THERE WILL BE NO JUSTICE FOR RHÉAUME

These facts are not in dispute: On Oct. 23, 2010, an inmate with nearly lifelong brain damage and a psychiatric disability got into some kind of dispute with staff at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre and ended up with lacerations to his face, one eye swollen shut, contusions on his ears and the back of his head, abrasions on several parts of his body and an internal swelling on his head for which he was hospitalized.

Last year, Ontario’s ombudsman included this story of 34-year-old inmate Jean-Paul Rhéaume in a report on use of force in correctional facilities. He titled the report The Code, and the chapter about Rhéaume, Conspiracy of Silence. He found that “once the Ministry sent in its inspectors, stories began to change and falter. Eventually, four officers recanted their original reports of the incident and reluctantly admitted having witnessed the unprovoked and brutal beating.”

One officer was fired and charged with assault causing bodily harm. But that case ended abruptly this month when the Crown abandoned the case. The shifting testimony of the guards about which of them was responsible, evidence of collusion among the guards to cook up a story and one guard’s testimony that he told investigators whatever they wanted to hear to save his own job, all made it wrong to proceed with the case.

Rhéaume was dragged behind a car when he was three years old and sustained a brain injury. In 2010, he was serving 30 days for failing to make court appearances. He may well have been, as the guards claimed, a difficult inmate. This all points to the ongoing problem that the detention centre is not equipped to handle many of its inmates — something for which the province must answer. The system is broken. And if there was ever any doubt about whether the ombudsman was exaggerating to use terms such as “the Code” and “Conspiracy of Silence,” this trial has put that to rest.

We citizens, who pay for correctional facilities, who have a right not to be treated as Rhéaume was or to have unjustified violence done in our names, do not know what happened to Rhéaume because the guards won’t tell us. We have a right to answers, and we are not going to get them.

No one should interpret the dropping of this case to mean that no crime was committed against Rhéaume. All we know is that it looks like whoever did that to his face and body will never answer for it in a court of law.