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www.pgfreepress.com ■ CHILDREN
Ministry blasted by Turpel-Lafond
THE OLD HEAVE-HO
11-year-old subdued by police with Taser DELYNDA PILON newsroom@pgfreeepress.com
Teresa MA LLA M/Free Press
Gerry Bergeron demonstrates his cross-sawing technique at the 28th annual Francofun Winter Festival fun day Saturday. Outdoor activities organized by Le Cercle des Canadiens Francais included a shoot to score challenge, hammering contest, snowshoe races, snow sculpturing, and toffee on snow event along with indoor live entertainment and a Sugar Shack Brunch.
By the time he was 11 years old and subdued by police with a Taser, a local boy had already undergone isolation from human contact, cold showers for bed-wetting, and was made to eat hot sauce as a punishment. Children and Youth Representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond yesterday issued the results of an investigation she conducted into the life of the boy leading up to the April 2011 Taser incident near Prince George, concluding the system failed him, and providing recommendations to stop a reoccurrence with another child. “This is not the only child who has profound needs in B.C.,” she said, making several recommendations. Minister of Children and Family Development Stephanie Cadieux thanked the representative for her report and has committed to accept all the recommendations within the report. The boy’s problems basically began the day he was born. Turpel-Lafond said the boy was left in his home until he was two years old, even though there was evidence of neglect and abuse by his birth parents. The ministry placed the boy in a home where he lived for three years, where there was more physical and emotional abuse and neglect, said Turpel-Lafond. A good placement followed, but the foster parents needed supports which weren’t given and the boy had to move again. He was returned to his birth mother, but little had changed regarding her parenting skills, and less than a year later he was moved again. After that the boy was placed nine
more times and lived in 15 different foster or residential homes. “This case is tragic and you can’t read the report without feeling heartbroken and, in fact, angry,” Cadieux said in a statement issued shortly after the TurpelLafond press conference. “It is clear from this report that decisions were made throughout this child’s life that were wrong. This report points to very serious gaps in the system and it is my responsibility as minister to ensure those gaps are closed. We are accepting all of the recommendations in the report.” Turpel-Lafond reported the child had challenging behavioural issues but the ministry still had a duty to care for the child. Yet all the residential placements the boy lived in since he was eight years old featured a safe room, a room locked from the outside where the boy could be isolated when he became, or was deemed to have become, aggressive. Turpel-Lafond said the ministry had no legislative authority to permit the use of isolation, confinement or physical punishment. Yet, she says the boy was locked in the safe room several times. “I firmly believe this locked room was misused,” she said, adding it isn’t supposed to be used punitively. One of the major problems all through the life of this boy is he was never placed in care in a suitable home, properly staffed and equipped to help, said Turpel-Lafond. She made four recommendations she wants adopted so the same or worse doesn’t happen elsewhere. 1. The first is to create a comprehensive turn to PAGE A4