Agency tolerated abuse of foster kids, judge finds
A Quebec Court judge came down hard on the province’s youth protection agency in a recent ruling, admonishing it for allowing two Drummondville boys to sustain years of abuse while in foster care.
In a ruling published this week, Judge Marie-Josée Ménard found that the foster parents beat the boys, broke their toys and forced them to eat their meals apart from the rest of the family. Ménard says the youth protection agency first became aware of this behaviour in 2009 but tolerated it for nearly six years.
“For years, the children were exposed with the consent of the (youth protection agency) and the tolerance of its case workers to an environment that was inappropriate, inadequate and unhealthy to their emotional well being,” Ménard wrote in her Oct. 24 decision.
“Because of the well-documented difficulties these children endured, we cannot explain, justify or tolerate that the agency was so passive in its intervention with the children.”
The boys were aged two and six when the agency placed them in foster care in 2008. Their biological parents struggled with addiction and the children had already been through a traumatic childhood by that point, according to the ruling.
The judge claims there’s a documented history of abuse that stretches back to 2009 — when the foster parents reportedly began spanking the kids and breaking their toys to discipline them. Their foster mother taunted and humiliated the boys, while the foster father struck the older child in the face at least once, the ruling found.
Though the agency suggested
We cannot explain, justify or tolerate that the agency was so passive in its intervention with the children.
measures and services that might aid in the children’s development beginning in 2010, the foster parents never made much of an effort to seek help. Furthermore, the judge believes that, for years, youth protection workers never followed up despite a number of red flags raised in their interventions.
Over the years, psychiatrists and case workers picked up on developmental problems in the boys. One developed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and the younger child — though a successful student — got into trouble at school for “violence, lies and theft.”
In the face of what Ménard calls a “toxic” living situation that went on for nearly eight years, the agency acknowledged its workers did not follow proper protocol. An investigation by the agency found that the case workers who intervened in the foster home over the years didn’t share “pertinent and crucial information” that could have protected the boys.
The children were finally removed from the foster home last year and are slowly adjusting to their new home, according to the ruling. Ménard wrote of an incident where the older boy, now 14 years old, reacted violently when his new foster parents asked him to wait for them in the car.
“He feared being confined to the car for hours as was the case at his old foster home,” Ménard wrote. “The (new) parents showed patience and compassion to reassure the child, explaining to him that they simply wanted to all get in the vehicle to go home.
“Still, much work will need to be done for these kids who have been ‘dented’ by life.”
Chantal Grondin, the lawyer who represented the boys, did not return the Montreal Gazette’s phone call as of this writing. The lawyer for the youth protection agency could not be reached for comment.