State should say why it gave up on boy

N.S. case file offers unique opportunity

For as long as there have been children dying in the care of the state, usually via a child welfare agency, the state has pretended to be very, very interested in finding out what on Earth happened, what went wrong, what new processes can prevent another such death.

Phoenix Sinclair, aged five, killed by her mother and boyfriend in 2005.

Jeffrey Baldwin, aged five, killed by his grandparents in 2002.

Jordan Heikamp, aged five weeks, starved to death in 1997 while at a women’s shelter with his mother.

Sara Podniewicz, aged six months, killed by her parents in 1994.

The number of such cases is legion; these are just some of the names I know intimately, where I covered the murder trials and/or the coroner’s inquests or fatality inquiries or a more sweeping inquiry.

In the story of Abdoul Abdi, the government of Nova Scotia has a unique opportunity — to study the life and times of a kid who grew up in the arms of the state and somehow, against all the odds, managed not to die.

Yet he ended up being moved to no fewer than 31 group or foster homes (they are not the same), managed to acquire a significant criminal record and made it, hold your breath, as far as Grade 6.

Abdi ended up serving a five-year sentence for aggravated assault and other offences. He was released on parole in January, and is now living in a halfway house, and working.

That this happened to a defenceless, exceptionally vulnerable child who spent so much of his life in the care of the state is a disgrace and should be a source of shame for Nova Scotia.

Abdi of course is the 24-year-old who this week escaped deportation to Somalia, a country in which he never lived and has no family but which Canadian authorities were until recently (the collective mind having been changed, it appears, thanks only to a series of judges’ decisions and unending bad publicity) bent on “returning” him.

He was born in Saudi Arabia to a Somali mother and a Saudi father, whom he never knew. He lived as a baby in Saudi and then spent four years with his mom, two aunts and his sister in a UN refugee camp in Djibouti. His mother died there. In August of 2000, Abdi et al. arrived in Canada as sponsored refugees, landing first in Cape Breton and then Halifax.

Imagine this frightened, skinny kid arriving just in time for his first Canadian winter on the island.

In any case, within a year, the province’s Department of Community Services, or DCS as it’s known, apprehended Abdi and just two years later he was made a permanent ward.

Apparently even to those who have seen the voluminous files, it isn’t entirely clear why the apprehension even took place — one of his aunts Abdi apparently regards as his mother and she remains in his life, trying, for instance, to get him his citizenship when she got hers but was overruled by DCS — but it’s likely it can be attributed at least in part to them being overwhelmed by their shockingly new situation.

Early this year, in the wake of Abdi’s case, Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil announced the province would be reviewing the files of children in care who don’t have citizenship. Friday, DCS spokeswoman Heather Fairburn told the National Post in a phone interview that the review has been completed and that effective May 1, if a child doesn’t have Canadian citizenship, a caseworker will collect official paperwork to verify his or her status and take it into account in all plans of care.

I reached Fairburn at the end of the day and she didn’t have time to find out information about the number of children in care who may be without citizenship.

Helpful as she was, there is no way on God’s green earth that, absent a broader public inquiry into his case, the world will ever know the truth of what happened to Abdoul Abdi.

Because I’ve been down this road before with dead kids, I have a fair inkling that it will involve buck-passing and arse-covering, bureaucratic ennui, occasional glimpses of outright incompetence, and a collective blindness to the fact that this was a kid — a human being of tender years and endless potential — who had an incredibly bad draw in life and needed all the help he could get.

I’d like to know if, as his file made the rounds, anyone read it.

I’d like to know who were the various social workers who determined that it was OK to move this child, again, to his sixth and then his 11th and then his 21st and then his 30th group home.

(Abdi came to Canada at the age of six and was apprehended at the age of seven. Assuming he “aged out” of the system at the age of 18, that means he spent 11 years in care. He was in 31 group or foster homes, which works out to a new place every four months or so.)

I’d like to hear the supervisors of those social workers testify.

I’d like to know if anyone noticed he wasn’t progressing in school, if anyone tried to get him extra help.

I’d like to know when DCS gave up on him, though I’m certain it won’t be put that coarsely. But there will be in those files such a moment, a point of no return.

And I’d like to hear from Abdi himself, about what it was like, how he found the resilience to survive that horror show.

The motto of the Ontario coroner’s office is, “We speak for the dead to protect the living.” It would be outstanding, just once, to hear from the living.