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Monster of the Month
March 21, 2007 permalink
In the case below, Marie-Emilie Chartier was convicted of kidnapping for taking her children to Sweden in defiance of a family court order. This makes sense to anyone who believes the legal system is a better guardian of children than mom and dad.
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Mother found guilty of abducting own children
Paula McCooey, The Ottawa Citizen, Tuesday, March 20, 2007
A jury has found a 36-year-old woman guilty of child abduction related to an incident when the mother took her four children on a trip to Sweden in March 2005, contrary to a custody order.
Marie-Emilie Chartier was wanted on a Canada-wide warrant and she sparked international police alerts after boarding an international flight from Montreal to Sweden on March 15, while the children were legally in the care of their grandmother, who lives in Ottawa.
A date for her sentencing hearing was to be set Tuesday afternoon.
Marie-Emilie Chartier was found guilty of child abduction.CREDIT: Nicki Corrigall, The Ottawa Citizen
Last October, another jury found the woman guilty of four counts of making false statements on a passport application.
They found that on Jan. 28, 2005, Ms. Chartier applied for passports for herself and the children, disregarding the section of the passport application that requires applicants to say whether they are involved in any legal proceedings related to custody or access to children.
Ms. Chartier will be sentenced on April 25 for those offences.
Source: Ottawa Citizen
Addendum: Here is the news of the sentencing:
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Child-abduction mom given conditional sentence
By SEAN MCKIBBON, COURT BUREAU
A mother convicted of child abduction and making false statements on a passport application will spend the next 15 months on a conditional sentence.
"Merci," said Marie Chartier, 36, meekly after receiving her sentence from Justice Robert Maranger.
Chartier was convicted last month of child abduction in her third trial relating to an March 2005 incident in which she took her kids to Sweden to seek political asylum in contravention of a custody arrangement.
Maranger ordered Chartier to seek employment, not be in possession of passports or passport applications and to perform 100 hours of community service if she can't hold down work.
Maranger also imposed two years of probation following the conditional sentence.
The sentence doesn't quite put a final chapter on Chartier's odyssey through the courts. She's back in court on April 25 to be sentenced on the passport offences.
Chartier's first trial in April 2006 ended in a mistrial when she fired her lawyer and complained that the jury was not representative of the Canadian population.
A second trial in October 2006 ended with a conviction on all four counts of making a false statement on a passport application.
Source: Ottawa Sun
Addendum: That wasn't enough for caring for your own kids. Here is more sentencing.
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Mother in abduction case sentenced to 6 more months for false passport statements
A mother who was handed a 15-month conditional sentence earlier this month on child abduction charges, was given a consecutive six-month sentence Wednesday for making false statements on a passport when she took her four children overseas in contravention of a court order.
Marie-Emilie Chartier, convicted of child abduction in March, was wanted on a Canadawide warrant after boarding a flight from Montreal to Sweden on March 15, 2005.
At the time, her children were legally in their grandmother’s care.
She surrendered to Swedish authorities in early May 2005 and returned with her children to Canada a week later.
Last October, another jury found her guilty on four counts of making false statements on a passport application.
When she applied for passports for herself and her children on Jan. 28, 2005, she disregarded a section in the forms requiring applicants to say whether they are involved in legal proceedings related to custody or access to children.
The Crown suggested four to six months in jail, while the defence asked for a suspended sentence with probation or a conditional sentence.
While Justice Albert Roy did not impose a curfew for Ms. Chartier’s first conditional sentence, he did so Wednesday.
She will be required to stay inside her home from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. for the first three months of her second sentence, which will be followed by one year’s probation. She is also ordered to follow whatever counselling her probation officer suggests to help her understand how to make better choices with regard to her children.
Source: Ottawa Citizen
Addendum: October 2007. The courts finally seem to be through with punishing this mother.
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No change in mom's sentence
October 19, 2007, By MEGAN GILLIS, SUN MEDIA
The province's appeal court has agreed that a judge didn't punish an Ottawa woman who abducted her four kids enough when he gave her a conditional sentence without even a curfew.
But the judges still dismissed an appeal of Marie Emilie Chartier's sentence by the Attorney General of Ontario, arguing justice wouldn't be served by changing the sentence because she's already served much of it.
"There is no doubt that Parliament intended the imposition of a conditional sentence to be more punitive than probation, and to be more restrictive of the offender's liberty," the judges wrote.
"Thus, except in rare cases, a conditional sentence must carry with it some form of punitive terms, such as house arrest and/or a curfew."
The appeal court judges agreed that the judge erred but noted that Chartier had served six weeks in jail before her trial and was sentenced to more punitive terms for lying on an application for her children's passports.
FLED IN 2005
"We are not persuaded that justice would not be served by interfering with the sentence imposed," the justices concluded.
A Canada-wide arrest warrant was issued for Chartier in March of 2005 when she fled with her children, aged 5, 6, 8 and 12, of whom she'd lost custody in November 2004. Her mother was their guardian.
Chartier surrendered after surfacing in Sweden in May of that year and returned to Canada.
A jury convicted Chartier, 36, of four counts of child abduction in March. She was given a 15-month conditional sentence and two years of probation.
She was also later given a six-month sentence and a year of probation for the passport offences, which included a curfew between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. for the first three months.
Source: Ottawa Sun
