Stephen Kimber is a professor of journalism at the University of Kings College in Halifax Nova Scotia. Here are several of his articles on the subject of Carline VandenElsen and Larry Finck.

May 30, 2004

The recent 67-hour standoff between Halifax Regional Police and a couple who refused to hand their infant daughter over to the custody of the Children's Aid Society showcased the former at its professional, level-headed best but has raised troubling questions about the role of the latter in controversial child protection cases.

Start with the police. The police had little choice but to enforce a Jan. 15 apprehension order for Mona Clare VandenElsen, the then three-week-old daughter of Lawrence Finck and Carline VandenElsen.

But when officers went to the family home in late January to get the child, VandenElsen had already disappeared with her daughter.

Police learned earlier this month that the mother and child had returned to Halifax, so officers were dispatched to the house again at midnight on Wed., May 19. Though one can certainly question the wisdom of trying to serve such an order in the middle of the night, the police were legitimately concerned -- based on their own experience in January as well as the couple's track record in violating custody orders in previous relationships -- that one of them might take off with the little girl again.

This time, however, the people inside the Shirley Street house refused the officers entry, barricaded the door and, at one point, when police tried to enter a second time, allegedly fired shots out the window.

That was the beginning of a tense two-and-a-half days of SWAT teams, neighbourhood evacuations and ongoing, seemingly never-ending negotiations. Punctuated at one point by a police robot improbably delivering diapers to the house and at another by the couple's impromptu appearance on the home's roof to denounce Children's Aid and breastfeed the baby.

But as Halifax Police Const. Kevin McLellan put it to reporters at one point during the siege: "As long as we're talking... we are moving forward."

The police were smart enough to recognize that this was not a situation that required the recklessness of Rambo so much as the patience of Job. On Friday night, their staying power was rewarded when the standoff ended two days and 15 hours after it began -- bizarrely but without additional violence. (While Finck's elderly mother, who was inside the home during the standoff, did die during the siege, officials say it was of natural causes.)

We owe the police a debt of gratitude for the way they handled what could easily have turned into a horrible tragedy.

But, that said, what are we to make of the Children's Aid Society's decision to seek custody of the child in the first place?

The Society isn't commenting on the specifics of the case so we're left with more questions than answers, the most important of which is this: was this apprehension order really necessary?

There's no question both Finck and VandenElsen have track records of violating court orders in child custody disputes.

In 2000, Finck was convicted of abducting his four-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, and spent time in jail.

That same year, VandenElsen fled to Mexico with the triplets from her first marriage because she was afraid she was about to lose all access to them. An Ontario court had already awarded custody of the children to her ex-husband and a decision on her own future access was pending.

A jury later acquitted her on the abduction charges, accepting the defence argument that VandenElsen feared the children would be irreparably harmed if they lost all contact with their mother. That decision has since been overturned and a new trial ordered.

Reading between the lines of the clippings concerning those cases, neither Finck nor VandenElsen seem easy to like. "Ms VandenElsen" wrote one judge, "has chosen to perpetuate her fixation with her own victimization." The judge in Finck's case said he was "volatile and unpredictable... [and] has taken on the mantle of the obsessed and seems to have forsaken reason."

The one thing I didn't find in any of those news stories, however, was any suggestion that either parent had deliberately harmed any of their children (except, of course, insofar as the custody battle itself represented a kind of harm to them.)

Parents involved in bitter child custody battles often feel like victims, often become obsessed and, occasionally, even do stupid things they believe to be in their children's best interests..

VandenElsen and Finck have certainly both done what appear to be irrational, perhaps even illegal things in what may have been misguided attempts to right what they see as wrongs being done to their children.

The courts have, or are, dealing with those cases.

But does that mean VandenElsen and Finck represented such an imminent danger to Mona Claire that Children's Aid had no choice but to swoop in and take their child from them?

"When any court formally terminates a parent-child relationship, that is an event that is inevitably sad," Mr. Justice Grant Campbell wrote last year in denying VandenElsen custody of her three older children. "A court must take such a drastic step in only the most extreme of cases."

Was this really one of those cases?

Or, in this case, is Finck and VandenElsen's "perceived victimization" more real than perceived?

Stephen.Kimber@ukings.ns.ca

Unanswered questions from the Shirley Street Standoff

Aug 15, 2004

What to make of the latest bizarre twists and turns in the tempestuous, tortured and terrible -- not to forget, in these news-less dogs days of summer, terribly titillating -- saga of Larry Finck and Carline VandenElsen?

Last Tuesday, the Halifax couple at the centre of May's infamous 67-hour Shirley Street Standoff were finally committed to stand trial in connection with the incident. They are each charged with breaching a court order for refusing to hand over their infant daughter to the Children's Aid Society, forcibly confining their baby to keep her out of the hands of CAS workers and, finally, obstructing well-weaponed police officers -- they showed up at Finck's family home in the middle of the night packing a machine gun and battering ram in their arsenal -- attempting to enforce that order.

Finck is also charged with six different weapons offences in connection with a gun shot allegedly fired from inside the house at the beginning of the standoff, even though -- as became clear during the preliminary hearing -- the Crown no longer believes he fired the gun.

And so it goes.

When they first appeared in court after their arrest, VandenElsen and Finck demanded an immediate preliminary hearing in order to get the facts of their case out quickly (not to mention asking for safe haven in Iraq).

But then last week, in the middle of that very hearing, they suddenly volunteered to waive their right to the preliminary and move directly to trial. Given that preliminary hearings are mainly intended to provide the defence with the outlines of the Crown's case so the defendants can prepare for the trial, giving up on the hearing before it had concluded seemed... well, unusual.

Even more unusual, however, the Crown opposed the request. In part, that's because Crown attorney Rick Woodburn wanted to present evidence to convince the judge there were grounds for charging VandenElsen instead of Finck as the trigger-person in the alleged shooting.

But Judge Castor Williams ruled there wasn't enough evidence to support those charges, meaning the Crown is still prosecuting Larry Finck for firing the shot they no longer believe he fired.

Uh, OK...

In the midst of all this, we learned from the papers that Finck's mother -- who died of natural causes inside the barricaded house during the incident and whose body was then carried out by the couple on a stretcher when they ended the siege -- had bequeathed Finck a grand total of just five dollars out of an estate worth three-quarters of a million dollars.

Tee-hee...

It is easy -- too easy -- to get caught up in the weirdness of all of this and lose sight of the important issues at the heart of this case.

Should Children's Aid have been given a court order to take custody of Finck and VandenElsen's infant daughter in the first place? Did Halifax Regional Police's handling of the initial stages of this incident help provoke the confrontation that led to the standoff.

Both VandenElsen and Finck have a "history;" each has faced charges of abducting their children from previous relationships during custody battles. But there has never been any indication in anything I've heard or seen to suggest either of them was ever an abusive, or negligent, or otherwise unfit parent.

So why would Children's Aid want to take their new baby away from them? Hiding behind its usual "protection of privacy" shield, the Society has had little to say about the circumstances that led them to seek the order but we have learned, as a result of the court proceedings, that it followed a call from VandenElsen's ex-spouse, the one with whom she had the custody battle. Hardly a disinterested party.

And the police? While the force deserves credit for its patience and restraint during the standoff, it has now become apparent that the initial police actions -- arriving in the middle of the night, heavily armed, and using a battering ram to try and gain entry to the house -- may have been at least as responsible as VandenElsen and Finck for the way events so quickly spiralled out of control.

Carline VandenElsen is absolutely right. We do need a public inquiry into the way Children's Aid and the Halifax police dealt with this case from the beginning. Because we won't find the answers to the most important questions from the court cases.

Stephen.Kimber@ukings.ns.ca

The crime of being a pain

By Stephen Kimber

Sept 19, 2004

So is Canada's judicial system now punishing Carline VandenElsen for the high crime of being a legal pain in the ass?

Last week, an Ontario judge turned down VandenElsen's request to delay until next March her upcoming retrial on charges that, during an ugly custody battle with her ex-husband in 2000, she grabbed her triplets and took off to Mexico.

On the face of it, her request hardly seems unreasonable, or unusual.

Anyone who has spent any time inside a Canadian courtroom will know just how much valuable court time is sucked up as lawyers and judges sweat over their Daytimers and Palm Pilots trying to find a date, any date, often months in the future, when they'll finally all be in the same place at the same time -- and there'll be an unoccupied court room available for them to use -- so they can attend to whatever are the pressing legal matters at hand.

One could argue that it takes way too long to get justice in Canada, but that is another issue and another column.

The simple fact is that delays are the way the system works.

And VandenElsen had good cause to ask for a delay.

Her case in Ontario is set of begin with a pre-trial hearing on Tuesday. But on Friday, VandenElsen was supposed to be here in Halifax in Family Court for the continuation of a hearing to review the status of a temporary custody order involving her baby daughter. That hearing was expected to last into this coming week (although the judge has since ruled, without VandenElsen present, that her baby will, in fact, remain in temporary foster care).

Even with custody off the table, VandenElsen still has plenty of other legal matters on her plate to keep her fully occupied in Halifax. For starters, of course, she and her husband must prepare their defence against a blizzard of criminal charges -- and legal counter-claims -- relating to a three-day standoff in late May when police arrived at their home in the middle of the night with a battering ram and machine guns to enforce a court order taking their baby away from them.

That case is supposed to go to trial in January.

The charges are serious, and VandenElsen doesn't have a lawyer. Rocky Jones, who represented her at her preliminary hearing this summer, withdrew from the case because he said provincial Legal Aid doesn't pay lawyers enough to handle complex criminal matters.

Before her life became an escalating series of legal battles with the established order, it's worth noting that VandenElsen was a middle-class mother of three, a teacher, a homeowner, someone "who could afford a glass of wine when I wanted one."

Today she is living rent-free in her late mother-in-law's home on Shirley Street, barely surviving on the $175 a month she gets from welfare and the supplementary support of friends. She can't afford a lawyer, can't even afford a phone, and she gets around -- mostly from court house to court house -- on a borrowed bicycle.

So how is she supposed to be able to afford to fly back and forth to Ontario for her upcoming retrial and legal hearings in Halifax? (She managed to make last week's court date in Ontario only because her sister bought the ticket.)

Judge Bonne Wein didn't answer that when she ordered VandenElsen to be back in court in Stratford this week.

Just as she didn't explain exactly what it was about this particular case that made it so pressing it had to go forward immediately.

VandenElsen has already been tried once. She was acquitted when a jury bought her argument she was not guilty by reason of necessity, forced to abduct her own children to prevent the courts from denying her permanent access to them. The Ontario Court of Appeal overturned the jury's verdict, ruling the judge had made a mistake in letting her make the necessity argument in the first place, and ordered a new trial.

So VandenElsen must faces those charges again, but there is no urgency about the matter. Since her original trial, another court awarded permanent custody of the children to her ex-husband. She hasn't seen them since Sept. 2003.

Even the Crown, in a June letter, said it believed the more serious "Nova Scotia matters should be concluded" before her retrial.

So why the urgency?

Could it be that VandenElsen ruffles too many legal feathers? Last week, she angrily called a Nova Scotia Children's Aid Society lawyer a bitch and loudly informed the judge in her Ontario hearing she wouldn't be back for the court-ordered jury selection.

Over the past decade, it's fair to say VandenElsen has become so embittered by her experiences with Canada's legal system she fails to show the due deference our courts believe they're entitled to.

But since when has it been a crime to be a pain in the ass.

Stephen.Kimber@ukings.ns.ca

The taking of Mona Clare... again

By Stephen Kimber

Sep 26, 2004

I know, I know. I should move on. There is, after all, plenty of other stuff I could be writing about: wars, hurricanes, civic elections, American elections, panhandlers, health care deals, health care crises, the new fall television season, the no-new hockey season, the sponsorship scandal hearings, how those fine editors at CanWest managed to make "terrorists" out of "militants" and even ordinary "people" and blah blah blah...

So why do I keep coming back to the strange and twisted tale of Carline VandenElsen, Larry Finck, their daughter Mona Clare, the Halifax Regional Police and the Children's Aid Society?

Because there is still much about this case that puzzles me, and because the more I learn the less convinced I am that Children's Aid is acting -- as it is supposed to do -- in the "best interests" of this child.

Let's review: At 1:30 a.m. on May 19, Halifax City Police stormed the Halifax house where the Fincks were living with their then five-month old daughter and Finck's mother. The police demanded they surrender the baby to Children's Aid, which had obtained a court order for her custody. That precipitated a 67-hour standoff that is now the focus of a dog's breakfast of charges -- and counter-charges -- involving VandenElsen and Finck.

But did the police really need to go in with a battering ram and machine guns in the middle of the night to rescue the child?

No. Although VandenElsen did take the baby to visit her sister in Alberta around the time the initial court order was issued in mid-January, they returned to Halifax a month later and had been hiding in plain sight in her mother-in-law's house for more than two months before police moved in.

In the weeks before the siege, in fact, VandenElsen went for walks in the neighbourhood without Larry. She carried Mona Clare in a Snugli. The police could easily have apprehended the baby in those circumstances without violence and certainly without the standoff that eventually transpired.

We know they could have done that because we now know police knew for some time VandenElsen and the baby were back in town, and were watching them.

In fact, earlier on the night the standoff began, police officers followed Finck and VandenElsen to the local Walmart where they did some shopping for the baby. Mona Clare was at home with her grandmother. Again, that created an obvious window of opportunity for police to seize the child without provoking an incident -- if they so desired.

We do not know -- and probably never will if we depend just on the criminal trials ahead -- why the police acted as they did.

Just as we may never know -- without a public inquiry -- exactly why Children's Aid sought the court order to take the child in the first place.

We know the first record in the chain that led to the custody order was a call to Children's Aid in Stratford, ON, on Dec. 18 from Craig Merkely, VandenElsen's ex-husband, wrongly informing them VandenElsen had already had her baby in Halifax.

To put his call in context, Merkley and VandenElsen had been involved in a lengthy, nasty custody battle over their triplets, during which -- as is often the case in such matters -- each side accused the other of poor parenting, even abuse. But there was never any evidence VandenElsen actually abused her kids.

The worst the Children's Aid there could come up with when it issued its Canada-wide Child Protection Alert a day after talking with Merkley, in fact, was VandenElsen's "attempts to have the children align with her throughout a lengthy custody and access dispute."

Now there's a surprise.

It is true, however, that VandenElsen did take off with the children in the fall of 2000 when she thought she would lose complete custody of them. As a result, she was charged with child abduction. But a jury acquitted her on the grounds of "necessity." The Ontario Court of Appeal overturned that decision and has ordered a new trial, which is scheduled for this fall. Last October, another court there awarded permanent custody of the children to her ex-husband.

Two weeks after that, VandenElsen moved to Halifax with Larry Finck --who'd served two years for abducting his daughter in a custody dispute -- whom she'd met and married during her legal odyssey. Their plan was to start over with their new child in a new city. On Dec. 23, VandenElsen gave birth to Mona Clare.

Were VandenElsen and Finck -- whose main run-ins with the law involved highly charged custody disputes -- such a danger to their newborn daughter she needed to be taken from them immediately?

Certainly not based on the family photographs VandenElsen included in an affidavit she filed with the Supreme Court in August. They show a smiling baby, playing with stuffed animals, cuddled in the arms of her father, being dressed by her mother and fed by her grandmother.

Photographs never tell the whole story, of course, but consider these reports from doctors who examined Mona Clare.

On Jan 8, 2004, the Children's Aid Society approached Dr. Dawn Edgar, who'd assisted in Mona Clare's birth and saw the family on three subsequent occasions, to ask if she had any concerns about "either parent, re: mental health." According to Edgar's own notes of the conversation, she told the CAS: "No, no concerns. Both parents appropriate with baby, caring, loving."

A week later, the Children's Aid her got an order to apprehend the baby.

Three months later, after Mona Clare was turned over to social workers following the siege, she was taken to the IWK Health Centre "for further observations and investigations for possible non-accidental injury." According to the discharge report signed by Dr. D. Chowdhury, nursing notes indicated the baby was "doing well on the floor, active, playful and feeding well." Chowdury's own impression was that Mona Clare was "a well grown and well developed baby with no clinical signs of any illness."

So why was Mona Clare taken from her parents?

We need a public inquiry into this case -- and plenty of others I've been told about since I started writing about Mona Clare -- to find out how Children's Aid really operates and whether it acts in "the best interests" of children.

Stephen.Kimber@ukings.ns.ca

Best interests of the child or Children's Aid

By Stephen Kimber

March 2, 2005

What is in the best interest of a child? And what is in the best interest of the agency responsible for protecting that child?

Those were the first questions that jumped into my head last week when I learned that the Children's Aid Society of Halifax now wants the courts to grant it permanent custody of the daughter of Larry Finck and Carline VandenElsen.

The Society says it believes it must seek permanent care and custody of the child because -- in the 12-and-a-half months since it won its first apprehension order for the then-infant in January 2004 -- "the parents have become more enveloped in their own theories of conspiracy and system abuse, and have shown a continued and increasing inability and unwillingness to acknowledge mental health issues, parenting concerns and their own involvement in activities which place the child at risk."

Whoah.

Rewind.

We need to remind ourselves of how we got to this point in the first place.

Start with Finck and VandenElsen. They do each have a history of conflict with child protection authorities, it is true, but neither has ever been convicted of abusing or neglecting their children.

In the heat of custody disputes with their former spouses, both took off with their kids. In 2000, Finck was convicted and served time in jail. That same year, VandenElsen ran off to Mexico with her triplets because she was afraid she was about to lose all access to them. An Ontario jury later acquitted VandenElsen of child abduction, agreeing with her argument that she believed losing contact with their mother would cause the children irreparable harm. But the Crown has since successfully appealed that verdict and VandenElsen is now awaiting a second trial on those charges.

In the fall of 2003, after VandenElsen became pregnant with their child, she and Finck returned to her new husband's hometown of Halifax, and moved in with his mother.

The event that apparently triggered the wild legal and emotional rollercoaster that is still rolling over both of them was a phone call to Children's Aid officials in Ontario on Dec. 18, 2003, informing them that Carline was in Halifax, had had a baby -- she didn't until a week later -- and that it could be in danger.

The call came from Craig Merkley, VandenElsen's ex-husband, the one with whom she'd had the bitter custody dispute. Hardly an unbiased observer.

Based -- so far as we know now -- on that self-interested call and on the Ontario CAS's blatantly obvious conclusion that Carline had attempted to "have the children align with her throughout a lengthy custody and access dispute" -- it relayed a "child protection alert" to Halifax Children's Aid, which then sought an apprehension order to take the child from its parents.

Children's Aid went ahead with its application even after interviewing a Halifax doctor who'd helped deliver the baby and had met with the family on three separate occasions before and after. She told them she had "no concerns" about their parenting at all.

Which hardly clarifies why Halifax police officers, carrying a machine gun and battering ram, showed up in the middle of one night last May to execute the CAS order.

While Finck's and VandenElsen's refusal to hand over their child in such circumstances -- and the bizarre 67-hour standoff that followed -- might explain the CAS's reference in its permanent custody application to the couple's "involvement in activities which place the child at risk," it does not even begin to explain why Children's Aid triggered the chain of events that put the child at risk in the first place.

The more you look under the rock of the CAS's initial decision-making, in fact, the easier it is to understand why Finck and VandenElsen might become enveloped in "theories of conspiracy and system abuse." Although those theories -- Children's Aid as an adoption factory for white babies, or in collusion with the pharmaceutical industry to over-medicate children in care for greater profits -- might indeed be outlandish, and their blizzard of legal challenges and lawsuits against anyone and everyone even remotely involved in their case may be a time-consuming annoyance to the courts, the reality is that all of this started because of what appears to be the unjustified actions of the Children's Aid Society.

Given that, you can begin to understand why Finck and VandenElsen might be reluctant to "acknowledge mental health issues [and] parenting concerns" when all they did to trigger this torrent of officialdom was have a baby.

Did Children's Aid really take this baby because it thought she was in danger? Or as an act of bureaucratic vengeance because VandenElsen and Finck -- who already believed the agency had treated them unfairly in the past and had made their feelings known loudly and often -- rubbed its workers the wrong way?

And does CAS now want its original custody order made permanent to protect the child? Or itself?

Before any order is granted, we need answers to those questions.

Stephen.Kimber@ukings.ns.ca

KIMBER: Why we need a public inquiry...

Why we need a public inquiry into the taking of Mona Clare

By Stephen Kimber

May 29, 2005

Forget for a moment the circus that their trial became: their lawyer firings, their seemingly ever-more-paranoid claims of baby-factory conspiracies, their spectator-shocking, judge-trying courtroom outbursts, their richly fertilized and cross-pollinated legal garden of lawsuits, appeals, briefs and petitions that are still growing wild inside Halifax court houses. Forget even Carline VandenElsen’s current “starving-for-the-children” hunger strike that threatens to turn this farce into tragedy.

Focus instead on the single critical — and still unanswered — question that is at the heart of the story of Mona Clare Finck: Did the Nova Scotia Children’s Aid Society have any reasonable legal grounds to seize the infant from her parents in the first place?

Everything else — policemen with battering rams and machine guns showing up at the Finck front door in the middle of one night last May, the single shot fired from inside the house, the 67-hour standoff with a heavily-armed police tactical squad that followed, the death by natural causes of Mona Clare’s grandmother in the middle of it all, the criminal charges, the trial, the application by child protection authorities for permanent custody… All of those events flow from an initial decision by Children’s Aid back in December 2003 to seek an apprehension order for the then still-unborn Mona Clare.

Why did Children’s Aid do that?

Could its decision to take the infant have been made on the basis of nothing more substantial than a relayed phone call to Ontario Children’s Aid from VandenElsen’s far-from-disinterested ex-husband, informing them — wrongly, as it turns out — that VandenElsen had already given birth in Halifax.

We do know VandenElsen and her husband Larry Finck had each been in conflict with child protection authorities in Ontario over the custody of their children from previous marriages. We know Finck served time for abducting his daughter, and VandenElsen was charged with kidnapping her triplets. But we also know a jury found her not guilty of those charges, accepting her argument she was acting out of what she considered necessity. We know too that the Crown successfully appealed the verdict, meaning VandenElsen — still not found guilty of anything — was awaiting a new trial at the time of the apprehension order.

Perhaps most importantly, we know now that there is nothing on the public record — other than their ongoing battles with child custody authorities — to indicate that either Finck or VandenElsen was an unfit parent.

So why did Children’s Aid seize Mona Clare?

Should there be — as Carline VandenElsen is demanding — a full public inquiry to answer that question?

Nova Scotia Justice Minister Michael Baker doesn’t think so. Shortly after VandenElsen announced she would stop eating until authorities agreed to such an inquiry, the Justice Minister issued a terse news release: “Based on the information we have at the present time,” he said, “the Department of Justice does not feel that a public inquiry is warranted.”

What information is that, Mr. Baker?

The province’s Children and Family Services Act, which governs child custody issues, is clear that the “purpose of this Act is to protect children from harm, promote the integrity of the family and assure the best interests of children.”

The Act specifically lists 14 different situations in which a child might be “in need of protective services.” Those include everything from actual and potential physical, sexual or emotional abuse, to neglect and abandonment, to the parents’ failure or unwillingness to provide proper medical care.

None of the criteria apply to this case.

Even if you were to stretch the Act’s Section 22.2(g) — which says a child can be taken from its parents if “there is a substantial risk that the child will suffer emotional harm [demonstrated by severe anxiety, depression, withdrawal, or self-destructive or aggressive behaviour]…” — and tried to make the argument that someday perhaps Mona Clare’s parents’ disputes with child protection authorities over custody of children from before she was born might somehow, possibly, conceivably result in some unspecified emotional harm to Mona Clare, well, that is much, much more than just a stretch.

The Act itself is clear about what constitutes “substantial risk” of harm to a child: “a real danger that is apparent on the evidence.”

The evidence in this case, in fact, suggests quite the opposite. The doctor who delivered the child and met with the family before and after her birth reported: “Both parents appropriate with baby, caring, loving.” Neighbours, who saw mother and daughter in the weeks before the police assault, said they saw nothing to indicate the child was in any danger. Doctors and nurses at the IWK, who examined five-month-old Mona Clare after she’d been seized by police, described her as “a well grown and well developed baby with no clinical signs of any illness… doing well… active, playful and feeding well…”

So, Mr. Baker, let me ask you again: What information did your department have at the time that legally justified seizing this child from her parents?

Or does this really have anything to do with the law?

Could it be that Children’s Aid here over-reacted to an over-reaction by child protection officials in Ontario, who didn’t like Finck’s and VandenElsen’s attitude and wanted to punish them for the crime of being difficult? And could it be that judges here okayed this because our Family Court system has become more of a rubber stamp for the child-care bureaucracy than a careful check on the arbitrary powers of those agencies? Could there be other cases as egregious as this one that we don’t yet know about only because no shots were fired.

The truth, Mr. Baker, is that you already have plenty of information to warrant a public inquiry. It’s past time you called one.

Stephen.Kimber@ukings.ns.ca

KIMBER: Open Letter to Justice Baker

Open Letter to Justice Minister Michael Baker
By Stephen Kimber

Dear Mr. Baker,

You said last week it is “inappropriate” for you to comment on calls for a public inquiry into the May 2004 seizure of then five-month-old Mona Clare Finck by the Children’s Aid Society, both because her parents are awaiting sentencing on their criminal convictions in the matter and because the issue of the now-toddler’s permanent custody is still before the courts.

That’s strange, Mr. Baker.

When does the inappropriate become appropriate for you?

On Nov. 10, 2004, for example, you announced, with much fanfare, that there will be “a full, independent and public inquiry” into the circumstances surrounding the death of Theresa McEvoy. You made this announcement less than a month after a teenager was charged with causing her death during a joyride in a stolen car. You announced this inquiry before the courts had dealt with those charges and a full seven months, in fact, before the boy’s sentencing hearing — which only begins this week — had taken place.

Appropriate?

This wasn’t even the first, or only, time you’d decided it was “appropriate” for you to talk this particular case in public while it was before the courts. On Nov. 1, you criticized your own officials’ handling of the case and said it was “extremely unfortunate” the boy hadn’t been kept in jail while awaiting trial on other charges. On Nov. 4, you publicly expressed “sympathies” to the McEvoy family and promised you would “carefully review and consider” their request for a judicial inquiry. You even announced you would be going to Ottawa to lobby for legal changes to make it easier to keep young offenders behind bars.

Was that inappropriate?

You tell me.

In the Finck-VandenElsen case, you say that, “based on the information we have at the present time, the Department of Justice does not feel that a public inquiry is warranted.” Unless there is new information, you said, there would be no inquiry.

I have no new information, Mr. Baker, but I do have some old questions. Perhaps, since you feel the public knows everything we need to know about how this case was handled, you’d like to answer them for me:

1) What was the legal basis for seizing the baby from her parents? Which of the 14 criteria specified in the Family and Children’s Services Act justified this action? Did the court consider, as the Act requires, “the best interest of the child” and “the importance for the child’s development of a positive relationship with a parent or guardian and a secure place as a member of a family,” or was it swayed by irrelevant arguments about the personal behaviour and attitudes of the parents that were unrelated to their capabilities as parents?

2) What witnesses were called and what evidence was presented at the January 2004 hearing when the initial apprehension order was granted in order to satisfy the court there were “reasonable and probable grounds to believe that the child may be in need of protective services”? Did the proceedings demonstrate, as the Act requires, “a real danger [to the child] that is apparent on the evidence”?

3) Was the doctor who delivered the baby and met with the parents before and after the baby’s birth called to testify at this hearing? Was the judge informed that the Children’s Aid Society had interviewed the doctor the week before the hearing to ask if she had any concerns about “either parent, re: mental health,” and that she’d answered: “No, no concerns”? Were the doctor’s notes — “Both parents appropriate with baby, caring, loving” — introduced as evidence? Were those notes considered by the judge before making her decision?

4) Has your department — as it was so quick to do in the McEvoy case — launched an internal review of how this case was handled by your officials? By the Family Court? By Children’s Aid? If so, what was the nature of those inquiries? What were the results?

5) Has your department received a copy of the internal review by the Halifax Regional Police into its handling of this case? Will it be made public? Will there be an independent review to determine how and by whom the decision to use overwhelming force — battering ram, submachine guns — to carry out the apprehension order and whether this level of force was appropriate in this case?

I have other questions as well. About Children’s Aid’s role, more generally, in child custody cases. And about the checks and balances in place, in the law and in practice, to ensure that our Children and Family Services Act lives up to its lofty promise of acting in “the best interests of a child.”

But I’ll wait for your answer to these initial questions before I pose them.

I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

Stephen Kimber
Stephen.Kimber@ukings.ns.ca

The Daily News (Halifax)
Sunday, July 3, 2005

Potholes litter path to public inquiry

By Stephen Kimber
The Daily News

It’s been an interesting week on the other side of the media trenches.

I’ve recently become a member of a community group pushing for a public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the seizure of the infant child of Larry Finck and Carline VandenElsen. I usually steer clear of joining such groups, partly because I already have a pulpit for my views, partly because I want to maintain my independence and partly — if I am to be honest — because I hate meetings.

But I’d become frustrated only writing about this particular case. Since the May 2004 highly publicized 67-hour standoff between Finck and VandenElsen and a heavily armed police swat team, I’ve written a half-dozen columns outlining my concerns about the role the Children’s Aid Society and Family Court played in taking this child from its parents, and about the massive use of police force to do it.

Each column generated e-mails, letters and phone calls, many from ordinary readers with no direct connection to the case or personal histories with Children’s Aid, most supporting my call for a public inquiry and many asking what they could do to help make an inquiry happen.

My only suggestion — that they write their MLA — seemed lame and unlikely to have much effect without an organized campaign behind it.

So when I got a call a few weeks ago from author Heather Laskey, a resident of the neighbourhood where the standoff took place, inviting me to a meeting she and some others were holding to discuss what they could do to right what they too saw as a wrong, I quickly agreed.

Last week, we — now known as the MCF Inquiry Committee (MCF is how the infant is described in court documents) — called a news conference to explain why a public inquiry is needed and to announce the committee’s plans to insert an advertisement in the next day’s Halifax Chronicle-Herald. The ad would outline the case for a public inquiry and encourage readers to write Justice Minister Michael Baker demanding one.

Just before the news conference, however, a Herald official called to say the paper wouldn’t run our ad without editorial changes (reasonable ones, in fact, to which we quickly agreed), and unless — as well as paying upfront for the ad — each member of the committee signed a letter to “indemnify and hold harmless The Halifax Herald Ltd., its officers and individuals acting on its behalf from any claims or causes of action” that might result from the ad.

That unusual request — when was the last time any newspaper asked Sobeys officials to sign a waiver absolving the paper of legal responsibility for the contents of their ads? — isn’t really so unusual in this very unusual case.

Ever since the standoff, in fact, media outlets have been grappling with a difficult dilemma: what can they legally publish or broadcast?

On the one hand, this is a child-custody case, and there are very clear rules in place that prohibit publishing any information that might reveal the identities of children involved in such cases.

On the other hand, the standoff — shotgun fired, police emergency response teams, snipers on roofs, neighbourhood evacuated — was a major news event that could not be understood without writing about the custody issue that triggered it all.

To complicate matters, the story raised a number of important questions of legitimate public interest. Were Children’s Aid and Family Court really acting in “the best interests of the child” when they took the five-month-old from her parents, or were they vindictively punishing two admittedly difficult parents for challenging their arbitrary authority? Did the police act appropriately, or did the massive deployment of police power actually create the crisis that followed?

How do you ask those questions without writing about the custody issue?

Even now, no one seems quite sure how to juggle these competing pressures. It took CBC Radio, for example, more than five hours and eight local newscasts’ worth of internal discussion last week to finally decide to run a story about our committee’s call for a public inquiry.

And the Herald, which had published its own first-rate, four-day series on the background to the case last week — the first real attempt to put the issues and personalities in context since Richard Cuthbertson’s excellent story on Larry Finck’s personal history appeared in The Daily News immediately after the standoff — decided not to post its own series on its website on the advice of its lawyers.

(Having raised the issue of how other media outlets have dealt with the story, I should note — gratefully — that my editors have not censored or substantively altered any of the columns I’ve written about the case.)

But this media conundrum — like the standoff circus and the courtroom craziness — is ultimately beside the point.

We are still left with questions — Why did authorities take the child in the first place? Who authorized the use of massive force to seize the child? Why does the child not have her own independent legal representation in court? What external checks and balances are in place to make sure that Children’s Aid, Family Court and the Community Services Department act in the interest of the child? — that can only be answered by a full, independent and public inquiry.

If you agree, I encourage you to write (5151 Terminal Rd., Halifax, N.S. B3J 2L6), call (902-424-4044) or e-mail the justice minister (bakermg@gov.ns.ca or michaelbakermla@ns.sympatico.ca) demanding he appoint such an inquiry.

It won’t happen otherwise.

Stephen.Kimber@ukings.ns.ca

The Richard Cuthbertson article alluded to above appears next.

The Daily News (Halifax)

Sunday, May 30, 2004

Who are they?

By Richard Cuthbertson

A small bouquet of flowers wrapped in plastic lay on the doorstep of the lime green house at 6161 Shirley St. last week. Only days earlier, the house was the scene of a sensational three-day standoff involving Carline VandenElsen, her husband Larry Finck, their infant daughter and swarms of heavily armed police officers.

Police had arrived in the middle of night with a Children's Aid Society apprehension order in hand, but were turned away when the door to the home was barricaded and shots allegedly fired from inside.

Finck and VandenElsen face a myriad of charges in relation to the standoff, and their infant daughter has been taken by Children's Aid.

Meanwhile, it appears that someone placed those flowers at the house in memory of Finck's mother, Mona, who died in the house during the standoff.

We now know that Mona Finck lived on the street for more than three decades, and longtime residents like Mary Deyoung, said she was a familiar and well-liked face in the neighbourhood.

The circumstances surrounding her death date back years.

Larry Finck and VandenElsen are quickly becoming household names. Some see them as narcissistic, spurred by a sense of martyrdom, people who relish their battles with the justice system. Others see them as heroes in a fight pitting an overbearing, even menacing, state against the lawful rights of parents.

It seems odd (although some would say it's destiny) that two people whose lives have taken such remarkably similar tangents should meet, fall in love, marry and have a child together. But that's exactly what happened when they wed a year ago. Now, the couple is embroiled in a legal and custody battle that's become a low point in years of legal accusations, custody battles, and kidnapping trials.

Larry Finck's story began when his first daughter was born in Ontario in 1995. The mother died a year later, leaving custody of the child with her brother.

But Finck felt the girl should be with him and began a legal battle to gain guardianship.

As a younger man, Finck was no saint, said an old friend, Ron VandenBussche, who met Finck 20 years ago while organizing a senior league hockey team in London, Ont.

"He was a party boy, there's no doubt about it," said VandenBussche this week. Among other things, Finck was once reportedly busted by police for running an after-hours bootlegging club in London.

"He was just a character," said VandenBussche. "He'd been around the hockey wars and had a lot of good stories to tell. He was a streetwise guy."

But Finck, who became a master plumber, wanted to straighten out, said VandenBussche, and was preparing to bring up his young daughter in an old farmhouse he was renovating. At the time, Finck only had access to his daughter, including a two-week period during August 1999, when she visited him.

According to court records, Finck was due to return his daughter at the end of the month to her home on the Thames First Nation Reserve, where she was living with her uncle. Instead, he whisked her off to Halifax. Halifax Regional Police and arrested him a month later, returning Finck and his daughter to Ontario. Although offered legal aid, Finck defended himself against charges of kidnapping. According to court documents, he introduced 15 witnesses, attempting to justify his actions by demonstrating his daughter was in danger under the care of her uncle. But the judge in the case dismissed the claim that the girl was being mistreated and found Finck guilty, a ruling that was upheld on appeal. In the appeal decision, Justice Robert Armstrong wrote that far from being in danger, Finck's daughter was in good hands.

"There was no evidence that (Finck's daughter) was ever at risk physically, emotionally or psychologically," wrote Armstrong.

"The five physicians called to testify by (Finck) each described (Finck's daughter) as happy and in good health. The Children's Aid and Child and Family Service workers expressed no concern about her welfare. The two childcare workers described (Finck's daughter) as a happy, normally developing child."

The conviction landed Finck a two-year prison sentence. Judges have described Finck as confrontational, and even friends said the man isn't always easy to deal with.

"He's a smart guy and knows his way around the Criminal Code better than most lawyers," said London barrister William Dewar, who's known Finck for 25 years.

"And he's fearless. He'll stand up to the judges, even appeal court judges, tell them what the law is, look them in the eye. That's his problem: he's too smart by half."

But in a written decision obtained by The Daily News discussing Finck's application for parole in November 2001, the National Parole Board went further, suggesting that Finck's actions bordered on delusional.

"Your current obsessive type behaviour regarding the legal challenges you are making to the courts appears at times to be a departure from the generally shared perception of reality."

That doesn't make sense to VandenBussche, who said he's never thought twice about trusting his own 14-year-old daughter with Finck and VandenElsen.

He said he first met VandenElsen and her triplets by a previous marriage when they were his guests last summer at his home at Turkey Point on Lake Erie.

"She spent three days with us," said VandenBussche. "I thought she was a good mother. She disciplined the kids when they needed it, and was good to them when they needed it. They took my daughter and their kids down to the play-park, just like an ordinary family."

VandenElsen's story hit headlines in 2000 when she took off with her triplets, going on the run out of fear she would lose all custody to her ex- husband. The incident sparked an international search, while the woman spent three months zigzagging across the continent with her children, briefly spending time in Halifax. Her face was plastered on America's Most Wanted, a U.S. television program that profiles accused criminals on the lam. Authorities caught up to VandenElsen and the triplets in Acapulco, Mexico. The children were returned to their father, and VandenElsen faced three charges of kidnapping. But she beat the rap after a sympathetic jury was convinced that the kidnapping was justified because the children would have suffered emotional harm without access to their mother.

Despite the ruling, VandenElsen lost custody of her children in November. In a written decision of her appeal in the case, Justice Grant Campbell wrote: "It has become patently obvious to any person with any healthy sense of balance that these three children have become the vehicle by which Ms. VandenElsen has chosen to perpetuate her fixation with her own perceived victimization."

About a month later, VandenElsen gave birth to Finck's daughter in Halifax. According to Dewar, who's been in contact with Finck, the couple believed the Children's Aid Society wanted to take the child soon after she was born.

"Somebody recognized Carline in the hospital (in Halifax) and blew the whistle, and it wasn't long before the CAS down there got in the picture," said Dewar.

In the end, the child was taken after the 67-hour standoff, which ended when VandenElsen and Finck emerged from the Shirley Street house with their infant daughter, carrying a stretcher bearing the body of Mona Finck.

Mona Finck's funeral was a simple affair at St. Thomas Aquinas Church on Oxford Street, where she once worshiped. There was no eulogy, only prayers and quiet hymns -- belying, perhaps, the circumstances of her death.

rcuthbertson@hfxnews.ca

The Daily News (Halifax)
Sunday, July 10, 2005

Justice minister should know better when it comes to Children’s Aid

By Stephen Kimber
The Daily News

Justice Minister Michael Baker is no stranger to controversies over child protection in Nova Scotia.

Which may explain his reluctance to call a public inquiry into last year’s Family Court decision to order the Halifax Children’s Aid Society to seize the daughter of Larry Finck and Carline VandenElsen, despite a lack of evidence the infant was at risk.

Baker, a South Shore lawyer before becoming an MLA, served a good-works apprenticeship in the decade or so before he was first elected to the legislature in 1998.

He was vice-chairman of the Lunenburg County Regional Housing Authority, president of the Lunenburg Academy Foundation and — from 1992 to 1995 — a member of the board of Family and Children’s Services of Lunenburg County (FCS), “a non-profit child-welfare agency dedicated to the protection of children from abuse and neglect.”

In 1994, the Liberal government of the day appointed two Ontario social workers to conduct an independent review of the operations of that same Lunenburg FCS — the equivalent of Halifax’s Children’s Aid Society — following two shocking incidents in which FCS officials appeared to be the ones perpetrating the abuse and neglect.

In the first case, a five-week-old baby was shaken to death in 1993, three weeks after child-protection workers had received warnings the baby was being abused.

In the second, workers at the agency had ignored complaints that children, in what the agency proudly described as a “very good” foster home, were being sexually abused. FCS actually continued to place children — 20 in all — with the family, even after learning of the allegations. It wasn’t until five years after the first complaints that the foster father was finally found guilty — no thanks to FCS — of sexually abusing four youngsters in his care.

In truth, the review of the Lunenburg FCS only happened — three years after the guilty verdict — because Debra Stevens refused to go away.

A single mother who’d been talked into turning her two sons over to children’s services in 1985, Stevens became suspicious about the foster home into which her two sons had been adopted, and refused to stop asking questions.

The Family and Children’s Services Agency initially ignored her complaints, or dismissed her as a “nuisance” — remind you of anyone, Mr. Minister? — and described her as a “social climber (who) went into a song and dance about being a single parent.” The first social worker she dealt with reported that “Hopefully, (Stevens) got the message, as it was obvious that she appeared guilty.”

Guilty of what? Caring about her children?

The outside reviewers the province finally appointed to look into what had gone wrong in that and the shaken-baby case concluded — in the words of a simple but telling precis offered by then-community services minister Jim Smith — “the system failed Debra and her family.”

Incredibly, when Stevens tried to regain custody of her youngest son after the sexual-abuse charges were laid, FCS opposed the move, dispatching its own lawyers and four witnesses to the hearing to fight to keep the child with the wife of the man who’d abused her children (who was then out on bail).

Supreme Court Justice Walter Goodfellow not only awarded custody back to Stevens, but he also demolished the FCS’s claim the woman hadn’t known the children were being abused by her husband: “If in fact she did not know, ignorance of such conduct could only be by willful blindness or negligence.”

What does all of this have to do with Michael Baker now?

To be fair to Baker, he only joined the board after the courts had convicted the foster father, but that was still a full three years before the province — not the FCS — launched its review.

Knowing what he knows about what went on in Lunenburg, Baker should realize just how fallible children’s services can be.

The Finck-VandenElsen case, of course, represents the flip side of what happened in Lunenburg. Instead of under-reacting to allegations of real abuse, the Halifax Children’s Aid Society stands accused of over-reacting to vague concerns from Ontario Children’s Aid and erroneous information from a not-disinterested ex-husband.

While that may put into clearer perspective the real-life dilemma child-protection workers face every day in trying to determine when a child is at real risk — something even those of us criticizing Children’s Aid need to acknowledge — it also strengthens the argument that we need a public inquiry to find out what went wrong in the Finck-VandenElsen case, and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Let’s hope it doesn’t take another three years this time.

Stephen.Kimber@ukings.ns.ca

Last updated at 7:28 AM on 05/07/07

Wrong member on review body

Community Services shows contempt for its own processes

STEPHEN KIMBER, The Daily News

If you want to begin to understand the utter disdain Nova Scotia's Community Services Department has for its own legislation - and for the people it is supposed to serve - consider its recent appointment of Robert Wright to the committee that is supposed to review the province's Children and Family Services Act.

Wright is a senior community-services bureaucrat, a former director of Cumberland County family and children's services and executive director of the department's recently announced youth strategy and services.

Incredibly, however, Wright has been named to the review committee as one of two persons "whose children have been, are or may be in need of protective services ..." (italics very definitely mine).

When the Nova Scotia Family and Children's Services Act was introduced in 1990, it was hailed as a progressive piece of legislation. But even its framers understood the act would need to be reviewed regularly to make sure it was still working to - in the words of the act - "protect children from harm, promote the integrity of the family and assure the best interests of children."

Which is why the legislation required the minister to "establish an advisory committee whose function is to review annually the provisions of this act and the services relating thereto and to report annually to the minister concerning the operation of the act and whether the principles and purpose of the act are being achieved."

Key players

The 10-member committee was supposed to represent all the key players in the child-protection system, including not only agency representatives, legal-aid workers and other insiders but also - specifically - two people whose experience was from the receiving end of child-protection services.

Wright, whatever his many other sterling qualities, should not be a "parent" representative on this committee. (A government spokesperson says she can't say what Wright's specific qualifications are for the post "as it would be a breach of confidentiality," noting only that the legislature's toothless human-resources committee appointed Wright.)

Regardless, the fact is he is an insider. He can't help but represent - and be seen to be representing - the government's vested interest in the review process. A government spokesman claims the department sought "legal advice" before it appointed him. I'd love to see the verbal gymnastics involved in justifying that leap of lizardly legal logic!

The unhappy truth is that Wright's appointment merely continues the pattern of cavalier contempt the department has shown for its own process.

Between 1999 and 2005, this government didn't even bother to appoint a review committee. It only reluctantly did so after two determined women - who'd had their own unhappy experiences with the system - took the minister to court two years ago.

After Supreme Court Justice Hilary Nathanson ordered the department to belatedly live up to its legal obligations, the then-minister, David Morse, did his best to sabotage the ruling's intent.

The legislation calls for the appointment of "two persons drawn from the cultural, racial or linguistic minority communities" in order to bring other perspectives to the table. Morse instead appointed two Children's Aid Society staff members who, only incidentally, happened to come from those communities.

Morse named a personal friend as the first parent member on the committee. (The government, of course, wouldn't even consider applications from the two women who'd taken the government to court and won; they clearly were too interested in the system's workings. The department claims it's still looking to fill the other parent vacancy on its committee.)

And now, thanks largely to the government's ongoing efforts of hobble its work - delaying appointing new members to replace those who have resigned or whose terms have expired, naming people like Wright who clearly don't belong - the committee is in a shambles. It still hasn't even filed its last annual report, which would have been only the first since the courts ordered it to act.

None of this is intended as a knock on Wright's qualifications to serve as executive director of the new youth strategy the government has set up in response to the Nunn Commission report. Or even to suggest he could not represent the minister's interests on the review committee; there are slots for that, too.

But he cannot - and should not pretend to - represent the interests of those on the receiving end of the system.

If the minister doesn't revoke his appointment, Wright should do the honourable thing and resign.

Stephen Kimber is the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King's College. His column, Kimber's Nova Scotia, appears in The Sunday Daily News.

Source: website of the Halifax Daily News

Last updated at 6:21 AM on 02/08/07

Little revealed in standoff review

Three years later, questions remain about the Shirley Street siege

STEPHEN KIMBER, The Daily News

The Halifax Regional Police learned nothing from 2004's costly three-day Shirley Street standoff - because there was nothing for them to learn. They did everything right.

That, at least, is the pre-determined conclusion of the department's self-serving, butt-covering, two-years-in-the-making, 16-page internal review of "Incident Number 04-21470."

That is the blandly bureaucratic designation for the infamous case in which police bungled efforts to execute a Children's Aid Society apprehension order to seize the infant daughter of Larry Finck and Carline VandenElsen. That quickly escalated into a 67-hour siege, complete with barricaded suspects, a shot fired, deployment of a heavily armed SWAT team, the evacuation of a Halifax neighbourhood, the natural-causes death of Finck's mother who was inside the house at the time, prison terms for both VandenElsen and Finck, and the end of any hope their infant daughter might have had for a normal family life.

One hopes the reason the police didn't release the report's findings publicly themselves - I had to get my only slightly blacked-out copy through a Freedom of Information Act application - is because they're embarrassed by it.

One hopes ...

Though the report deals with, or, more accurately, dismisses questions about the entire chain of events - from the department's initial attempt on Jan. 15, 2004, to execute a court order to take the infant into protective custody to the moment the child was finally grabbed on May 21, 2004 - let's look today only at the critical decisions police officers made on the night of May 19. Those were the ones that turned what should have been a routine custody matter into a matter of life and death.

Having heard rumours that VandenElsen - who'd disappeared with her daughter around the time of the initial court order - had been spotted back in Halifax in the company of Finck in the criminal act of "pushing a baby stroller in the area of Vernon and Shirley Street," the police immediately mounted a full-scale, drug-style surveillance operation.

Peeked in window

Early that evening, they followed the couple to a Wal-Mart and watched as they clandestinely "purchased baby supplies." After shadowing the dangerous duo back to their Shirley Street address with their fresh-bought diapers, one of the officers peeked in a window and saw Finck with "an infant he assumed" to be their daughter.

One assumes, though the report doesn't say so, that the infant did not appear to be in mortal danger from her father at the time.

At that point - after 10:30 p.m - police officers made the fateful decision to snatch the child immediately rather than wait for morning, or for the couple - who seemed blissfully unaware police were on to them - to leave the house again.

Why not wait? There is no evidence the child - supposedly the reason for all of this - was in immediate danger.

Was it a budgetary decision? Did police gamble a swift snatch-and-grab would be cheaper than the hard slog of continuing surveillance and safe apprehension? If so, they blew it badly.

The report never really addresses those questions, though it does attempt to justify the fact senior officers dispatched three uniformed police to pound on the door at 12:34 a.m.

Finck and VandenElsen, the report says, "were known to be violent towards police."

While that makes an even more compelling argument for caution, we need to ask on what basis the police determined this. The report offers no backup for its assertion.

VandenElsen, it's true, had been charged with abducting her children from a previous marriage. But a jury had acquitted her in that case. An appeals court had ordered a new trial, but it hadn't yet taken place. There's no evidence I've seen she was ever violent toward police.

As for Finck, he'd served two years for kidnapping a daughter from a previous relationship and was certainly well known to challenge authority. Did he have a history of actual violence against police? Not that I'm aware of.

The reality, as police know all too well, is that custody cases are emotional and volatile. That's why prudent decision-making is vital to prevent an incident from escalating out of control.

'Discretion'

The report claims police officers "do not have discretion" in enforcing apprehension orders - which is, of course, ludicrous. While they may not have a choice in whether to enforce an order, they have lots of leeway in how to do it.

Police decisions in this case led to an expensive, disruptive standoff, criminal convictions for two people who wanted nothing more than to raise their child and the total destruction, beyond repair, of a family - and yet the report claims there are no lessons to be learned.

Perhaps we will only begin to learn those lessons after a police officer - or a baby - is dead.

www.stephenkimber.com

Stephen Kimber is the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King's College. In 2004, he was a member of an ad hoc citizens group that campaigned unsuccessfully for a public inquiry into this case. His column, Kimber's Nova Scotia, appears in The Sunday Daily News.

Source: website of the Halifax Daily News

Here is a copy of the police report, posted to the internet by the Halifax Chronicle-Herald.

Last updated at 6:23 AM on 09/08/07

Beneath the black marker

Curiosity uncovers a secret in the Shirley Street standoff review

Stephen Kimber, The Daily News

Satiable curiosity, as Rudyard Kipling called it, is one of the peculiar traits of the journalist. I have spent more hours than I can count - or should admit to - trying to decipher the usually meaningless upside-down writing on the desks of people I am interviewing. Or listening in on banal conversations to which I am not a party.

Which may explain how I came to be hunched over a spotlight last week, squinting, trying to make out what was hidden beneath the black felt-markered-out sections of the copy of the Halifax Regional Police Operational Review of the Shirley Street standoff.

Last week, I wrote about what was in the publicly released portion of that much delayed report I had received through a Freedom of Information request. It focused on the police department's role in a controversial May 2004 incident, in which heavily armed police used a battering ram to smash into a Halifax home in the middle of the night to execute a Children's Aid apprehension order for an infant.

This week, I want to talk about the parts I wasn't supposed to see.

To be fair, the police only blacked out three small sections of the 16-page report. In his cover letter to me, Deputy Chief Tony Burbridge cited two sections of the Protection of Privacy and Freedom of Information Act to justify what he described as the "severed parts of the record."

'Unreasonable invasion'

The first was that disclosing the information "would reasonably be expected to harm law enforcement and harm the effectiveness of investigative techniques or procedures ..." The second was that the information "would be an unreasonable invasion of a third party's personal privacy."

So, of course, I peeked. And peered. And stared. And held the documents up to the light to see what, if anything, they might reveal.

I was unable to decipher anything from two of the excisions, which were among a catalogue of what the report described as "numerous tactics ... utilized in attempting to reach a successful resolution of the incident."

But the third blacked-out section - about an incident before the stand-off, when the police were still trying to find out where Carline VandenElsen had disappeared with her baby daughter - turned out to be at least partially readable.

And intriguing.

In the chronology, the incident occurs sometime between Feb. 23, 2004, when a Det./Cst. Webber contacted a Children's Aid official to update her on the progress of the investigation; and Feb. 26, just three days later, when Larry Finck, the father of the little girl and husband of Carline, came to police headquarters asking to lay a complaint against Children's Aid "for conspiracy in the abduction of his child."

Which means that the subject of this blacked-out section occurred more than a month after police first unsuccessfully tried to enforce the apprehension order, and almost two full months before police attempts to seize the child touched off a three-day SWAT-team siege at the Finck home.

Here's what I can read: "Det./Cst. Webber met with Senior Crown Attorney Frank Hoskins to discuss proceeding with" - which is followed by a few words I can't read - "He advised that there were insufficient grounds at this time to support prosecution. Barbara MacPherson of Children's Aid was advised of this decision."

Which raises an interesting question.

How does this information match up with the department's stated explanations for refusing to disclose this particular section to me?

Commonplace procedure

Surely, consulting with a senior Crown attorney on whether there are grounds to lay charges is commonplace police procedure - hardly the sort of top-secret investigative technique the act is supposed to allow police to keep confidential.

As for violating the privacy rights of a third party, the fact is that both the cop and Barbara MacPherson, a CAS case worker, are already identified in several sections of the report released to me. And Frank Hoskins is a public official acting in a public capacity.

So which of the stated exemptions applies in this case?

If neither do - and it appears they don't - then why did the police decide to try to keep this small section of the report from my prying eyes?

Could it be that they simply didn't want to publicly admit there were no grounds to lay charges against anyone in this case until police officers banged on the door in the middle of the night of May 19 and turned a family matter into a criminal case that changed the lives of all of those involved?

And what does that say about the police department's commitment to openness and transparency?

Source: website of the Halifax Daily News