LEARNING FROM ALEX’S DEATH
Family — and the system — failed him
“It was a collection of errors.”
That’s the painful understatement from a former social worker who summed up what went wrong in a child welfare case involving Alexandru Radita. The worker had been involved in 2003 when the boy was removed from his B.C. home, mere hours from death.
Tragically, 10 years later and a province away, the boy was dead. The 15-year-old weighed only 37 pounds when he died of a bacterial infection from starvation, untreated diabetes and neglect. He died in his bed, in his family’s Calgary home in May 2013.
What happened in that decade in between? How did the family fly under the radar of the social services network, of educators, of health care in this country? Despite a high-profile trial in which his parents were convicted of murder, there are no clear answers. Mistakes were made along the way that allowed this boy to disappear from public view.
“I believe that Alex was failed on so many levels by so many flawed people,” Alex’s kindergarten teacher, Sandy Wong, said in an impact statement she had hoped to read at the trial in 2016.
Clearly the blame for the youth’s death lies with his parents, who refused to accept Alex’s diabetes after he was diagnosed at age two. Over the years they neglected to properly treat his condition, mismanaged insulin, didn’t attend medical appointments and battled social workers who acted on their son’s behalf. But while Rodica and Emil Radita sit in jail for at least the next 25 years unless they win their appeals, what about that collection of errors made by others? Have the lapses in communication, in judgment, been addressed?
Crown prosecutor Susan Pepper said the trial showed the gaps in the social safety net that led to Alex’s death — a lack of communication between provinces and the fact he dropped from the education and health-care systems without anyone noticing.
“It really highlights the degree of isolation that Alex lived in — he had no friends, or teachers, or support people, or doctors, or anyone,” Pepper said.
Alex’s main social worker, Patricia MacDonald, has proposed an Alex Alert, as a way to notify authorities when a family that requires monitoring for abuse or neglect leaves one province for another, which happened in this case.
“Alex was a very brave and a very smart little man and ... for his life to have meaning, he would have wanted for it to have brought about change for other children.”
So badly emaciated his neck muscles were near total liquefaction
Canada does have an interprovincial child welfare protocol that was signed in 2016 and sets out roles and responsibilities for when children or families involved in care move out of province. It includes direction on how information is shared and cases are managed, as well as detailing child protection alerts that should occur when a child, youth, adult or family is missing or there is knowledge that a person or family has moved and a child or youth may be in need of protection.
This agreement covers all children in care or those receiving services, but it isn’t clear whether it would apply in a case like the Radita family, which was no longer being monitored by social services.
The proposal for Alex Alerts is interesting, Aaron Manton, press secretary for Alberta Children’s Services Minister Danielle Larivee, said in a statement this year.
“We look forward to seeing this proposal and exploring how it could fit within or improve the existing inter-jurisdictional protocols for child intervention,” Manton said.
Alberta has embarked on a review of its child services following the death of another child. Fouryear-old Serenity died while living in kinship care overseen by government workers. Her death led to a ministerial panel to help fix what Premier Rachel Notley described as “systemic” problems.
Peter Choate, assistant professor of social work at Mount Royal University, is a member of the panel. While he said a national database is an interesting idea, it is fraught with problems.
“The challenges of an Alex Alert is that it’s going to run into a whole variety of provincial legislation around information and privacy. You have to negotiate with 13 jurisdictions.”
Choate also said it raises ethical questions by assuming the worst when in fact the majority of child welfare cases in Canada are successfully managed.
“We come back to the balance. We want to protect the child and ensure the rights of the parents. One of the biggest problems is trying to understand human behaviour and predict human behaviour. That’s a very hard thing to do,” he said.
“If we want to increase the rights of the child, then we have to contemplate the degree we’re prepared to interfere in the rights of the parents. Ethically, that’s the trade-off we’re trying to work our way through.”
Choate said there could be other fixes, such as amending the Criminal Code to hold accountable nonguardian adults who are aware of child abuse yet fail to report it.
“If we learn from Alex’s death, one powerful thing is, is there a national solution?” he questions.
His teeth had rotted down to stumps, suggesting he was suffering from scurvy
Alex’s trauma began early in life. He was apprehended in 2003 after he ended up in Surrey Memorial Hospital in dire shape from mistreated diabetes.
He had multi- system organ failure, sunken eyes and no chest muscles left. His belly was dis- tended similar to children from Third World countries. He was five.
Alex was “in the last stages of malnutrition” and had “no more than a day to live at that point,” said Dr. Michael Seear, who treated him when he was transferred to B.C. Children’s Hospital in Vancouver. “He came in the door close to death.”
After spending months in hospital, Alex was placed for a year with foster parent Vera Boyko, who has since died. He gained weight, got healthy and blossomed.
“I remember him as a chubby little boy with a smile on his face,” said Tracy Brady, Boyko’s daughter. She said B.C. Children’s Services placed Alex with her mother because, apart from being a 30year child care worker and foster parent, Boyko was diabetic and knew how to handle his medical needs.
“What I keep remembering is all the times with Alex and my daughter, who is a year younger than him. I remember them going trick or treating as he had never gone out for Halloween. He wore the pumpkin costume and he was so excited about the candy. We had to be careful what he could have and substitute most of it for something healthy,” recalled Boyko. She also reminisced about celebrating Canada Day when the two youngsters got flags painted on their cheeks.
“It’s those firsts, that’s what you remember.”
Brady said there were many gatherings and Alex was always a part of it. He attended their church where the “little old ladies loved him” and he seemed happy. He liked to play with the big tub of Lego at his foster mother’s house and he was artistic, often drawing when he spent time with Brady’s daughter.
“I think he was happy, but he did miss his siblings. He would sometimes act out when he came back to my mom’s. He had visitations with his family and those times were difficult. I got the impression he was never told no.” (A court- ordered publication ban exists on details surrounding his siblings; Alex had seven siblings, most of whom were adults when Alex died.)
After a year with Boyko, the B.C. Ministry of Children and Family Development sought a “continuing custody order” but his family fought for his return.
“We felt that Alex wouldn’t be safe in the family home with his parents and we were asking the court to make him a continuing custody ward, meaning he would stay in the care of the ministry until we found an appropriate adoption home,” said MacDonald, the social worker.
Boyko was also opposed to him leaving. “She knew he would not last long if he had to stay with them. To her, it was obvious they weren’t looking after his medical needs,” said Brady, who years later is still emotional about Alex’s fate.
The judge in the case, J.G. Cohen, released Alex to his parents in part because conditions had improved for the child. His parents had found him a regular family doctor, something he didn’t have when he was removed from their custody. And with Boyko, he was a full-time student under the watchful eye of a teacher — Wong — who monitored his condition through the school week.
“There is no proof that the parents continue now, in the present, to deny that (Alex) has diabetes or that they will treat him in the fu- ture, should he be returned home, as though he is not diabetic and thereby fail to appropriately treat his condition,” Cohen wrote in his 2004 decision.
“These parents are capable of properly managing the treatment of their son’s diabetes, given sufficient education and monitoring. The education, according to the evidence, is a lifelong commitment while the monitoring is just to ensure against (so far unproven) suspicions and concerns.”
He placed Alex under a sixmonth supervision order but when it expired, the boy and his family fell off the radar. He never returned to the school. Their case only surfaced again years later, when Alex missed two appointments in July 2008 and January 2009 at the Children’s Hospital diabetes clinic. A hospital social worker called the B.C. Ministry of Child and Family Development to ask if they could find the family. Despite there being a forwarding address in Calgary in the file, nothing further was done.
Child and Family Services coded the file “no further action” due to insufficient information and closed the file. The B.C. social worker assigned to the case did not conduct any searches in Alberta.
“It’s not a part of our procedure,” she testified at the Raditas’ trial.
The B.C. ministry will not comment on the Radita case, but department spokesman Shawn Larabee noted that policy at the time dictated Alberta’s officials should have been notified if B.C. social services were investigating a family in their jurisdiction.
“While Alex was the subject of much oversight by British Columbia Social Services while he lived in B.C., once he moved to Alberta, no Alberta social service or medical authorities were aware of his existence or his history,” Pepper said recently.
There are only tendons and bones
Another lapse in communication occurred in Alberta after the family moved here in 2008.
Alex was registered in September 2009 as a Grade 5 student at School of Hope, a distance learning program based in Vermilion that reports to the East Central Catholic Schools district, but no work was ever submitted. Calls to his parents went unanswered and, eventually, their voicemail was full. In June 2010, the school sent a letter to the family advising them they were withdrawing Alex, and his siblings, because their program “was not meeting the learning needs of the student.” In January 2011, the school issued Alex’s report card filled with 1s, meaning “assessment not able to be completed at this time.”
None of that information was relayed to the school board or to Alberta Education despite the School Act requiring children under 16 to be in school or receiving an approved education.
“There’s no record of the board being notified about Alex. The letter the school sent to the parents wasn’t copied to the superintendent here. That’s not to say it didn’t happen but there’s no record in central files, and no record we contacted the department,” said district superintendent Charlie McCormack, who wasn’t employed there at the time.
“It’s certainly tragic what happened to Alex. I think we’re all on the same page on that. We do use that as an example of a child who fell through the cracks in trying to find ways to keep it from happening again.”
During the trial, School of Hope’s current principal Cardell Musyj testified they were under “no obligation to contact anybody when the child is not in school or (no) longer with us.”
In an interview this year, he said Alex’s case highlights gaps in the system, such as what the process should be when a student doesn’t register for the upcoming year and you can’t communicate with the family.
“What happens to that student’s name, where does it go? When a student falls off the face of the earth, what happens in that current school year and, secondly, what happens in the future year? What is the process?” questions Musyj.
“How do we prevent this from happening again? That’s something even Alberta Education is asking, too, because of this case.”
An Alberta Education spokesperson said school boards, not the government, are “ultimately responsible for making reasonable efforts” to ensure students attend class. If that fails, they can refer the case to the Attendance Board which is now undergoing a change.
Saying it has been ineffective at solving chronic truancy, Alberta’s education minister is creating a new provincial attendance office that will become active this year. It will work with school districts and divisions to help with attendance strategies. “Intractable” cases of truancy will be referred to a smaller attendance board, David Eggen said.
The board has the power to issue court orders compelling parents to bring their child to school, try home-schooling or get other help such as medical or counselling services. Though it rarely uses it, the board has the power to fine parents $100 for each day a child misses school, up to a maximum of $1,000.
The Radita children were only registered with School of Hope for one year, in 2009-10. What happened to Alex’s education from then until his death? When he died at age 15, he had not even completed Grade 4.
“That’s three years he’s unaccounted for being in school,” said Musyj. “There’s a legal responsibility for parents to have their child in school, but when that doesn’t happen that’s when our system should have the checks and balances.”
So while in this province, Alex wasn’t in school, had not seen a doctor and had no involvement with social services.
For five years the little boy went unnoticed; it was like he didn’t exist. And at the end of his suffering, he didn’t. He laid mummified in his bed.
Utter neglect with this emaciated corpse in the middle of it
Boyko was beside herself when she found out.
“Mom (Alex’s foster mother) was horrified. It was really hard on her,” said Brady. “It was a lot of heartbreak for a lot of people. That’s what I hope can be learned from this — how do we stop this from happening again to another child?”
All these years later, Alex’s kindergarten teacher also wants action.
“It was difficult to sit in the courtroom and hear about the suffering he endured for most of his short life. I believe the outcome of the case will help to bring necessary changes at the Ministry level and in regards to the sharing of information between provinces for the protection of vulnerable children such as Alex,” said Wong.
“I will never forget sweet Alex, his smile and inquisitive nature. ... Such a tragedy.”
For five years the little boy went unnoticed; it was like he didn’t exist. And at the end of his suffering, he didn’t. He laid mummified in his bed.