LEFEBVRE: Stay in proceedings in Ontario

Well, there was a court appearance today leading to the staying of the upcoming trial for Carline in Stratford. She will not face a new trial in Ontario next week.

[ Here is a copy of the Crown's Submission, July 12, 2005:

The Crown, upon the authority of Criminal Code 579(1) and having been delegated the authority under that section by the Attorney General of Ontario, is directing that these proceedings against Carline Antonia vendenElsen be stayed. The Crown concludes that it is no longer in the public interest to continue this prosecution. The reasons for the Crown's taking this position are these:

1. Craig Merkley and his 3 children, Peter, Olivia and Gray are the victims of the accused's conduct that resulted in these criminal charges. Mr. Merkley has consulted with the Crown respecting consideration of whether or not these charges should proceed. His position is that he and his children were victimized by the accused when she abducted his children. They were victimized by the accused in her conducting the first trial. He does not want them to be victimized yet again by her conduct in the course of another trial. The triplets were abducted in the year 2000 when they were 7 years old. Now, in the year 2005, they are age 12. Craig Merkely considers that the impact upon them in this trial of their mother in Stratford would be negative to the extreme.

2. The accused, is presently serving a substantial sentence for serious violence and abduction offences committed in Nova Scotia. The Nova Scotia offences were committed after the Stratford abduction. Accordingly, in the Crown's view, the likely outcome, uin the event of a finding of guilt on the Stratford charges, cannot be a dramatic increase in the custodial sentenmce that the accused in now serving. Also, in view of the sentence imposed in Nova Scotia, the continued prosecution of these Stratford charges for the purpose of the need for deterrence is significantly diminished.

3. The legal issue raised in the first Stratford trial was the nature of the defence of necessity in the context of the child abduction by a parent. the Crown took that issue to the Ontario Court of Appeal. The issue was resolved in favour of the Crown position. Accordingly, no new trial is required for the purpose of resolving the legal issue of necessity; it has been settled.]

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A few points jumped at me, but I will take a day to regroup before committing to anything here.

Regards,

Andre Lefebvre


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NS insurers refuse to cover child welfare agencies

NS insurers refuse to cover child welfare agencies - Child & Family
Community Action
June 16, 2003

HALIFAX -- Nova Scotia insurers are pulling out of insuring child welfare services and the provincial government has been forced to step in as insurer. One agency is facing 20 child abuse lawsuits, five child welfare agencies are not able to purchase liability insurance.

The provincial government is now providing coverage for the Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children and four Children's Aid Societies after insurers cancelled or refused to renew their policies. Other agencies in the province face similar rejections as their current policies end.

The government became the insurer because the directors and staff would have been open to lawsuits. It is prepared to indemnify the agencies while it searches to find a permanent solution to the problem.

The 20 lawsuits arose out of the Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children, a former orphanage that now provides services to at-risk teens. Former residents have alleged physical, mental and sexual abuse.

The Children's Aid Societies in Halifax, Colchester, Queens and Lunenburg are also experiencing difficulties in obtaining liability insurance.

Kimber: Justice Minister should know better ...

Justice Minister should know better when it comes to Children's Aid

By Stephen Kimber
The Daily News
Sunday, July 10, 2005

Justice Minister Michael Baker is no stranger to controversies over child protection in Nova Scotia.

Which may explain his reluctance to call a public inquiry into last year's Family Court decision to order the Halifax Children's Aid Society to seize the daughter of Larry Finck and Carline VandenElsen, despite a lack of evidence the infant was at risk.

Baker, a South Shore lawyer before becoming an MLA, served a good-works apprenticeship in the decade or so before he was first elected to the legislature in 1998.

He was vice-chairman of the Lunenburg County Regional Housing Authority, president of the Lunenburg Academy Foundation and - from 1992 to 1995 - a member of the board of Family and Children's Services of Lunenburg County (FCS), "a non-profit child-welfare agency dedicated to the protection of children from abuse and neglect."

In 1994, the Liberal government of the day appointed two Ontario social workers to conduct an independent review of the operations of that same Lunenburg FCS - the equivalent of Halifax's Children's Aid Society - following two shocking incidents in which FCS officials appeared to be the ones perpetrating the abuse and neglect.

In the first case, a five-week-old baby was shaken to death in 1993, three weeks after child-protection workers had received warnings the baby was being abused.

In the second, workers at the agency had ignored complaints that children, in what the agency proudly described as a "very good" foster home, were being sexually abused. FCS actually continued to place children - 20 in all - with the family, even after learning of the allegations. It wasn't until five years after the first complaints that the foster father was finally found guilty - no thanks to FCS - of sexually abusing four youngsters in his care.

In truth, the review of the Lunenburg FCS only happened - three years after the guilty verdict - because Debra Stevens refused to go away.

A single mother who'd been talked into turning her two sons over to children's services in 1985, Stevens became suspicious about the foster home into which her two sons had been adopted, and refused to stop asking questions.

The Family and Children's Services Agency initially ignored her complaints, or dismissed her as a "nuisance" - remind you of anyone, Mr. Minister? - and described her as a "social climber (who) went into a song and dance about being a single parent." The first social worker she dealt with reported that "Hopefully, (Stevens) got the message, as it was obvious that she appeared guilty."

Guilty of what? Caring about her children?

The outside reviewers the province finally appointed to look into what had gone wrong in that and the shaken-baby case concluded - in the words of a simple but telling precis offered by then-community services minister Jim Smith - "the system failed Debra and her family."

Incredibly, when Stevens tried to regain custody of her youngest son after the sexual-abuse charges were laid, FCS opposed the move, dispatching its own lawyers and four witnesses to the hearing to fight to keep the child with the wife of the man who'd abused her children (who was then out on bail).

Supreme Court Justice Walter Goodfellow not only awarded custody back to Stevens, but he also demolished the FCS's claim the woman hadn't known the children were being abused by her husband: "If in fact she did not know, ignorance of such conduct could only be by willful blindness or negligence."

What does all of this have to do with Michael Baker now?

To be fair to Baker, he only joined the board after the courts had convicted the foster father, but that was still a full three years before the province - not the FCS - launched its review.

Knowing what he knows about what went on in Lunenburg, Baker should realize just how fallible children's services can be.

The Finck-VandenElsen case, of course, represents the flip side of what happened in Lunenburg. Instead of under-reacting to allegations of real abuse, the Halifax Children's Aid Society stands accused of over-reacting to vague concerns from Ontario Children's Aid and erroneous information from a not-disinterested ex-husband.

While that may put into clearer perspective the real-life dilemma child-protection workers face every day in trying to determine when a child is at real risk - something even those of us criticizing Children's Aid need to acknowledge - it also strengthens the argument that we need a public inquiry to find out what went wrong in the Finck-VandenElsen case, and make sure it doesn't happen again.

Let's hope it doesn't take another three years this time.

Stephen.Kimber@ukings.ns.ca