Friday, July 17, 2015

Why An 'Internal' Review Of The Tragic Child Custody Case Will Not Do.

ThisIsNotMy
BritishColumbiaVille


Why not?

Because the 'internalists', including the minister responsible, have known about this since 2012.

Ian Mulgrew, doing what a professional journalist should do in the VSun, gets to the bottom of the story. The following is a chunk of his latest piece but I strongly suggest that you head on over and read the entire thing:

...The couple — identified in legal documents only by their initials: J.P., the mother, and B.G., the father — separated Oct. 5, 2009 after a decade-long relationship when J.P. accused B.G. of assaulting her and one of their four children, comprising two boys and two girls, then 7, 5, 3 and 1.

A few months later, in December, acting on an anonymous tip that later proved false, the ministry seized the children from the mother and allowed the father unsupervised access that allowed him to sexually abuse the youngest.

The child welfare authorities later portrayed the mom as mentally unbalanced and backed the dad’s bid for sole custody.

In March 2012, Victoria realized its horrific mistake and withdrew support from the demonic dad.

Two months later, on June 25, 2012, at the end of the outrageously long 92-day trial, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Paul Walker concluded that the mother suffered “from extreme distress caused by the sexual abuse disclosures and the apprehension of and subsequent separation from her children, and from finding herself in an ongoing situation where no one in a position of authority was prepared to believe her.”

He found the mental health concerns groundless and that the dad physically and sexually abused the children, and was scaldingly critical of the ministry.

Sound familiar?

Justice Walker repeated those scathing findings two days ago at the end of the lengthy liability phase of the trial, at which he again savaged the ministry.

Cadieux has known about this case for years — since she took office in Sept. 2012, because it was already an embarrassment and had cost the government a small fortune, or at the latest two years ago when I wrote about it in The Sun.

To listen to her, you would have thought Tuesday’s excoriating ruling was a surprise rather than a damning regurgitation of what the judge said in 2012...



Meanwhile...

As happened when her government was found to be throwing the adult disabled out into the street for budgetary reasons (scroll down), we wait for the premier to start accusing members of the Opposition of playing 'games' for bringing this matter up in the legislature.




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1 comment:

Lew said...

Mr. Mulgrew writes, “Instead of doing a review and settling out of court, the ministry continued to wage a war against the mother with a passel of lawyers.”

Consider these statements:
“I did not have any confidence I would receive factual information from the Attorney General.” “Based on my pre-existing perception that the Ministry of the Attorney General tends to resist public transparency and accountability, I consider the conduct described in the affidavits which motivated the Auditor General to undertake these legal proceedings is symptomatic of a systemic problem in that Ministry.” “Over time, I formed the view that the Ministry of the Attorney General has tended to foster a closed culture which has resulted in diminished public accountability and transparency as compared to many other ministries. …I do not consider its current level of accountability and transparency to be healthy or acceptable in a mature democracy.” “Although as Solicitor General my responsibilities focused primarily on the policing component of the justice system, I must admit that my bigger interest was with the work of the Ministry of the Attorney General. I came to realize that the real power resided in that Ministry, in part because of its key involvement in drafting legislation, in part because of its role in charge approval and prosecution, but also in large measure because of the influence it generally enjoyed with other ministries which necessarily looked to it for legal advice.”

Those are statements made by former Solicitor General John van Dongen in a sworn affidavit before the Supreme Court of British Columbia on April 22, 2012. He was there, and he’s seen the inner workings first hand.

It seems to me that the Justice Ministry is first on the list of all the government ministries that need a damn good house cleaning. There are people in that ministry whose names keep appearing in government scandals past and present. Too often it’s because they gave the advice that created the scandal. It’s time to pull their retainers.