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April 8, 2012 permalink

The Ottawa Citizen prints an article that sounds like one of those distorted affidavits filed in court by children's aid. The reporter includes no comments from the family itself, only those from children's aid and a court ruling. And since the family is not named, it is impossible for anyone to check.

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Children’s Aid seizes “wild, destructive and uncontrollable” Ottawa children

OTTAWA — They ate pizza off the floor, had dried mucous on their faces, smelled, had lice for six months and they lived in a home that had garbage and broken belongings hoarded in piles, holes in every wall and feces smeared in a child’s bedroom.

One four-year-old boy didn’t know how to speak and only grunted. The children tortured another family’s dog. They bit and spat at people. One boy, only 5, had already been suspended from school twice. His temper was short and he didn’t know how to play with other children.

One child’s socks had been on so long they had to be peeled off the soles of his feet.

It was this home life of “chronic anxiety created by woefully unprepared parents” that contributed to their special needs, a child-protection worker said.

The children, who ate every meal as if it were their last, were described as “wild, destructive and uncontrollable.” These three Ottawa children, aged 4 to 7, have now been seized from their biological parents and put up for adoption by the state.

The Children’s Aid Society took the parents to court and won state wardship of all three children earlier this year. A fourth child — a three-year-old girl — was made a permanent ward of the state last year after state supervision since birth.

In 2009, child-protection workers sent an alert about her birth to all Ottawa hospitals after a report that her mother had punched herself in the belly while ranting about being pregnant a fourth time. The girl was put up for adoption.

In a poignant ruling by Superior Court Justice Catherine Aitken, the remaining three children, two boys and a girl, were also made state wards and put up for adoption.

“Having considered all the evidence, I conclude that the best interests of the children can only be served by an order of wardship. The [Children’s Aid] Society and numerous community services have done everything in their power to assist first [the mother] and [the father], and more recently [the father] on his own, to maintain the family unit.

“Those services have failed to bring [the father’s] parenting and household management capabilities to the point where he can adequately meet the children’s needs. One cannot help but feel very badly for both [the mother and father] for having tried as hard as they have. Society let them down when they were children. Now the court is permanently removing the children from their care. I hope that both [mother and father] will come to understand that this step is necessary to ensure that we do not let their children down the way they were let down as children.”

The Children’s Aid Society seized the children shortly after a late January court ruling.

The first thing they did was take them to McDonald’s. After the fast-food meal, the children were taken to a foster home in Ottawa.

When the two boys and their sister took off their shoes, the smell was ‘overpowering’, according to court records.

Then they ran wild, tearing all the curtains and ripping blinds off the walls. They smashed all in their path and tortured the foster family’s dog.

The children have since shown signs of improvement socially after being exposed to good foster parents.

The Children’s Aid Society has identified three Ottawa families approved and willing to adopt the three children together.

Because the child-welfare agency does not publicly comment on its cases, it is not known if the children have been adopted, let alone together.

Judge Aitken noted in her ruling that if the children are adopted by different parents and separated, they have legal access to one another.

The court records also show that the parents were also neglected as children. Their father suffered horrific abuse at the hands of foster parents from an infant until he was 10 years old. When he met his wife, then 19 and living on the streets of Ottawa, he was a petty criminal and drug addict.

She got pregnant with the first of what would be four children while homeless.

The family of six went on to living in a public-housing project only to get evicted.

They were put into emergency shelter at a Rideau Street motel room, then into a family shelter and finally to that dirty apartment from which the children were seized.

Their parents, especially the father, tried and tried to present a good, clean home to child-protection workers but always came up short. The place was still a mess, he still had anger problems that had him punching holes in the walls, and when he once couldn’t find his kids he never bothered to notify authorities.

In one inspection of their intended family apartment, child-protection workers noted another couple present, two guard dogs, and a crack addict living in the basement who had frequent male visitors.

The father then left his wife and was granted supervised visits, then ultimately overnights at his new apartment. But in time, he again failed his children with his anger, lack of attention and inability to keep a clean home.

According to a standard publication ban, it is against the law to identify the children or their parents.

Source: Ottawa Citizen

Oscar the grouch

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