Time for a public inquiry into the Fenwick MacIntosh case
One hopes Nova Scotia’s prosecution service will find compelling legal grounds to appeal last week’s Nova Scotia Court of Appeal decision overturning Fenwick MacIntosh’s conviction for sexually abusing children.
The accusations are too serious and the legal issues too important not to appeal.
But whatever the outcome of the legal process—and, indeed, without waiting for its results—Ottawa needs to launch a public inquiry into what went so horribly wrong in this case. To make sure it doesn’t happen again.
The allegations against MacIntosh date back to Port Hawkesbury in the 1970s but the complainants—some as young as 10 at the time of the incidents—understandably didn’t come forward until the mid-1990s.
The RCMP formally began investigating in January 1995, five months after MacIntosh left Nova Scotia for a job in India. It’s not clear whether his departure was related to those accusations then-bubbling in the community.
In December 1995, the RCMP filed the first charges against MacIntosh.
Even though they knew he was in India, it took the Mounties a year and a half to alert Canada Customs to watch for him, and Passport Canada another year to notify MacIntosh it intended to revoke his passport, which would have made it difficult for him to work and live in India.
But a federal court judge then “temporarily” overturned Passport Canada’s decision, in part because no one but MacIntosh presented evidence at his hearing. Where was the RCMP? And why didn’t Ottawa follow up on what was supposed to be just a temporary court order?
In April 1998, Nova Scotia’s Director of Public Prosecutions asked Ottawa to ask India to send MacIntosh back to Canada for trial.
At that point, the case disappeared into yet another diplomatic and bureaucratic black hole. It took Ottawa more than five years to prepare its extradition request and another three to deliver the request the 11,000 km from Ottawa to New Delhi. Why?
While all of this was not going on, there are reports MacIntosh got his passport renewed three times and traveled on at least two occasions between India and Montreal.
An inquiry? Absolutely. Regardless of what happens with the court case, there are larger questions we need answers to. Before something similar happens again.
Copyright 2011 Stephen Kimber
Best interests of the child (care system)
Remember that Cole Harbour kid who had so many complex emotional issues and acronym-saturated syndromes the province’s community services department decided the only possible solution was to put him in a residential care facility where he could be helped 24 hours a day on a long-term, continuing basis?
And remember there wasn’t such an institution in Nova Scotia. So two years ago community services shipped him off to Bayfield in Ontario.
Recall that his grandparents—who’d raised him since he was a toddler and initially asked community services for help—objected to sending him so far from home. They—horrors—complained to the press and even went to court to force the government to bring him back.
They lost that battle but… well, one bit of sour publicity led to another. There were questions about the efficacy of Bayfield’s treatment approach, and allegations the boy may have been abused. This summer Bayfield washed its hands of the boy and shipped him back to Nova Scotia.
In late September, community services dumped him back on his grandparents with nothing more than a skimpy, page-and-a-half “Service Plan”— part-time/sometime help from a school liaison/tutor, family therapist and alternative youth worker—and good riddance.
But remember. It was community services that initially claimed he had so many issues and syndromes he needed 24 hour continuing care and supervision.
Remember, too, that this boy is still only 15!
It’s difficult not to see his treatment as vindictive payback by miffed community services officials who don’t like having their authority questioned.
Today, the grandparents report the boy’s behaviour is no better and, arguably, worse now than when community services took him two years ago. They’re going back to court to force the department to implement an alternative, community-based, intensive care program developed by Moncton psychologist Dr. Charles Emmyrs and other professionals. But the earliest family court date they can get is December 22nd.
Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse should be embarrassed. And the opposition should be demanding answers—not to mention a public inquiry into whatever happened to what is supposed to be the bedrock of our child welfare legislation: “the best interests of the child.”
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
The troubled child and the vindictive state
Is it possible nanny-state community services officials have decided to punish the grandparents of a boy who dared question their decision to send him out of province for treatment by dumping him back in their laps with minimal supports, setting them—and him—up for I-told-you-so failure?
That seems the most rational conclusion after reading the vague page-and-a-half “Service Plan” officials handed the boy’s family earlier this month.
Quick rewind. Two years ago, the grandparents—frustrated by their inability to cope with the then-13-year-old’s running and self-destructive behaviours—asked community services for help. Officials grabbed guardianship of the boy and shipped him to Bayfield, a residential treatment centre in Ontario.
The working-class family went to court—spending more than $20,000 on legal fees and developing an alternative, community-based care plan—to convince the province to treat him in Nova Scotia instead. They failed.
But the ongoing publicity eventually convinced Bayfield it wanted nothing more to do with the boy. In August, it shipped him back to community services, which will be in court today to officially present its new plan of care—and unofficially wash its hands of him.
Before we examine the skimpiness of the department’s proposed “plan,” consider what the province itself previously claimed. The boy has been diagnosed with such a witches’ brew of syndromes and disorders—attention deficit hyperactivity, alcohol-related neural development, impulse control, learning disabilities—they said he needed long-term care in a structured, restricted facility.
During his 14 months at Bayfield, his grandparents claim the boy was treated with powerful drugs—whopping doses of Seroquel XR, an antipsychotic medication, among others—rarely attended school classes and was physically “restrained” on at least 10 occasions. Bayfield officials controlled—occasionally—cut off—contact with the grandparents community services wants to send him back to.
They now want to hand him back to his family, enroll him in a public high school for which he is unprepared and ill-equipped and, well… let’s see what happens. They’re “offering” the ill-defined assistance of a school liaison/tutor, a family therapist and an alternative youth worker, but the “performance indicators” for their efforts are so vague as to be meaningless.
Can you say vindictive?
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
Inquiry needed into children’s stories that don’t end well
I’ve been writing about child protection issues since 2004 when I got interested in the story of a Halifax couple embroiled in a highly publicized, 67-hour, shots-fired standoff with police. The issue: Children’s Aid had seized their five-month old daughter, not because of anything the couple had done to the child—in fact, evidence indicated they were loving, capable parents—but because they’d each been accused of abducting children during acrimonious custody battles in previous relationships.
Their story didn’t end well. The parents ended up in jail. Their daughter disappeared into the often self-serving anonymity of the province’s foster care system.
Then there was the story of the 16-year-old girl whose mental health issues were never addressed in foster or group homes. She ended up in court. The frustrated judge ordered the then-minister of community services—the girl’s legal guardian—to explain the mess. The minister never testified. Instead, the case was shuffled to the sidelines.
I caught up with the girl—now 18—last year. She told me she didn’t get any more help after her court case; instead, as soon as she turned 18, she was spit out into the adult welfare system. Good riddens.
Through her, I met a young man who’d been shipped off at the age of 12—against his parents’ wishes—to an Ontario residential treatment centre called Bayfield where he spent five years. Bayfield, he says, didn’t help. Instead, they prescribed drugs: he was on 13 medications at one point. Like the girl, Bayfield and child welfare washed its hands of him as soon as it could. The last I heard, he was living on the streets.
Which brings us to the current case: the 15-year-old Cole Harbour boy who was also sent to Bayfield. He didn’t do well either. Bayfield has now dumped him, but not before squeezing his grandparents/guardians out of his life—leaving the province, which claims it doesn’t have the facilities to treat him, to decide what to do next with him.
Whatever it does with the boy, the province should do something else; call a public inquiry into how we deal with troubled children and families. Something is clearly wrong.
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
Family an obstacle—but for whom?
Nova Scotia’s Community Services Department has upped the ante: last week it severed family access to a troubled Cole Harbour teenager it had shipped off to an Ontario residential care facility last year. It will now apply to family court “to vary the current order with respect to access,” thus legalizing the elimination of the boys’ grandparents from any future role in his care.
Why?
According to an Aug. 19 letter to the grandparents from the department, the Ontario facility—Bayfield Homes—believes “family contact has become an obstacle to providing [the boy] with the treatment he requires in a highly structured residential facility.”
Really?
Could it be that family contact is an obstacle to the people who run that institution, and who profess to know best what is in the child’s now-and-future best interests?
Let’s recap.
The grandparents, who’d raised the boy since he was a toddler and acknowledged he needed help they couldn’t provide, objected—in public—to the province’s plan to send him out of province for treatment.
They went to court in a lengthy but ultimately unsuccessful bid to bring him home.
They enlisted the aid of a New Brunswick child psychologist and other experts who came up with an alternative plan of care that would have seen the boy returned to Nova Scotia and cared for in a community setting.
Two weeks ago, the government turned down their plan.
Last spring, Restoring Dignity, a group advocating for victims of institutional abuse, took up the family’s cause, bringing allegations of mistreatment at Bayfield to the attention of various authorities in Ontario, including the province’s child advocate.
On July 19, the group organized a press conference to outline allegations the boy had been beaten for asking to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Ontario Provincial Police are investigating.
No wonder Bayfield isn’t happy.
The boy’s grandmother, admittedly, can be difficult. She’s relentless, even obsessive about what she considers the best interests of her grandson.
Is that so bad? In three years, when the boys turns 18 and Bayfield washes its hands of him, who will be left to look out for his best interests?
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
Is the boy better off?
Forget dueling interviews, competing psychologists, contradictory studies, even the difference between physically assaulted and “placed in a position of control.”
Ask yourself one question: is the 15-year-old Cole Harbour boy at the centre of the controversy over his care better off now than when community services shipped him off to Ontario 13 months ago?
A quick recap: the boy, who suffers from an psychiatrist’s brew of disorders, had been raised by his grandparents since he was a toddler. By November 2008, his acting out—running away, stealing cars, doing drugs, selling his body—was so out of control his grandparents agreed to put him in the care of community services.
Instead of treating him here, the province decided he needed secure, long-term facilities it couldn’t provide. Last June, it shipped him off to Ontario’s Bayfield centre.
Is he better off?
According to his grandmother, he’s on heavy doses of drugs, some self-administered (she says Bayfield wants to add lithium to his medical cocktail); he rarely attends classes; and he has been what the reports call “restrained” on at least 10 occasions. Once, he ended up at the hospital; more recently, he claims he was beaten for asking to go to the washroom.
To complicate matters, Bayfield has done its best to cut the boy off from his grandparents, refusing some face-to-face visits, limiting phone calls to two, monitored 15-minute conversations a week and even, at one point, imposing a total contact blackout because the grandmother was “negative” on the phone. How? In one report I saw, the monitor complained she “asked about his medication again, and was more assertive that he she did not believe he should just be taking medication whenever he wanted.”
Last week, Vicki Wood, Nova Scotia’s director of child welfare, claimed “we make every effort to maintain the ties” between child and family. Really?
Wood also said: “There’s a forum for the family to bring forward their concerns. That would be the court, not a press conference.”
The problem is Nova Scotia’s family court seems like an extension of community services. And father-knows-better community services isn't willing to consider alternatives to out-of-province institutional treatment.
The boy is not better off.
***
Previous stories
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kimber
Subscribe
About
STEPHEN KIMBER, the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax, is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of one novel -- Reparations -- and eight non-fiction books.