Comment
See no evil
The facts, at least those that have surfaced, are deeply unsettling. Last fall, foster parents Joe and Janet Holm were convicted of sex crimes related to children in their care. Last week, an unnamed 71-year-old man was convicted of sexually assaulting children entrusted to his care. Later this month another man will stand before a judge to answer to charges of sexual assault upon children in his care. Children abused in homes provided by the Children’s Aid Society of Prince Edward County.
Children’s Aid Society. Just saying those words out loud sounds wrong, knowing what has happened to children in this agency’s care in this community.
When he was sentencing Mr. and Mrs. Holm to jail time, Justice Geoff Griffin strongly urged this community to push for an inquiry—to find out what had gone so horribly wrong with the Children’s Aid Society that it had put already victimized children in harm’s way. How an organization tasked with the solemn responsibility to protect vulnerable children, could have failed so badly. Not just once—but repeatedly. How many more stories of sexual abuse of children in foster care are out there?
It is well past time we found out.
Removing a child from his or her family is a grave duty—an act that must surely only be taken when all other remedies and actions have been exhausted. The stress and trauma of the destruction of this fundamental social structure must be balanced against the harm that the child may be subjected to by staying at home.
Even in the clearest of situations, this is a judgment call. A decision made by humans based on wobbly and moving variables—but one that we certainly must make as a community from time to time.
Surely when we do this, it is our non-negotiable, non-debatable obligation to ensure that the home, in which we place these damaged children is safe. Free from harm. Free from abuse. It is our duty to shield them from further evil.
But we know now that in at least two homes—perhaps more—we failed these children in this most basic of responsibilities.
The response from the Children’s Aid Society has been pathetic.
First, it did what most corporate perpetrators do when they get caught—hire a public relations firm.
Then the agency’s CEO Bill Sweet penned a press release last week claiming he shared the community’s outrage and among other things vowed to communicate better with foster parents, stating that the CAS would institute “regular compliance checks, reviews and enhanced supervision of foster homes and better training and support of foster homes.”
Really? It took a series of crimes against children in its care for this agency to figure out it should monitor and screen foster homes more closely?
Sweet writes that the Children’s Aid Society will not tolerate the abuse of children’s right to be safe, respected and well treated. These words must come as hollow comfort to the growing number of children who have been abused in foster care in this community under this agency’s watch.
This isn’t a public relations problem. This is a fundamental breakdown in the purpose and management of this community agency. And the victims are children.
We need a thorough inquiry into this agency. First we need to ensure foster kids in this community are safe. Then we need to understand what went wrong and begin making the necessary changes to make sure this never happens again.
We can have no confidence the Children’s Aid Society can do this on their own. At the end of the day it is the community’s job to keep our children safe— we’ve trusted this organization for too long.
It is clear we made a mistake. It is now our job to fix it.
rick@wellingtontimes.ca
also would like to thank the Times for running with this story. I hope the paper continues to shed light on a severe problem that affects every member of society.
I am a former foster child and having lived through 14 foster homes and 3 group homes I can say without a doubt that the system is corrupt, damaging and horrid.
Our taxpaying dollars would be much better spent within the natural home, it would take a 1/4 of the amount to support families at home. Instead we pay strangers to further damage our children.
We have 22 year old workers removing children from homes; we have in take workers with no more than 2 years of schooling making adoption decisions. We have courts relying solely on the judgment of one worker when making court decisions. Social workers do not visit homes, in take workers do. Poorly trained and often over worked in take workers.
These agencies need to be abolished and the provinces need to take over the care of our children.
These agencies use police force to remove children, I cannot tell you how damaging this is. There are no words.
But then again, to just not have your children come home from school one day without a word….I’m not sure which is worse.
My mother was sexually abused in Foster Care, I was sexually abused, my 5 year old neice was sexually abused….My son had his arm badly broken through neglect in one of their group homes. That doesn’t even begin to touch the personal experiences I have had with CAS.
My logic on this is, if all of this abuse is happening to just one family, how much more is going on? No, these are not exceptional cases. These are the norm for children in CAS care. Sure, there may be the occasional Foster Home out there that actually cares about the kids, but for the most part, it’s more about having a big house and financing it on the backs of these children.
The system is very flawed. It needs to be torn apart and rebuilt from the ground up. Safe guards, accountability, and responsibility needs to be built in from step one.
A lot of CAS workers, who are not social workers BTW, are on power trips and see themselves as above the law in every way. I can prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt in one case.
I would like to thank and applaud the Wellington Times for actually not being afraid to point out the truth about these Private Corporations.
Thank you for not being like certain other media organizations such as the Intelligencer that purposely attempt to cover up and suppress the truth about the CAS and even go as far as to skew the truth to make the CAS look good.
I also encourage everyone to read a letter that I helped one of the victims in the recent court case in Picton write to the Intelligencer during the trial because of the harm that the Intelligencer was doing to the victims by skewing the truth about what was going on. Here is the link to that letter: http://fixcas.com/cgi-bin/go.py?2012c.teen
The Children’s Aid Societies in Ontario are full of problems and there needs to be a complete restructuring of the entire system. Right now the Children’s Aid Societies in Ontario as private corporations currently receive their funding based on the number of children in their care and the number of files that they have open at one time.
Because of this flawed funding structure, these corporations regularly engage in practices that are unlawful and downright immoral just to be able to take children from loving homes where there is no need of protection and then place these children into homes were they get abused and worse.
We need child protection in Ontario but it needs to be run by the government and it needs oversight and accountability so that these sort of things never happen and so that these organizations actually operate in the best interest of the children and not as it is now where their main priority is to look out for the best interest of themselves and their paychecks.
There is a major problem with sex abuse in foster care and it has been a problem since these agencies were started. They are archaic and operate their funding based on how many children they can capture, the whole system is flawed. There have been numerous problems with them; pedophiles, kids being overmedicated, CAS employees adopting which is a conflict, stealing kids for adoption, leaving kids in real cases of abuse, false information about children, criminal activity, fraud, missspending, not doing police checks and keeping dangerous employees. It is a cesspool. These are just a few of the problems in the various agencies, not just this one, and they answer to no one. They a mafia the way they operate.
This editorial says it so well, it is pitiful that this is being left. It is the Liberals that refuse to have the Ombudsman to have oversight of the CAS, imagine what else we don’t know about that is going on?
Bill 110 was made just recently, an NDP private members bill for Ombudsman oversight of them, these agencies are fighting this along with the Liberals which should be alarming to the public and a big red flag that something even more evil exists beyond even this, what is it? Time to find out with Ombudsman review and the PCs need to take this on as well, they should know that Dalton and his Liberal government is corrupt, it is obvious – they need to bring Marin on NOW!