the success of the investigation “confirms that when we work together, regardless of the borders that divide us, we can successful track down those who not only prey on our most vulnerable but also profit from it.”
Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair said the exploitation of children “is a crime for which law enforcement comes together united around the world to do our very best to protect those individuals who can’t protect themselves.”
by Andrew Palamarchuk
Andrew Palamarchuk is a reporter with Metroland Media Toronto and toronto.com. He has been covering the crime beat since 2002 and has a passion for giving a voice to those affected by tragedy and looking at societal issues that may have contributed to it.
Email: apalamarchuk@toronto.com
https://www.toronto.com/news-story/4219011-toronto-police-s-project-spade-results-in-international-child-porn-arrests/
Hundreds arrested in international child porn case
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/hundreds-arrested-in-international-child-porn-case-1.2426176
Child porn bust: The men who were charged.
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/11/14/child_porn_bust_the_men_who_were_charged.html
How Police Cracked Canada's Largest Child Pornography Ring
https://thewalrus.ca/how-police-cracked-canadas-largest-child-pornography-ring/
Nicolas Boudreau is evacuated after swallowing a substance at the Quebec City Courthouse on Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017.
Former teacher is fourth known person involved with child-porn case to have taken his own life. Four years after police first alleged that hundreds of suspects had bought child pornography from a Toronto firm, fallout from the investigation is still rippling, with the suicide this week of a Quebec man who poisoned himself in a courtroom rather than go behind bars.
Journalists at the Quebec City courthouse saw the convicted defendant, Nicolas Boudreau, collapse on Wednesday morning after he pulled a small flask from a pocket and gulped its content right after Quebec Court Justice Christian Boulet sentenced him to six months in jail.
The courtroom was evacuated while constables tried to resuscitate the 52-year-old Mr. Boudreau. He died the next day in hospital.
Mr. Boudreau, a former junior-college chemistry teacher and soccer coach, is the fourth person known to have killed himself after being identified in connection with Project Spade.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/man-poisons-himself-after-being-sentenced-in-child-pornography-case/article36374086/
2016: 80 arrested, 274 charges laid in massive Ontario-wide child porn bust
“There’s always been a misconception that a lot of this material is produced in third world type countries,” OPP Det. Staff-Sgt. Frank Goldschmidt told reporters at a press conference Thursday morning.
“But it’s our experience and the investigations that we’ve completed, just as much of that material is produced right here in Ontario.”
https://globalnews.ca/news/2667299/arrests-made-in-ontario-wide-internet-child-porn-probe/
Child porn images will revictimize: Kingston Police
https://www.thewhig.com/2016/08/17/child-porn-images-will-revictimize-kingston-police/wcm/6d8766ab-9664-fd1c-c6df-598dd57e71b1
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CAS managers charged more than $106,000 in 'unreasonable’ expenses.
By SANDRO CONTENTA News Thu., Nov. 10, 2016
The CEO of the York Region Children's Aid Society, Colette Prevost, has spent 30 years working in the social services and mental health sectors. She worked at the Sudbury society from 2008 to early 2015 and managed $36.2 million in provincial funding in the 2014-15 fiscal year. (TORONTO STAR)
The audit of senior manager expenses describes accounting and spending problems throughout the Sudbury society.
We all want to believe that nonprofit corporations like the children's aid society are full of hard-working people committed to improving society. But even the most well-meaning nonprofits can get into financial hot water.
Unfortunately the temptation to cover up financial problems can be particularly seductive for nonprofit CAS managers who have spent money like politicians with an expense account credit cards and no spending oversight for decades.
From April 1, 2013 to March 31, 2015, the society was not addressing, or complying with, 21 mandatory provincial government directives that govern how records are kept, expenses are approved and contracts awarded.
Record keeping was so bad that auditors couldn’t rule on an additional $290,000 worth of expenses on corporate cards, partly because they could not figure out which senior manager charged them.
That suggests the problems could go deeper than those found in the $203,400 worth of expenses they were able to review.
The audit also found more than $240,000 worth of contracts awarded in ways that violated minimum procurement policies, including failure to seek multiple quotes.
In a statement, the Children’s Aid Society of the Districts of Sudbury and Manitoulin said it has launched an internal forensic audit to “identify all the expenses that can be recovered” from Prévost.
In response to a request for comment from The Star, Prévost, who has not seen the report, said,“I do not take this lightly. I worked very diligently for Sudbury CAS. Sudbury CAS and I agreed late last year to reimbursement of expenses that were viewed as potentially outside agency policy.”
The York society’s chair, Barb Gray, said in an email that Prévost “is on a personal leave of absence.”
https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/11/10/cas-managers-charged-more-than-106000-in-unreasonable-expenses.html
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A review of spending at the London and Middlesex Children’s Aid Society, kept under wraps for months, revealed nearly two dozen executives made more than $100,000 and the agency shelled out thousands of dollars for taxis and iPads.
London’s child welfare agency squandered money on costly office renovations and highly paid, bloated management ranks, a just-released report by the Ministry of Children and Youth Services states.
The ministry put the Children’s Aid Society of London and Middlesex under review in late 2013 because the agency that cares for vulnerable children was running a deficit.
https://lfpress.com/2015/03/16/child-welfare-agency-found-to-have-wasted-money-on-office-renovations-consultants-and-bloated-management/wcm/e32079bc-4395-7c5e-70ec-378d688f0b6a
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Layoffs At Windsor-Essex Children’s Aid Society BY ADELLE LOISELLE SEPTEMBER 1, 2017
The Windsor-Essex Children’s Aid Society is laying off eight administrative support and preventative services workers.
Interim Executive Director Terry Johnson says the layoffs will not affect workers on the frontline and should not affect the quality of care received by children in their custody.
She says the problem is the budget. The province is reviewing the funding formula, so the agency does not know how much money it will get this year.
“We don’t know our budget for the year, and we’re five months into our year,” she says.
While the number of children in Children’s Aid custody has remained relatively consistent, Johnson says more kids require more complex care, and that is costly.
(The most expensive babysitters on earth...)
“On average that’s $310 a day, but when you bring some kids in it costs $500 to $1,000 a day,” says Johnson. “It has a huge impact on the budget.”
The average family of four on welfare might get a $1000 a month in Ontario.
The agency came up short $1.4-million, but thanks to surpluses in years past, it was able to whittle that down to $300,000 or $400,000. Children’s Aid is not allowed to carry over a deficit, so it has to find ways to mitigate the shortfall.
Once it hears back from the province, Johnson says it is possible those workers will be recalled.
Because of bumping rights in the workers’ collective agreement, the layoffs are not expected to take effect until mid-October at the earliest.
https://blackburnnews.com/windsor/windsor-news/2017/09/01/layoffs-windsor-essex-childrens-aid-society/ ---
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Children's Aid gets $4.3 million cash boost from province
The local Children's Aid Society is out of the red after the province agreed to "mitigate" the agency's $4.3 million deficit in time for its April 1 fiscal year start.
BEATRICE FANTONI, WINDSOR STAR Updated: March 28, 2013.
The local Children’s Aid Society is out of the red after the province agreed to give the agency an extra $4.3 million to erase its deficit and balances its books in time for its April 1 fiscal year start.
But whether that extra money will help reverse a decision to layoff 18 casual employees is hard to say, said Bill Bevan, director of the Windsor-Essex Children’s Aid Society.
“There won’t be any quick decisions in the next few weeks,” Bevan said on Monday, adding that the cash boost will help balance the 2012-2013 budget, but he has yet to get a clear picture of what the province will provide for the 2013-2014 budget, since it has introduced a new funding model.
Last week, the CAS announced it would layoff 18 casual case workers due to budgetary deficits.
The cutbacks are forced by a $70-million provincial funding shortfall across Ontario. WECAS not only had a $4.3 million deficit, it is also juggling $1.6 million in historic debt.
https://windsorstar.com/news/childrens-aid-gets-4-3-million-cash-boost-from-province
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Unlicensed Daycare Operator successfully sued for making an unreasonable report to the CAS... 2013.
In a decision delivered last month, Superior Court judge Lewis Richardson ruled Tammy Larabie’s call to the CAS was “unreasonable” and there “was nothing to suggest that (the baby) was in any danger.”
It’s a ruling which children’s aid society advocates say ignores child care providers’ duty to report suspected child abuse or neglect to the CAS, and it could dissuade them from doing so for fear of a lawsuit.
In a court transcript obtained by the Star, Richardson found the parents “to be competent, caring and capable” who “properly looked after the interests of their son.”
“There was no basis whatsoever to report them to the Children’s Aid,” he said. “(Larabie) acted selfishly and to protect her own interest, not for the benefit of the child.”
“It’s hard enough to get people to report (to the CAS) and this will have a silencing effect,” said Mary Birdsell, executive director of Justice for Children and Youth. “The legislation is supposed to protect people from being sued if their report was reasonable.”
What needs to be realized is that when it comes to people’s lives the impact of CAS actions can be profound and wide-reaching and that’s far more important than the question of good intentions.
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/03/27/daycare-operator-sued-for-calling-the-cas.html
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2016: Report shines light on poverty’s role on kids in CAS system.
The effect of provincial policies on struggling families was especially apparent in the late 1990s, when the conservative government slashed welfare payments and social service funding at the same time it introduced in child protection the notion of maltreatment by “omission,” including not having enough food in the home. The number of children taken into care spiked.
A new report cites poverty as a key factor in families who come into contact with the child protection system.
“We’re able to tell a story of maltreatment, but we have not done a very good job in telling a story about poverty,” Goodman said, referring to Ontario’s 47 privately run children’s aid societies.
Goodman suggests silence suited the provincial government more than it suited the society's funding goals, in particular the Ministry of Children and Youth Services, which regulates child protection and funds societies with $1.5 billion annually.
On average, 15,625 Ontario children were in foster or group-home care in 2014-15. The latest figures indicate if your still willing to blindly take the society's word for it that only 2 percent of children are removed from their home due to sexual abuse and 13 percent for physical abuse. The rest are removed because of neglect, emotional maltreatment and exposure to violence between their parents or caregivers.
“The ministry has been pretty clear with us that advocacy is not part of our mandate,” Goodman said. “It’s not like they’re asking for the (poverty) data. They’re not.”
The poverty removal rates were extracted from the government-funded Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect, compiled in 2013. A team of researchers examined a representative sample of 4,961 child protection investigations conducted by 17 children’s aid societies. The cases involved children up to 14.
Co-author Kofi Antwi-Boasiako, a PhD student at the University of Toronto’s faculty of social work, will be expanding the report into a full-fledged study.
Goodman credited the report with revealing “the glaringly huge elephant in the room.” Children’s aid societies have long witnessed the grinding effect of poverty on families but have rarely spoken out about it or pressured policy makers.
https://www.ourwindsor.ca/news-story/6810640-report-shines-light-on-poverty-s-role-on-kids-in-cas-system/
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Story 1 of 3 - Barbara Kay: "Children's aid societies gone rogue."
Judge Harper wrote that that the father was lucky to “dig out from under the avalanche thrust upon him,” and that “the scars to the children” were permanent. In summary, “This was exacerbated by the actions of the Society, some police officers, some women’s groups and a school board.
The mother was, to put it mildly — confirmed by recordings, e-mails and text messages — unreliable and manipulative. The three boys repeatedly alerted the CAS to their mother’s violence, alcoholism and sexual indiscretions. Yet the CAS blithely ignored all evidence to the contrary of their own settled conviction that the mother deserved their support.
Finally the mother accused her oldest son of trying to kill her, which brought the family into a criminal court that doesn't just take society's word for everything .
Judge Harper assigned two-thirds of the court costs to the CAS — a record $1.4 million — and $604,500 to the mother.
He had scathing words for the CAS, whom he charged with becoming “a lead advocate” for the mother and the driving force for the trial.
He said that the agency went to great lengths to smother any evidence that countered their theory.
It was revealed at trial in a criminal court that mandatory document-sharing (file disclosure) was running a year late in the family court, and that one CAS supervisor, tasked with providing information to lawyers, had removed 475 pages of notes, records, summaries and emails from the file to the criminal proceedings. (This, by the way, is a criminal offence, although to my knowledge the supervisor has not been charged.) Judge Harper also noted that meetings were held to discuss how to protect the mother and case workers from the demonized father.
http://nationalpost.com/opinion/barbara-kay-childrens-aid-societies-gone-rogue
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Story 2 of 3: "CAS vows to appeal ruling of ‘bad faith."
“We stand by our decision to seek a child protection application in this matter.”
“We don’t make these decisions lightly and we take into consideration the opinions of other professionals and in this case we did so,” said Fitzgerald, referring to consultations with police, women’s groups and school officials.
Last week, Superior Court Justice John Harper slapped the CAS with a $1.4-million court bill and had harsh words for the agency, saying it failed to properly investigate a mother’s version of events in a divorce and custody battle, even when three children tried to alert authorities of the woman’s violence, alcoholism and manipulation.
http://www.lfpress.com/2014/04/14/cas-vows-to-defend-ruling-of-bad-faith
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Story 3 of 3
THE BIG STORY LEFT OUT OF NEWSPAPER IN ONTARIO.
Children’s Aid Society of London and Middlesex v. C.B.D.: Interests of the Children Lead to Quashing of Appeal in Child Protection Context Mark Gelowitz. Oct 31, 2014.
Though the Ontario children's aid society has claimed for years family courts judges provide important oversight in child protection matters (which doesn't appear to be in their job description) the family court judge in this case did nothing at all to prevent this tragedy and if anything was a contributing factor.
But as it turns out some judges like outside the family courts Judge Harper do provide important oversight and insight into the many faces of Ontario children's aid society.
Quashing an appeal for lack of merit is an extreme remedy. But occasionally, when very little merit coincides with another social interest, an appeal can be quashed for a combination of reasons. Children’s Aid Society of London and Middlesex v. C.B.D., released October 9, 2014, is an example of this, as the Ontario Court of Appeal quashed the appeal of the Children’s Aid Society of London and Middlesex (the “Society”) from a decision refusing to impose a child protection order. The Court held that the appeal had very little merit, and the interests of the children mandated that the appeal be quashed.
https://www.osler.com/en/blogs/appeal/october-2014/children-s-aid-society-of-london-and-middlesex-v
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Woman charged with sex assault of minors worked at male Highland Shores Children's Aid Society group-home at time of alleged offences.
February 1, 2019 7:16 pm By Alexandra Mazur Online Reporter Global News.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4916584/woman-charged-with-sex-assault-of-minors-worked-at-male-cas-group-home-at-time-of-alleged-offences/
Woman charged with sexual exploitation worked at Children’s Aid at time of alleged offences.
Belleville police say two male victims came forward claiming incidents of sexual assault with the accused, 48-year-old Sandra Forcier.
https://globalnews.ca/video/4917374/woman-charged-with-sexual-exploitation-worked-at-childrens-aid-at-time-of-alleged-offences
Youth worker charged with historical sex assault.
Police in Belleville, Ont., have charged a 48-year-old woman with five counts of sexual assault dating back to 2012-2013, when she was employed as a youth worker.
The woman is charged with two counts of sexual assault, two counts of sexual exploitation of a youth under 18 and one count of sexual interference.
The woman was employed by the Highland Shores Children's Aid Society (CAS) when the alleged assaults took place. Police said a lengthy investigation resulted in two victims being identified.
Highland Shores CAS executive director Tami Callahan said the accused was a supervisor at a residence for youth run by the society before leaving in December 2013.
Callahan said Belleville police have not been in touch with the CAS, and she didn't know whether the complainants were in the society's care at the time of the alleged assaults.
The accused also worked at Belleville and Quinte West Community Health Centre as a counsellor. The centre's executive director, Sheila Braidek, said the accused has been on leave for an extended period of time.
The centre would not provide any further information, citing privacy concerns.
The woman is due back in court in February after being released from custody with numerous conditions.
Anyone with more information should contact Belleville police at 613-966-0882 ext. 2328
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/youth-worker-sex-assault-belleville-1.5001086
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Children’s Aid executive facing 20 charges in child abuse case. By Alexandra Mazur and Mike Postovit Global News. 2018.
OPP has charged William Sweet, a resident of Picton, Ont., after allegations of wrongdoing during his work as the executive director of the Prince Edward County Children’s Aid Society between 2002 and 2010.
After investigating cases of children placed with foster parents who themselves were convicted of child abuse, this led the OPP to look into Sweet’s involvement as executive director of the child care organization.
The 67-year-old Picton resident was charged with 10 counts each of criminal negligence causing bodily harm and failure to provide the necessities of life. The accused appeared at the Ontario Court of Justice in Picton on May 2.
Sgt. Carolle Dionne, provincial media relations coordinator, says that although Sweet never fostered any children of his own, he is being charged because as she said, “he ought to have known better” than to place children with the foster parents who have since been convicted in child abuse cases.
For a period of eight years, nine foster children were placed with six foster parents who have since been convicted of sexual abuse against those children.
According to Dionne, Sweet’s investigation encompassed a review of those previous abuse investigations and convictions between 2013 and 2016. Police then conducted additional interviews, executed search warrants and seized evidence to put before the court for Sweet’s charges.
OPP officers are not commenting on specific details of the allegations as the matter is now before the courts.
Children’s Aid Society moves on
Mark Kartusch is the current executive director of the Highland Shores Children’s Aid Society. In 2012, after the Ministry of Children and Youth Services reviewed the Prince Edward County Children Services, Sweet left his post, and his branch dissolved. What came from that was an amalgamation of several children’s aid offices, an organization which Kartusch now heads.
He says that Sweet’s charges are bringing up bad memories, but that he hopes people will have faith in the workers.
“We didn’t have a lot of people coming forward to become foster parents,” said Kartusch, although he said that things have changed in the last few years.
He also emphasized that events like those that happened to the children placed out of the Prince Edward County children’s aid are highly unusual.
“Kids are safe in foster homes,” Kartusch emphasized.
He finished by saying that although there are employees from the now defunct Prince Edward Country chapter working within the Highland Shores organization, they were not involved in any criminal activity.
“The charges are isolated with Bill,” said Kartusch about Sweet.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4182170/childrens-aid-executive-charged/
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A 14-year-old girl is a ‘sexually mature young woman,’ not a child, children’s aid society lawyer argues in sex abuse suit.
Kenora-Rainy River Districts Child and Family Services tells the Star it disagrees with what its lawyer argued in an ongoing sexual abuse court case, but refused to say whether it plans to rectify the statement in court.
NEWS 01:49 PM by Jacques Gallant Toronto Star
A 14- or 15-year-old girl is not a child, but rather a "sexually mature young woman," according to a lawyer for a Northern Ontario children's aid society.
The statement by Toronto lawyer Gary McCallum is contained in a July 2018 affidavit in an ongoing civil court case, in which a woman is suing Kenora-Rainy River Districts Child and Family Services, claiming she was sexually abused as a child by her foster father in the 1980s while under the care of the agency's predecessor organization.
It was again referenced in a January 2019 ruling from the lengthy case, which is playing out in a Toronto court.
The statement has been described to the Star by other lawyers and a professor of social work as "offensive," "shocking," and "appalling" — doubly so because it was made by the lawyer for the very agency charged with protecting the most vulnerable children.
"This is outrageous," said Melissa Redmond, assistant professor of social work at Carleton University. "You represent the organization that is responsible for protecting children in this community, protecting children from exactly the sorts of horrific circumstances that this child found herself in."
820 Lakeview Drive Kenora Ontario P9N 3P7 Canada Phone: 807-467-5437 Fax: 807-467-5539
Ontario's Child and Family Services Act, which governs children's aid societies, is also clear. "'Child' means a person under the age of eighteen years," it reads.
Kenora CFS refused to say when it became aware its lawyer had made the statement, but told the Star this week it disagrees with McCallum and called his position "inaccurate."
The agency also refused to say whether it plans to rectify the statement in court.
McCallum declined to comment to the Star, saying in an email that "I will not be making any statements on matters that are currently being litigated and I will not be making any statements inconsistent with those of my client."
The statement is part of a voluminous court record that stretches back years. It appears in a July 2018 affidavit in which McCallum states he is responding to the affidavit of the plaintiff's lawyer, Simona Jellinek, which McCallum said is "rife with errors, imprecisions, and misrepresentations." (Jellinek declined to comment to the Star.)
"She states that the alleged assaults took place while the plaintiff was 'in childhood,'" McCallum states before noting that the plaintiff's year of birth indicates she would have been about 14 or 15 in the early 1980s.
"A fourteen or fifteen (sic) girl is a sexually mature young woman, not a 'child,' as the term is conventionally understood," McCallum states.
The statement is again referenced in a January 2019 decision by Superior Court Justice Jessica Kimmel, who ruled that the plaintiff's action could proceed. In her decision, Kimmel makes no comment on the statement itself, other than to say it was identified as a "live" issue by McCallum surrounding the allegation of sexual assault.
"He's speaking on behalf of a children's aid society, so it's deeply concerning that there's a children's aid society out there that takes the view that youngsters of 14 or 15 are sexually mature," said lawyer Loretta Merritt, whose practice is almost exclusively focused on representing plaintiffs in civil cases involving sexual abuse.
"If that's their view, the view of an organization charged with responsibility for caring for vulnerable children, then that's deeply concerning to me."
Kenora CFS executive director Bill Leonard told the Star in an email exchange this week that he can't really comment as the court case is ongoing.
"Mr. McCallum's statement is before the court and as you point out, it has been before the court for some time," he said. "But to be clear my agency does, and always has, considered 14 and 15 year old young persons to be children as defined by legislation and as such are deserving of our full protection from any form of abuse."
It's "disappointing" if Kenora CFS didn't know at the time that their lawyer had made such a statement in court, said Allen Wynperle, president-elect of the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association, which represents lawyers acting for plaintiffs.
Jacques Gallant is a Toronto-based reporter covering legal affairs. Follow him on Twitter: @JacquesGallant
https://www.thespec.com/news-story/9237081-a-14-year-old-girl-is-a-sexually-mature-young-woman-not-a-child-children-s-aid-society-lawyer-argues-in-sex-abuse-suit/
Between 2014\15 the Ontario children's aid society claim to have spent $467.9 million dollars providing protective services that doesn't seem to extend to the 90 to 120 children that die in Ontario's foster care and group homes that are overseen and funded by the CAS.
In a National Post feature article in June 2009, Kevin Libin portrayed an industry in which abuses are all too common. One source, a professor of social work, claims that a shocking 15%-20% of children under CAS oversight suffer injury or neglect.
Several CAS insiders whom Libin interviewed regard the situation as systemically hopeless.
A clinical psychologist with decades of experience advocating for children said, “I would love to just demolish the system and start from scratch again.”
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Between 2008 and 2012 the PDRC choose to review the deaths of 215 children in care. In 92 of those cases the cause of death could not be determined while the majority of the remaining deaths were listed as homicides, suicide and "accidental." The PRDC reported during that same time period only 15 children with pre-existing medical conditions in care had died of unpreventable natural causes making undermined the leading cause of death of children in care.
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“There are lots of kids in group homes all over Ontario and they are not doing well — and everybody knows it,” says Kiaras Gharabaghi, a member of a government-appointed panel that examined the residential care system in 2016.
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“It is stunning to me how these children... are rendered invisible while they are alive and invisible in their death,” said Irwin Elman, Ontario’s advocate for children and youth. Between 90 and 120 children and youth connected to children’s aid die every year.
Between 2008/2012 natural causes was listed as the least likely way for a child in Ontario's care to die at 7% (only 15 children) out of the total deaths reviewed while "undetermined cause" was listed as the leading cause of death of children in Ontario's child protection system at 43% of the total deaths reviewed. The of the deaths were categorized as homicide, suicide and accidental.
43% equals 92 children out of just the deaths reviewed by the PDRC (a group of child care experts not doctors or coroners...)
PRDC claims to be an independent committee of child care experts though OACAS CEO Mary Ballantyne has a voluntary seat on to "supplement her academic credentials in human industrial relations and industrial science."
92 mystery deaths and like every other year no further action was taken to determine the cause... Why weren't these mystery deaths in Ontario's care referred back to the police for further investigation and a cause of death determined?
Undetermined means those 92 had no known pre-existing medical conditions and there was no reason for them to have died.
http://www.mcscs.jus.gov.on.ca/english/DeathInvestigations/office_coroner/PublicationsandReports/PDRC/2013Report/PDRC_2013.html
http://www.mcscs.jus.gov.on.ca/sites/default/files/content/mcscs/images/195633-19.jpg
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158 CANADIANS SOLDIERS DIED IN AFGHANISTAN BETWEEN 2002 AND 2011 FIGHTING FOR WHAT?
Canada in Afghanistan - Fallen Canadian Armed Forces Members.
One hundred and fifty-eight (158) Canadian Armed Forces members lost their lives in service while participating in our country’s military efforts in Afghanistan. You can click on the names to explore their entries in the Canadian Virtual War Memorial.
https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/canadian-armed-forces/afghanistan-remembered/fallen?filterYr=2009
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Use of 'behaviour-altering' drugs widespread in foster, group homes.
2014.. Almost half of children and youth in foster and group home care aged 5 to 17 — 48.6 percent — are on drugs, such as Ritalin, tranquilizers and anticonvulsants, according to a yearly survey conducted for the provincial government and the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies (OACAS). At ages 16 and 17, fully 57 per cent are on these medications.
In group homes, the figure is even higher — an average of 64 percent of children and youth are taking behaviour-altering drugs. For 10- to 15-year-olds, the number is a staggering 74 per cent.
“Why are these kids on medication? Because people are desperate to make them functional,” Baird says, and “there’s so little else to offer.
Yet if the parents take medication to help make them more "functional" it's a reason for to keep a file open or apprehend a child, not render assistance or relief.
The figures are found in “Looking After Children in Ontario,” a provincially mandated survey known as OnLAC. It collects data on the 7,000 children who have spent at least one year in care. After requests by the Star, the 2014 numbers were made public for the first time.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/12/12/use_of_behaviouraltering_drugs_widespread_in_foster_group_homes.html
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What’s worse is that the number of children prescribed dangerous drugs is on the rise. Doctors seem to prescribe medication without being concerned with the side-effects.
Worldwide, 17 million children, some as young as five years old, are given a variety of different prescription drugs, including psychiatric drugs that are dangerous enough that regulatory agencies in Europe, Australia, and the US have issued warnings on the side effects that include suicidal thoughts and aggressive behavior.
According to Fight For Kids, an organization that “educates parents worldwide on the facts about today’s widespread practice of labeling children mentally ill and drugging them with heavy, mind-altering, psychiatric drugs,” says over 10 million children in the US are prescribed addictive stimulants, antidepressants and other psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs for alleged educational and behavioral problems.
In fact, according to Foundation for a Drug-Free World, every day, 2,500 youth (12 to 17) will abuse a prescription pain reliever for the first time (4). Even more frightening, prescription medications like depressants, opioids and antidepressants cause more overdose deaths (45 percent) than illicit drugs like cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and amphetamines (39 percent) combined. Worldwide, prescription drugs are the 4th leading cause of death.
https://dailyhealthpost.com/common-prescription-drugs/
Vulnerable children are being warehoused and forgotten.
A scathing report from Ontario’s coroner presses the provincial government to reform a child protection system that “repeatedly failed” youths who died while in care for decades.
The report describes a fragmented system with no means of monitoring quality of care, where ministry oversight is inadequate, caregivers lack training, and children are poorly supervised.
http://www.mcscs.jus.gov.on.ca/sites/default/files/content/mcscs/images/195633-19.jpg
“It is stunning to me how these children... are rendered invisible while they are alive and invisible in their death,” said Irwin Elman, Ontario’s advocate for children and youth. Between 90 and 120 children and youth connected to children’s aid die every year. (rendered invisible by the PDRC)
Between 2008/2012 natural causes was listed as the least likely way for a child in Ontario's care to die at 7% (only 15) out of the total deaths reviewed while "undetermined cause" was listed as the leading cause of death of children in Ontario's child protection system at 43% of the total deaths reviewed. The of the deaths were categorized as homicide, suicide and accidental.
43% equals 92 children out of just the deaths reviewed by the PDRC. 92 mystery deaths and like every other year no further action was taken to determine the cause...
Undetermined means those 92 had no pre-existing medical conditions and there was no reason for them to have died.
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Reasonable suspicion is a reasonable presumption that a crime has been, is being, or will be committed. It is a reasonable belief based on facts or circumstances and is informed by a police officer’s training and experience.
Reasonable suspicion is seen as more than a guess or hunch but less than probable cause.
Probable cause is the logical belief, supported by facts and circumstances, that a crime has been, is being, or will be committed.
The difference between the two terms is that probable cause means there is concrete evidence of a crime, whereas reasonable suspicion is open to broader interpretation.
Reasonable suspicion indicates that it appears that a crime has been committed; the phrase often is used to justify investigation into suspicious behavior when a crime may have been committed.
Under section 125 of the Child, Youth and Family Services Act every person who has reasonable grounds to suspect that a child is or may be in need of protection must promptly report the suspicion and the information upon which it is based to a Children’s Aid Society.
It is not necessary to be certain that a child is or may be in need of protection to make a report to a children’s aid society. “Reasonable grounds” refers to the information that an average person, using normal and honest judgment, would need in order to decide to report. This standard has been recognized by courts in Ontario as establishing a low threshold for reporting.
http://www.oacas.org/childrens-aid-child-protection/duty-to-report/
WHAT IS LOWER THAN REASONABLE GROUNDS FOR SUSPICION?
Simple suspicion is a lower threshold than reasonable grounds to suspect and is synonymous with a “gut feeling” or “hunch”. In other words, simple suspicion means that you have a feeling that something is unusual or suspicious, but do not have any facts.
Reasonable grounds to suspect is the required threshold in child protection legislation and is a step above simple suspicion, meaning that there is a possibility of government child care standards are not being met.
This means that you do not have to prove the facts that led to your suspicion. However, you do have the obligation to assess the facts that led to your determination of reasonable grounds to suspect the occurrence in front of a judge. The decision as to whether or not to grant a warrant and decide if a violation government child welfare standards has actually occurred should determined by a fair and impartial judicial system under the same rules of evidence used by most every other court in Canada.
Reasonable grounds to believe is a higher threshold than reasonable grounds to suspect and is more than what is required to conduct a investigation without delay. Reasonable grounds to believe means that there is a probability, supported by verified facts. In other words, there is enough evidence to support a reasonable and trained person to believe, not just suspect a child or children are at risk.
For example, law enforcement must reach reasonable grounds to believe that criminal activity has occurred before they can obtain judicial authorizations, including a production order..
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Racism Kept Thunder Bay Police From Fully Investigating Indigenous Deaths, Says Police Watchdog In Scathing Report.
An Ontario police watchdog said the force should re-do at least nine investigations.
By Samantha Beattie
Systemic racism throughout the Thunder Bay police force has compromised the investigation of the sudden deaths of Indigenous people, a scathing and unprecedented review has found.
Thunder Bay police's efforts have been so inadequate, it should re-investigate at least nine cases, said the the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, an Ontario police watchdog, in its 208-page report, Broken Trust, released Wednesday.
"The serious inadequacies and premature conclusions in TBPS investigations are at least in part because of racial stereotyping," said OIPRD's Gerry McNeilly.
"Officers repeatedly relied on generalized notions of how Indigenous people likely came to their deaths and acted based on those biases. (Bullshit.. These police officer were actively covering up murders in my opinion.) The investigations were too often handled differently because the deceased was Indigenous."
Investigators also lacked experience, failing to find out autopsy results, understand their significance or know what was in their own investigation file, including other reports filed by patrol officers, and they weren't properly supervised, McNeilly found. Thunder Bay police also doesn't have a major crimes unit, meaning investigators don't always receive the proper training on how to handle serious cases.
Thunder Bay police said in a statement it will review all the recommendations in the coming days and that it will be "of great value" in building trust with Indigenous communities.
"We acknowledge that there are systemic barriers in policing that must be addressed," said police Chief Sylvie Hauth. "With help from this report, the service continues to work towards bias-free policing."
Statement from the Chief of Police. https://t.co/7Mq0R24ai9
— Thunder Bay Police (@tbpsmedia) December 12, 2018
OIPRD looked at 37 Thunder Bay police investigations, including the deaths of Stacy DeBungee, 41, in 2015, and Josiah Begg, 14, and Tammy Keeash, 17, in 2017. For years, Indigenous leaders had raised concerns about the way police handled cases involving sudden deaths and disappearances of Indigenous people, many in their teens.
Keeash's body was found in one of Thunder Bay's waterways, after she'd been last seen at a nearby park, drinking with friends. Police informed her family she had died by suicide, said Keeash's uncle Tyson Matawapit. But her mother, Pearl Keeash, never believed them.
"I remember my late sister Pearl wanting answers, calling around, asking people questions on the streets about what they heard or seen about Tammy," Matawapit said from North Caribou Lake First Nation. "But she got very little answers. Everybody had their assumptions and ideas, but nobody knew exactly why or how Tammy died. It was frustrating.
"I just know that I can't trust any of the Thunder Bay police officers."
York Regional Police were called in to assist with the investigation. They found Keeash likely fell down an embankment into the river, suffered hypothermia and drowned, the review said. Her death does not appear to be one of the nine cases that OIPRD recommended should be re-investigated.
READ MORE HERE:
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/12/12/thunder-bay-police-racism_a_23616455/
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-report-finds-systemic-racism-at-police-service-in-thunder-bay-ont-2/
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CAN THE CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETIES OR PDRC BE TRUSTED?
An investigation into the deaths of children living in residential care, including seven Indigenous children, has found potential criminality according to Ontario’s chief coroner.
“There has been potentially involvement of police and potentially criminality in some of the cases we are reviewing,” Dr. Dirk Huyer told APTN News.
APTN asked if that involves the death of Kanina Sue Turtle, 15, who died by suicide inside her Sioux Lookout foster home Oct. 29, 2016, and is the subject of a recent APTN investigation.
Huyer wouldn’t say which of the cases he’s reviewing are involved. He did say his office hasn’t officially notified the police to investigate as of last week.
Huyer is leading what he’s calling an “expert panel” review of 11 deaths between Jan. 1 2014 and July 31, 2017 that occurred with children in protective services and living in residential care, like foster and group homes.
The review also includes homes operated by child welfare agencies, known as agency operated homes (AOH) that are staffed by a “live-in parent.”
Turtle was living in an AOH owned by Tikinagan Child and Family Services when she filmed her suicide. Despite being suicidal she was left alone for about 45 mins according to the video, which was recently reviewed by APTN.
Huyer met with the family of Turtle twice, including in January when he started making trips to the communities as part of the review.
While meeting with the family of Turtle in Poplar Hill First Nation he viewed, and obtained, two videos. One video was of her death, which he called “devastating” and an attempt from the day before on Oct. 28, 2016.
APTN has also reviewed that video. Turtle is by some trees when she attempts to hang herself holding her iPod.
Turtle didn’t say anything in the video of her death but APTN can report, for the first time, what she said in the video Oct. 28.
“I don’t know what to do anymore,” Turtle says. “I’m sorry for what … umm… I’m going to do.”
The video is just over a minute when she stops recording.
APTN has reported the family still questions, 16 months later, how Turtle could have been left alone so long when she was suicidal, and had been in hospital for self-harming at least twice in the nine days prior to her death.
Turtle’s mother Barbara Suggashie said she has never been told.
The Ontario government has also refused to say if any action was taken against the home. Tikinagan has refused to comment claiming privacy for the family.
Huyer also met with the family of Amy Owen during his trip to Poplar Hill. Owen, 13, died by suicide in an Ottawa group home April 17, 2017. APTN has previously reported that Owen was in the hospital multiple times in the weeks before her death inside the group home owned and operated by Mary Homes.
Mary Homes surrendered its license for that home after an investigation into Owen’s death. They own and operate several others in Ottawa.
Huyer said the expert panel review is something he thought about carefully and was triggered by an initial review of the deaths.
“We saw potential concerns about the service and the care that was provided to the youth … when they were in these care settings,” he said.
One example he provided was whether the children had the proper supervision, like 24-hour observation, known as one-to-one care. That’s when a worker is assigned to the child around the clock.
And whether the so-called care facilities met “the expectations that society … might have.”
Of the 11 deaths under review, seven were suicides, one homicide and all had a history of mental health challenges, according to the terms of reference provided by the coroner’s office.
The terms also further outlined the causes that sparked the review. They include potentially being placed in the wrong homes based on the children’s needs, training and qualifications of caregivers, availability of treatment, how children were placed in homes that had less requirements, like foster care compared to group homes, and the oversight provided by children’s aid societies.
It also found concerns with the Ministry of Children and Youth Services’ oversight of the placements.
Critics of the review have said the expert panel is essentially operating in the dark and an inquest into the deaths would put the deaths under public scrutiny.
It’s not lost on Huyer.
“I haven’t said we wouldn’t do an inquest into these cases but this is a step that allows us to look at things in greater depth with experts that have specific knowledge,” said Huyer.
He said the review allowed them to get started right away, while an inquest would take a number of years to get started.
It would also limit the scope.
“It allows us not to be narrowed down by the scope as much, because when you have an inquest there’s a lot of lawyers and they narrow it down,” said Huyer. “They define what we can look at, whereas the panel has a bit broader scope.”
He believes it will also allow him to potentially make recommendations to have immediate impact.
The report is expected to be complete by late spring or early summer and it will be made public said Huyer.
“It’s an important topic. I feel very strong about this. We have dedicated a significant amount of resources,” he said.
He said all files on each child, including hospital and police records, have been gathered since December. The coroner’s office is interviewing the families and all the information will be reviewed by a panel of seven experts.
The review will also hear from youth, care providers and agencies.
kjackson@aptn.ca
https://aptnnews.ca/2018/03/14/ontario-coroner-finds-potential-crime-review-foster-care-deaths/
::: the truth needs a coroner :::
Shocking conditions at now shuttered Thunder Bay foster homes detailed in child advocate’s final report
By Laurie Monsebraaten Social Justice Reporter
Sandro Contenta Feature Writer Tues., April 30, 2019.
Three Thunder Bay foster homes — closed by the province in 2017 after the death of a First Nations youth — had feces- and blood-stained floors, no working stove or food in the fridge, and were staffed by workers ill-equipped to handle the complex needs of youth in their care.
The shocking conditions are included in an investigative report by the office of Ontario’s Advocate for Children and Youth, which closed Tuesday as part of the Ford government’s “restoring trust, transparency and accountability” law. The office’s investigative role moves to the provincial ombudsman’s office May 1.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2019/04/30/shocking-conditions-at-now-shuttered-thunder-bay-foster-homes-detailed-in-child-advocates-final-report.html
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/irwin-elman-report-thunder-bay-1.5118129
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/irwin-elman-report-thunder-bay-1.5118129
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Cornwall sex abuse victims given large settlements
Published Thursday, June 10, 2010 12:20PM EDT ctvottawa.ca
Some victims of the Cornwall sex abuse scandal are receiving large financial settlements after decades of allegations that a cover-up of a pedophile ring existed in the eastern Ontario city, CTV Ottawa has learned.
The sex abuse scandal was uncovered in the early 1990s. A public inquiry ended in December 2009 after four years. The inquiry found the Catholic Church, police, the Ontario government and the legal system all failed to protect children from sexual predators.
Now, Ontario's attorney general has confirmed to CTV that several financial settlements have been reached with victims, and more lawsuits are outstanding.
The Project Truth inquiry into a pedophile ring cover-up and sex abuse allegations in Cornwall ended in December 2009.
Alleged victim Steve Parisien says the public has a right to know about large settlements paid out to sex abuse victims.
Although confidentiality agreements could mean taxpayers will never learn the true cost of the settlements, a former MPP predicts the payouts will total tens of millions of dollars.
"I would look at somewhere between $70-100 million," said Garry Guzzo, a former Conservative MPP who blew the whistle on the scandal and pushed for a public inquiry.
"It's a lot of money coming from very few taxpayers, and the people of the Catholic Church are taxpayers."
While sources have told CTV the payouts are in the millions, alleged victim Steve Parisien says some individuals are getting less than $20,000.
"I think parishioners and taxpayers have a right to know how much has been paid out," he said.
A lawyer representing dozens of the victims wouldn't reveal how much money was paid. However, he confirmed several settlements have been reached with the Catholic diocese, the Ontario government and other Catholic organizations. There are also several cases in the works against the Children's Aid Society.
Cornwall's Catholic Diocese says it has settled all 16 of the lawsuits against the Catholic Church. The last lawsuit was settled a few weeks ago.
Bishop Paul-Andre Durocher says the total payouts from those lawsuits amount to $1.2 million. He adds none of those settlements involved confidentiality agreements.
"There's no doubt in my mind that these victims deserve this money," said Guzzo.
"You know the confidentiality agreement - never going to trial, never allowing it to become public - there's an element of hush money."
Although Parisien hasn't received a settlement, he is hoping to get some compensation for his experience.
He says while no amount of money will change his life, it will help validate what he went through.
"Just for my loss of wages - that's all I seek. I don't want nothing else from these people, they've done enough damage. And they have to sleep with themselves at night."
With a report from CTV Ottawa's Catherine Lathem
https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/cornwall-sex-abuse-victims-given-large-settlements-1.521190
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2013: In leaked memo, Peel CAS staff asked to keep cases open to retain funding.
An internal memo from Peel Children’s Aid Society management asks staff not to close any ongoing cases during March, as part of a strategy to secure government funding.
According to the memo, when service volume is lower than projected, there is less money for the CAS.
An anonymous employee is troubled by the memo as it raises concerns about quotas and the impact on Peel families.
“Wrongly opening or leaving these files open can have a damaging impact on these clients’ lives. For example, some parents are separated from their kids, some parents have to take time off work to meet with us when their files should have been closed, and some parents are unable to return home because of a false abuse claim — and all of these cases leave these families in emotional limbo,” wrote the employee who would not reveal their identity for fear of retribution.
The employee said many workers are outraged over the memo, “because it is immoral and wrong to keep client cases open just to meet a quota. . . . There are far-reaching implications when you have a CAS record.”
Gene Colman, a Toronto family lawyer who handles cases involving CAS, said his office has been puzzled by the substantial increase in people calling because of CAS intervention in their families.
“I thought, ‘What’s going on, why are we getting so many calls?’ I wonder if it’s related. I don’t know,” he said not looking a gift horse in the mouth.
Though the CAS claimed the purpose of the memo wasn't to inflate numbers, between 2011 and 2013 the 46 (at that time) separate societies opened a combined total of 42 000 files or about 14 000 files per year, in 2014 - after the Peel Memo Leak - and launching a new government funded advertising campaign and reopening 20 000 previously closed files the societies opened a combined total of over 82 000 files to meet their funding goals that year as reported by the Toronto Star.
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/03/14/in_leaked_memo_peel_cas_staff_asked_to_keep_cases_open_to_retain_funding.html
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/03/15/province_in_talks_with_peel_childrens_aid_society_over_strategies_in_leaked_memo.html
http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/peel-cas-funding-shortfall-just-province-wide-tip-of-67-million-iceberg-1769188.htm
https://cupe.on.ca/archivedoc2283/
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Three CAS cases settled.
When it was filed in 2013, the civil suits totalled $14 million ($2.8 million per plaintiff).
Each plaintiff initially claimed $350,000 for pain and suffering, in addition to $1 million each for loss of future earnings and another $1 million for punitive damages. They sought $100,000 in future care costs, plus $100,000 for special damages and $250,000 for aggravated damages.
Two outstanding plaintiffs will be addressed shortly, Bonn said.
“We continue to work on those,” he said. “We intend to mediate those.”
The suit directed at the CAS also targets four former foster parents, two are now serving prison terms for sexual abuse of children placed in their care. A third convicted predator’s case is now before the Ontario Court of Appeal.
“Like most of these issues, they’re difficult all the way through and deal with unpleasant issues, but the fact that we’ve been able to reach some form of agreement means that each side is able to live with it at some level,” Bonn said Tuesday.
Bonn filed the claims on behalf of the five female plaintiffs, now in their late teens and early 20s.
“With litigation done, it would bring an end to this piece of their involvement with the CAS,” Bonn said.
All complainants listed claim the Prince Edward County CAS (PECCAS) is liable for the abuse each of them suffered while in the care of PECCAS.
The County society is now part of the newly-amalgamated Highland Shores Children’s Aid Society, which also spans the societies of Hastings and Northumberland counties.
Mark Kartusch, the society’s executive director, was also tight-lipped about the settlement.
“I can’t disclose any of the details,” he said Tuesday. “However, we do hope this helps these youths move forward.”
Kartusch wouldn’t go as far as viewing the settlements as a form of closure for the plaintiffs.
“How does one ever have closure?” he said. “We believe in these young people and their future and want to support them in that.”
Before the 2013 merger, PECCAS was subjected to an extensive government probe which revealed a bevy of damning findings.
The investigation led by the Ministry of Child and Youth Services in Dec. 2011 – following a rash of child sex abuse charges against County foster parents – showed the agency was rife with significant internal conflicts recklessly placing vulnerable children in homes not properly screened and some cases not screened at all for months.
Kartusch said the agency has found better footing since the findings triggered amalgamation.
“I think we’re moving forward but will not forget the past,” he said.
Some concerns linger.
“I’m concerned that this may cause people to lose confidence in fostering or foster families,” he said, adding few bad apples aren’t representative of the whole bunch.
The 2013 statement of claims alleged “PECCAS is responsible, in fact and in law, for its own negligence and breaches of its statutory and fiduciary duties as well as for the negligence and breaches of duty committed by its servants, agents and employees,” states the claim, a copy of which was obtained by The Intelligencer in April 2013.
Two of the former foster parents initially targeted in the claim were Walter Joseph Holm, 46, and his wife, Janet Holm, 49.
They pleaded guilty to several charges, including possession of child pornography, sexual assault and invitation to sexual touching and were sentenced in November 2011 to four- and three-year prison terms respectively.
Three of the five plaintiffs, now ages 21, 23, and 19, are linked to the Holms. It’s not known if they were the three of five now concluded.
Justice Geoff Griffin blasted the Holms for turning their home into a “sexual cult” while fostering 25 teenagers over the course of nine years.
The three plaintiffs further implied that PECCAS was “vicariously liable for the actions” of the Holms.
https://www.intelligencer.ca/2014/10/21/three-cas-cases-settled/wcm/3fd07287-3f2a-1755-7386-1c8c2353c943
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Also in 2013: PROJECT SPADE...
Toronto police’s Project Spade results in international child porn arrests
More than 300 people including doctors, teachers and law enforcement personnel charged.
An international child porn probe that started in Toronto is being credited with rescuing 386 children and the arrest of 348 people, including teachers, priests and law enforcement personnel.
The three-year investigation, dubbed Project Spade, began in October 2010 when undercover online officers made contact with a man who was sharing graphic images of children being sexually abused.
Police allege they traced the internet connection to a Toronto man who was running an “exploitation” movie production and distribution company.
“This company operated a website known as www.azovfilms.com where customers from around the world could place orders to have movies sent to them through the mail or through the internet,” Insp. Joanna Beaven-Desjardins told reporters during a Thursday, Nov. 14, morning news conference at police headquarters.
“Investigators believe many of these movies were consistent with the Canadian Criminal Code definition of child pornography. At this time, the Toronto Police Service sought the assistance of the United States Postal Inspection Service as it appeared many of the movies were being exported into the United States.”
On May 1, 2011, police executed numerous search warrants in Toronto, including the site of the production and distribution business in the west end of the city.
“Officers spent four days inside this business, cataloguing the thousands of movies, computers and other media located during their search,” said Beaven-Desjardins, who heads the child exploitation section of the sex crimes unit.
“At this time over 45 terabytes of information was seized from the business, and to give you some perspective this is equivalent to a stack of paper as tall as 1,500 CN Towers.”
Police also executed a search warrant at the home of the business’ owner/operator.
“It is alleged that officers located hundreds of thousands of images and videos detailing horrific sexual acts against very young children, some of the worst that they have ever viewed,” Beaven-Desjardins said.
Brian Way, 42, of Toronto faces 24 charges, including possessing child pornography, importing/exporting child pornography, possessing proceeds of crime, laundering proceeds of crime and three counts of selling/distributing child pornography. He has also been charged with instructing commission of offence for criminal organization, which is the first time in Canada the charge has been laid in relation to child pornography.
“It is alleged that Mr. Way’s company had revenues in excess of $4 million during the years he was operating,” Beaven-Desjardins said.
“It is also alleged that Mr. Way paid people to have children filmed in Eastern European countries in order to produce some of the movies that he would sell online.”
It took police months to determine who the customers were. The information was then sent to law enforcement agencies in more than 50 countries, resulting in a total of 348 arrests and the rescue of 386 children.
There were 50 arrests in Ontario, 58 in the rest of Canada, 76 in the U.S. and 164 in the rest of the world.
“Of concern to the investigators was the number of people that had close contact with children,” said Beaven-Desjardins.
“The arrests included 40 school teachers, nine doctors and nurses, 42 people who volunteered with children, six law enforcement personnel, nine pastors or priests and three foster parents.”
One man arrested in Canada was a retired school teacher who allegedly had more than 350,000 images and more than 9,000 videos of child sexual abuse.
“Some of these images were of children known to him, and he was also charged with sexually abusing a young child relative,” Beaven-Desjardins said.
The investigation is ongoing.
“There will be further arrests, and I would imagine there will be more children that will be saved because of it,” Beaven-Desjardins said.
Cybertip.ca, an online tip line for the reporting of sexual exploitation of children, received many complaints about the website that became the basis of Project Spade.
Beaven-Desjardins said the success of the investigation “confirms that when we work together, regardless of the borders that divide us, we can successful track down those who not only prey on our most vulnerable but also profit from it.”
Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair said the exploitation of children “is a crime for which law enforcement comes together united around the world to do our very best to protect those individuals who can’t protect themselves.”
by Andrew Palamarchuk
Andrew Palamarchuk is a reporter with Metroland Media Toronto and toronto.com. He has been covering the crime beat since 2002 and has a passion for giving a voice to those affected by tragedy and looking at societal issues that may have contributed to it.
Email: apalamarchuk@toronto.com
https://www.toronto.com/news-story/4219011-toronto-police-s-project-spade-results-in-international-child-porn-arrests/
Hundreds arrested in international child porn case
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/hundreds-arrested-in-international-child-porn-case-1.2426176
Child porn bust: The men who were charged.
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/11/14/child_porn_bust_the_men_who_were_charged.html
How Police Cracked Canada's Largest Child Pornography Ring
https://thewalrus.ca/how-police-cracked-canadas-largest-child-pornography-ring/
Nicolas Boudreau is evacuated after swallowing a substance at the Quebec City Courthouse on Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017.
Former teacher is fourth known person involved with child-porn case to have taken his own life. Four years after police first alleged that hundreds of suspects had bought child pornography from a Toronto firm, fallout from the investigation is still rippling, with the suicide this week of a Quebec man who poisoned himself in a courtroom rather than go behind bars.
Journalists at the Quebec City courthouse saw the convicted defendant, Nicolas Boudreau, collapse on Wednesday morning after he pulled a small flask from a pocket and gulped its content right after Quebec Court Justice Christian Boulet sentenced him to six months in jail.
The courtroom was evacuated while constables tried to resuscitate the 52-year-old Mr. Boudreau. He died the next day in hospital.
Mr. Boudreau, a former junior-college chemistry teacher and soccer coach, is the fourth person known to have killed himself after being identified in connection with Project Spade.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/man-poisons-himself-after-being-sentenced-in-child-pornography-case/article36374086/
2016: 80 arrested, 274 charges laid in massive Ontario-wide child porn bust
“There’s always been a misconception that a lot of this material is produced in third world type countries,” OPP Det. Staff-Sgt. Frank Goldschmidt told reporters at a press conference Thursday morning.
“But it’s our experience and the investigations that we’ve completed, just as much of that material is produced right here in Ontario.”
https://globalnews.ca/news/2667299/arrests-made-in-ontario-wide-internet-child-porn-probe/
Child porn images will revictimize: Kingston Police
https://www.thewhig.com/2016/08/17/child-porn-images-will-revictimize-kingston-police/wcm/6d8766ab-9664-fd1c-c6df-598dd57e71b1
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CAS managers charged more than $106,000 in 'unreasonable’ expenses.
By SANDRO CONTENTA News Thu., Nov. 10, 2016
The CEO of the York Region Children's Aid Society, Colette Prevost, has spent 30 years working in the social services and mental health sectors. She worked at the Sudbury society from 2008 to early 2015 and managed $36.2 million in provincial funding in the 2014-15 fiscal year. (TORONTO STAR)
The audit of senior manager expenses describes accounting and spending problems throughout the Sudbury society.
We all want to believe that nonprofit corporations like the children's aid society are full of hard-working people committed to improving society. But even the most well-meaning nonprofits can get into financial hot water.
Unfortunately the temptation to cover up financial problems can be particularly seductive for nonprofit CAS managers who have spent money like politicians with an expense account credit cards and no spending oversight for decades.
From April 1, 2013 to March 31, 2015, the society was not addressing, or complying with, 21 mandatory provincial government directives that govern how records are kept, expenses are approved and contracts awarded.
Record keeping was so bad that auditors couldn’t rule on an additional $290,000 worth of expenses on corporate cards, partly because they could not figure out which senior manager charged them.
That suggests the problems could go deeper than those found in the $203,400 worth of expenses they were able to review.
The audit also found more than $240,000 worth of contracts awarded in ways that violated minimum procurement policies, including failure to seek multiple quotes.
In a statement, the Children’s Aid Society of the Districts of Sudbury and Manitoulin said it has launched an internal forensic audit to “identify all the expenses that can be recovered” from Prévost.
In response to a request for comment from The Star, Prévost, who has not seen the report, said,“I do not take this lightly. I worked very diligently for Sudbury CAS. Sudbury CAS and I agreed late last year to reimbursement of expenses that were viewed as potentially outside agency policy.”
The York society’s chair, Barb Gray, said in an email that Prévost “is on a personal leave of absence.”
https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/11/10/cas-managers-charged-more-than-106000-in-unreasonable-expenses.html
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A review of spending at the London and Middlesex Children’s Aid Society, kept under wraps for months, revealed nearly two dozen executives made more than $100,000 and the agency shelled out thousands of dollars for taxis and iPads.
London’s child welfare agency squandered money on costly office renovations and highly paid, bloated management ranks, a just-released report by the Ministry of Children and Youth Services states.
The ministry put the Children’s Aid Society of London and Middlesex under review in late 2013 because the agency that cares for vulnerable children was running a deficit.
https://lfpress.com/2015/03/16/child-welfare-agency-found-to-have-wasted-money-on-office-renovations-consultants-and-bloated-management/wcm/e32079bc-4395-7c5e-70ec-378d688f0b6a
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Layoffs At Windsor-Essex Children’s Aid Society BY ADELLE LOISELLE SEPTEMBER 1, 2017
The Windsor-Essex Children’s Aid Society is laying off eight administrative support and preventative services workers.
Interim Executive Director Terry Johnson says the layoffs will not affect workers on the frontline and should not affect the quality of care received by children in their custody.
She says the problem is the budget. The province is reviewing the funding formula, so the agency does not know how much money it will get this year.
“We don’t know our budget for the year, and we’re five months into our year,” she says.
While the number of children in Children’s Aid custody has remained relatively consistent, Johnson says more kids require more complex care, and that is costly.
(The most expensive babysitters on earth...)
“On average that’s $310 a day, but when you bring some kids in it costs $500 to $1,000 a day,” says Johnson. “It has a huge impact on the budget.”
The average family of four on welfare might get a $1000 a month in Ontario.
The agency came up short $1.4-million, but thanks to surpluses in years past, it was able to whittle that down to $300,000 or $400,000. Children’s Aid is not allowed to carry over a deficit, so it has to find ways to mitigate the shortfall.
Once it hears back from the province, Johnson says it is possible those workers will be recalled.
Because of bumping rights in the workers’ collective agreement, the layoffs are not expected to take effect until mid-October at the earliest.
https://blackburnnews.com/windsor/windsor-news/2017/09/01/layoffs-windsor-essex-childrens-aid-society/ ---
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Children's Aid gets $4.3 million cash boost from province
The local Children's Aid Society is out of the red after the province agreed to "mitigate" the agency's $4.3 million deficit in time for its April 1 fiscal year start.
BEATRICE FANTONI, WINDSOR STAR Updated: March 28, 2013.
The local Children’s Aid Society is out of the red after the province agreed to give the agency an extra $4.3 million to erase its deficit and balances its books in time for its April 1 fiscal year start.
But whether that extra money will help reverse a decision to layoff 18 casual employees is hard to say, said Bill Bevan, director of the Windsor-Essex Children’s Aid Society.
“There won’t be any quick decisions in the next few weeks,” Bevan said on Monday, adding that the cash boost will help balance the 2012-2013 budget, but he has yet to get a clear picture of what the province will provide for the 2013-2014 budget, since it has introduced a new funding model.
Last week, the CAS announced it would layoff 18 casual case workers due to budgetary deficits.
The cutbacks are forced by a $70-million provincial funding shortfall across Ontario. WECAS not only had a $4.3 million deficit, it is also juggling $1.6 million in historic debt.
https://windsorstar.com/news/childrens-aid-gets-4-3-million-cash-boost-from-province
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Unlicensed Daycare Operator successfully sued for making an unreasonable report to the CAS... 2013.
In a decision delivered last month, Superior Court judge Lewis Richardson ruled Tammy Larabie’s call to the CAS was “unreasonable” and there “was nothing to suggest that (the baby) was in any danger.”
It’s a ruling which children’s aid society advocates say ignores child care providers’ duty to report suspected child abuse or neglect to the CAS, and it could dissuade them from doing so for fear of a lawsuit.
In a court transcript obtained by the Star, Richardson found the parents “to be competent, caring and capable” who “properly looked after the interests of their son.”
“There was no basis whatsoever to report them to the Children’s Aid,” he said. “(Larabie) acted selfishly and to protect her own interest, not for the benefit of the child.”
“It’s hard enough to get people to report (to the CAS) and this will have a silencing effect,” said Mary Birdsell, executive director of Justice for Children and Youth. “The legislation is supposed to protect people from being sued if their report was reasonable.”
What needs to be realized is that when it comes to people’s lives the impact of CAS actions can be profound and wide-reaching and that’s far more important than the question of good intentions.
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/03/27/daycare-operator-sued-for-calling-the-cas.html
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2016: Report shines light on poverty’s role on kids in CAS system.
The effect of provincial policies on struggling families was especially apparent in the late 1990s, when the conservative government slashed welfare payments and social service funding at the same time it introduced in child protection the notion of maltreatment by “omission,” including not having enough food in the home. The number of children taken into care spiked.
A new report cites poverty as a key factor in families who come into contact with the child protection system.
“We’re able to tell a story of maltreatment, but we have not done a very good job in telling a story about poverty,” Goodman said, referring to Ontario’s 47 privately run children’s aid societies.
Goodman suggests silence suited the provincial government more than it suited the society's funding goals, in particular the Ministry of Children and Youth Services, which regulates child protection and funds societies with $1.5 billion annually.
On average, 15,625 Ontario children were in foster or group-home care in 2014-15. The latest figures indicate if your still willing to blindly take the society's word for it that only 2 percent of children are removed from their home due to sexual abuse and 13 percent for physical abuse. The rest are removed because of neglect, emotional maltreatment and exposure to violence between their parents or caregivers.
“The ministry has been pretty clear with us that advocacy is not part of our mandate,” Goodman said. “It’s not like they’re asking for the (poverty) data. They’re not.”
The poverty removal rates were extracted from the government-funded Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect, compiled in 2013. A team of researchers examined a representative sample of 4,961 child protection investigations conducted by 17 children’s aid societies. The cases involved children up to 14.
Co-author Kofi Antwi-Boasiako, a PhD student at the University of Toronto’s faculty of social work, will be expanding the report into a full-fledged study.
Goodman credited the report with revealing “the glaringly huge elephant in the room.” Children’s aid societies have long witnessed the grinding effect of poverty on families but have rarely spoken out about it or pressured policy makers.
https://www.ourwindsor.ca/news-story/6810640-report-shines-light-on-poverty-s-role-on-kids-in-cas-system/
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Story 1 of 3 - Barbara Kay: "Children's aid societies gone rogue."
Judge Harper wrote that that the father was lucky to “dig out from under the avalanche thrust upon him,” and that “the scars to the children” were permanent. In summary, “This was exacerbated by the actions of the Society, some police officers, some women’s groups and a school board.
The mother was, to put it mildly — confirmed by recordings, e-mails and text messages — unreliable and manipulative. The three boys repeatedly alerted the CAS to their mother’s violence, alcoholism and sexual indiscretions. Yet the CAS blithely ignored all evidence to the contrary of their own settled conviction that the mother deserved their support.
Finally the mother accused her oldest son of trying to kill her, which brought the family into a criminal court that doesn't just take society's word for everything .
Judge Harper assigned two-thirds of the court costs to the CAS — a record $1.4 million — and $604,500 to the mother.
He had scathing words for the CAS, whom he charged with becoming “a lead advocate” for the mother and the driving force for the trial.
He said that the agency went to great lengths to smother any evidence that countered their theory.
It was revealed at trial in a criminal court that mandatory document-sharing (file disclosure) was running a year late in the family court, and that one CAS supervisor, tasked with providing information to lawyers, had removed 475 pages of notes, records, summaries and emails from the file to the criminal proceedings. (This, by the way, is a criminal offence, although to my knowledge the supervisor has not been charged.) Judge Harper also noted that meetings were held to discuss how to protect the mother and case workers from the demonized father.
http://nationalpost.com/opinion/barbara-kay-childrens-aid-societies-gone-rogue
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Story 2 of 3: "CAS vows to appeal ruling of ‘bad faith."
“We stand by our decision to seek a child protection application in this matter.”
“We don’t make these decisions lightly and we take into consideration the opinions of other professionals and in this case we did so,” said Fitzgerald, referring to consultations with police, women’s groups and school officials.
Last week, Superior Court Justice John Harper slapped the CAS with a $1.4-million court bill and had harsh words for the agency, saying it failed to properly investigate a mother’s version of events in a divorce and custody battle, even when three children tried to alert authorities of the woman’s violence, alcoholism and manipulation.
http://www.lfpress.com/2014/04/14/cas-vows-to-defend-ruling-of-bad-faith
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Story 3 of 3
THE BIG STORY LEFT OUT OF NEWSPAPER IN ONTARIO.
Children’s Aid Society of London and Middlesex v. C.B.D.: Interests of the Children Lead to Quashing of Appeal in Child Protection Context Mark Gelowitz. Oct 31, 2014.
Though the Ontario children's aid society has claimed for years family courts judges provide important oversight in child protection matters (which doesn't appear to be in their job description) the family court judge in this case did nothing at all to prevent this tragedy and if anything was a contributing factor.
But as it turns out some judges like outside the family courts Judge Harper do provide important oversight and insight into the many faces of Ontario children's aid society.
Quashing an appeal for lack of merit is an extreme remedy. But occasionally, when very little merit coincides with another social interest, an appeal can be quashed for a combination of reasons. Children’s Aid Society of London and Middlesex v. C.B.D., released October 9, 2014, is an example of this, as the Ontario Court of Appeal quashed the appeal of the Children’s Aid Society of London and Middlesex (the “Society”) from a decision refusing to impose a child protection order. The Court held that the appeal had very little merit, and the interests of the children mandated that the appeal be quashed.
https://www.osler.com/en/blogs/appeal/october-2014/children-s-aid-society-of-london-and-middlesex-v
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Woman charged with sex assault of minors worked at male Highland Shores Children's Aid Society group-home at time of alleged offences.
February 1, 2019 7:16 pm By Alexandra Mazur Online Reporter Global News.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4916584/woman-charged-with-sex-assault-of-minors-worked-at-male-cas-group-home-at-time-of-alleged-offences/
Woman charged with sexual exploitation worked at Children’s Aid at time of alleged offences.
Belleville police say two male victims came forward claiming incidents of sexual assault with the accused, 48-year-old Sandra Forcier.
https://globalnews.ca/video/4917374/woman-charged-with-sexual-exploitation-worked-at-childrens-aid-at-time-of-alleged-offences
Youth worker charged with historical sex assault.
Police in Belleville, Ont., have charged a 48-year-old woman with five counts of sexual assault dating back to 2012-2013, when she was employed as a youth worker.
The woman is charged with two counts of sexual assault, two counts of sexual exploitation of a youth under 18 and one count of sexual interference.
The woman was employed by the Highland Shores Children's Aid Society (CAS) when the alleged assaults took place. Police said a lengthy investigation resulted in two victims being identified.
Highland Shores CAS executive director Tami Callahan said the accused was a supervisor at a residence for youth run by the society before leaving in December 2013.
Callahan said Belleville police have not been in touch with the CAS, and she didn't know whether the complainants were in the society's care at the time of the alleged assaults.
The accused also worked at Belleville and Quinte West Community Health Centre as a counsellor. The centre's executive director, Sheila Braidek, said the accused has been on leave for an extended period of time.
The centre would not provide any further information, citing privacy concerns.
The woman is due back in court in February after being released from custody with numerous conditions.
Anyone with more information should contact Belleville police at 613-966-0882 ext. 2328
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/youth-worker-sex-assault-belleville-1.5001086
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Children’s Aid executive facing 20 charges in child abuse case. By Alexandra Mazur and Mike Postovit Global News. 2018.
OPP has charged William Sweet, a resident of Picton, Ont., after allegations of wrongdoing during his work as the executive director of the Prince Edward County Children’s Aid Society between 2002 and 2010.
After investigating cases of children placed with foster parents who themselves were convicted of child abuse, this led the OPP to look into Sweet’s involvement as executive director of the child care organization.
The 67-year-old Picton resident was charged with 10 counts each of criminal negligence causing bodily harm and failure to provide the necessities of life. The accused appeared at the Ontario Court of Justice in Picton on May 2.
Sgt. Carolle Dionne, provincial media relations coordinator, says that although Sweet never fostered any children of his own, he is being charged because as she said, “he ought to have known better” than to place children with the foster parents who have since been convicted in child abuse cases.
For a period of eight years, nine foster children were placed with six foster parents who have since been convicted of sexual abuse against those children.
According to Dionne, Sweet’s investigation encompassed a review of those previous abuse investigations and convictions between 2013 and 2016. Police then conducted additional interviews, executed search warrants and seized evidence to put before the court for Sweet’s charges.
OPP officers are not commenting on specific details of the allegations as the matter is now before the courts.
Children’s Aid Society moves on
Mark Kartusch is the current executive director of the Highland Shores Children’s Aid Society. In 2012, after the Ministry of Children and Youth Services reviewed the Prince Edward County Children Services, Sweet left his post, and his branch dissolved. What came from that was an amalgamation of several children’s aid offices, an organization which Kartusch now heads.
He says that Sweet’s charges are bringing up bad memories, but that he hopes people will have faith in the workers.
“We didn’t have a lot of people coming forward to become foster parents,” said Kartusch, although he said that things have changed in the last few years.
He also emphasized that events like those that happened to the children placed out of the Prince Edward County children’s aid are highly unusual.
“Kids are safe in foster homes,” Kartusch emphasized.
He finished by saying that although there are employees from the now defunct Prince Edward Country chapter working within the Highland Shores organization, they were not involved in any criminal activity.
“The charges are isolated with Bill,” said Kartusch about Sweet.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4182170/childrens-aid-executive-charged/
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A 14-year-old girl is a ‘sexually mature young woman,’ not a child, children’s aid society lawyer argues in sex abuse suit.
Kenora-Rainy River Districts Child and Family Services tells the Star it disagrees with what its lawyer argued in an ongoing sexual abuse court case, but refused to say whether it plans to rectify the statement in court.
NEWS 01:49 PM by Jacques Gallant Toronto Star
A 14- or 15-year-old girl is not a child, but rather a "sexually mature young woman," according to a lawyer for a Northern Ontario children's aid society.
The statement by Toronto lawyer Gary McCallum is contained in a July 2018 affidavit in an ongoing civil court case, in which a woman is suing Kenora-Rainy River Districts Child and Family Services, claiming she was sexually abused as a child by her foster father in the 1980s while under the care of the agency's predecessor organization.
It was again referenced in a January 2019 ruling from the lengthy case, which is playing out in a Toronto court.
The statement has been described to the Star by other lawyers and a professor of social work as "offensive," "shocking," and "appalling" — doubly so because it was made by the lawyer for the very agency charged with protecting the most vulnerable children.
"This is outrageous," said Melissa Redmond, assistant professor of social work at Carleton University. "You represent the organization that is responsible for protecting children in this community, protecting children from exactly the sorts of horrific circumstances that this child found herself in."
820 Lakeview Drive Kenora Ontario P9N 3P7 Canada Phone: 807-467-5437 Fax: 807-467-5539
Ontario's Child and Family Services Act, which governs children's aid societies, is also clear. "'Child' means a person under the age of eighteen years," it reads.
Kenora CFS refused to say when it became aware its lawyer had made the statement, but told the Star this week it disagrees with McCallum and called his position "inaccurate."
The agency also refused to say whether it plans to rectify the statement in court.
McCallum declined to comment to the Star, saying in an email that "I will not be making any statements on matters that are currently being litigated and I will not be making any statements inconsistent with those of my client."
The statement is part of a voluminous court record that stretches back years. It appears in a July 2018 affidavit in which McCallum states he is responding to the affidavit of the plaintiff's lawyer, Simona Jellinek, which McCallum said is "rife with errors, imprecisions, and misrepresentations." (Jellinek declined to comment to the Star.)
"She states that the alleged assaults took place while the plaintiff was 'in childhood,'" McCallum states before noting that the plaintiff's year of birth indicates she would have been about 14 or 15 in the early 1980s.
"A fourteen or fifteen (sic) girl is a sexually mature young woman, not a 'child,' as the term is conventionally understood," McCallum states.
The statement is again referenced in a January 2019 decision by Superior Court Justice Jessica Kimmel, who ruled that the plaintiff's action could proceed. In her decision, Kimmel makes no comment on the statement itself, other than to say it was identified as a "live" issue by McCallum surrounding the allegation of sexual assault.
"He's speaking on behalf of a children's aid society, so it's deeply concerning that there's a children's aid society out there that takes the view that youngsters of 14 or 15 are sexually mature," said lawyer Loretta Merritt, whose practice is almost exclusively focused on representing plaintiffs in civil cases involving sexual abuse.
"If that's their view, the view of an organization charged with responsibility for caring for vulnerable children, then that's deeply concerning to me."
Kenora CFS executive director Bill Leonard told the Star in an email exchange this week that he can't really comment as the court case is ongoing.
"Mr. McCallum's statement is before the court and as you point out, it has been before the court for some time," he said. "But to be clear my agency does, and always has, considered 14 and 15 year old young persons to be children as defined by legislation and as such are deserving of our full protection from any form of abuse."
It's "disappointing" if Kenora CFS didn't know at the time that their lawyer had made such a statement in court, said Allen Wynperle, president-elect of the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association, which represents lawyers acting for plaintiffs.
Jacques Gallant is a Toronto-based reporter covering legal affairs. Follow him on Twitter: @JacquesGallant
https://www.thespec.com/news-story/9237081-a-14-year-old-girl-is-a-sexually-mature-young-woman-not-a-child-children-s-aid-society-lawyer-argues-in-sex-abuse-suit/
Between 2014\15 the Ontario children's aid society claim to have spent $467.9 million dollars providing protective services that doesn't seem to extend to the 90 to 120 children that die in Ontario's foster care and group homes that are overseen and funded by the CAS.
In a National Post feature article in June 2009, Kevin Libin portrayed an industry in which abuses are all too common. One source, a professor of social work, claims that a shocking 15%-20% of children under CAS oversight suffer injury or neglect.
Several CAS insiders whom Libin interviewed regard the situation as systemically hopeless.
A clinical psychologist with decades of experience advocating for children said, “I would love to just demolish the system and start from scratch again.”
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Between 2008 and 2012 the PDRC choose to review the deaths of 215 children in care. In 92 of those cases the cause of death could not be determined while the majority of the remaining deaths were listed as homicides, suicide and "accidental." The PRDC reported during that same time period only 15 children with pre-existing medical conditions in care had died of unpreventable natural causes making undermined the leading cause of death of children in care.
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“There are lots of kids in group homes all over Ontario and they are not doing well — and everybody knows it,” says Kiaras Gharabaghi, a member of a government-appointed panel that examined the residential care system in 2016.
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“It is stunning to me how these children... are rendered invisible while they are alive and invisible in their death,” said Irwin Elman, Ontario’s advocate for children and youth. Between 90 and 120 children and youth connected to children’s aid die every year.
Between 2008/2012 natural causes was listed as the least likely way for a child in Ontario's care to die at 7% (only 15 children) out of the total deaths reviewed while "undetermined cause" was listed as the leading cause of death of children in Ontario's child protection system at 43% of the total deaths reviewed. The of the deaths were categorized as homicide, suicide and accidental.
43% equals 92 children out of just the deaths reviewed by the PDRC (a group of child care experts not doctors or coroners...)
PRDC claims to be an independent committee of child care experts though OACAS CEO Mary Ballantyne has a voluntary seat on to "supplement her academic credentials in human industrial relations and industrial science."
92 mystery deaths and like every other year no further action was taken to determine the cause... Why weren't these mystery deaths in Ontario's care referred back to the police for further investigation and a cause of death determined?
Undetermined means those 92 had no known pre-existing medical conditions and there was no reason for them to have died.
http://www.mcscs.jus.gov.on.ca/english/DeathInvestigations/office_coroner/PublicationsandReports/PDRC/2013Report/PDRC_2013.html
http://www.mcscs.jus.gov.on.ca/sites/default/files/content/mcscs/images/195633-19.jpg
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158 CANADIANS SOLDIERS DIED IN AFGHANISTAN BETWEEN 2002 AND 2011 FIGHTING FOR WHAT?
Canada in Afghanistan - Fallen Canadian Armed Forces Members.
One hundred and fifty-eight (158) Canadian Armed Forces members lost their lives in service while participating in our country’s military efforts in Afghanistan. You can click on the names to explore their entries in the Canadian Virtual War Memorial.
https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/canadian-armed-forces/afghanistan-remembered/fallen?filterYr=2009
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Use of 'behaviour-altering' drugs widespread in foster, group homes.
2014.. Almost half of children and youth in foster and group home care aged 5 to 17 — 48.6 percent — are on drugs, such as Ritalin, tranquilizers and anticonvulsants, according to a yearly survey conducted for the provincial government and the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies (OACAS). At ages 16 and 17, fully 57 per cent are on these medications.
In group homes, the figure is even higher — an average of 64 percent of children and youth are taking behaviour-altering drugs. For 10- to 15-year-olds, the number is a staggering 74 per cent.
“Why are these kids on medication? Because people are desperate to make them functional,” Baird says, and “there’s so little else to offer.
Yet if the parents take medication to help make them more "functional" it's a reason for to keep a file open or apprehend a child, not render assistance or relief.
The figures are found in “Looking After Children in Ontario,” a provincially mandated survey known as OnLAC. It collects data on the 7,000 children who have spent at least one year in care. After requests by the Star, the 2014 numbers were made public for the first time.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/12/12/use_of_behaviouraltering_drugs_widespread_in_foster_group_homes.html
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What’s worse is that the number of children prescribed dangerous drugs is on the rise. Doctors seem to prescribe medication without being concerned with the side-effects.
Worldwide, 17 million children, some as young as five years old, are given a variety of different prescription drugs, including psychiatric drugs that are dangerous enough that regulatory agencies in Europe, Australia, and the US have issued warnings on the side effects that include suicidal thoughts and aggressive behavior.
According to Fight For Kids, an organization that “educates parents worldwide on the facts about today’s widespread practice of labeling children mentally ill and drugging them with heavy, mind-altering, psychiatric drugs,” says over 10 million children in the US are prescribed addictive stimulants, antidepressants and other psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs for alleged educational and behavioral problems.
In fact, according to Foundation for a Drug-Free World, every day, 2,500 youth (12 to 17) will abuse a prescription pain reliever for the first time (4). Even more frightening, prescription medications like depressants, opioids and antidepressants cause more overdose deaths (45 percent) than illicit drugs like cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and amphetamines (39 percent) combined. Worldwide, prescription drugs are the 4th leading cause of death.
https://dailyhealthpost.com/common-prescription-drugs/
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