‘THAT’S CRUELTY’
The justice system’s treatment of the mentally ill was thrust into the spotlight Monday. The sister of Cleve ‘Cas’ Geddes told a coroner’s inquest that putting a suicidal man into solitary confinement was a cruel, and in the end deadly, mistake.
Placing her suicidal, schizophrenic brother in solitary confinement at the Ottawa jail when a judge had ordered him admitted to a psychiatric hospital was “downright cruelty,” the sister of Cleve Geddes testified Monday during the first day of a coroner’s inquest into his death.
“I don’t know whose idea it is to put anybody in solitary confinement,” Sigrid Geddes testified. “Just imagine if it was your sister or your brother in that situation. If someone identifies as suicidal and you put him in a room alone? That’s cruelty. That’s just downright cruelty. It’s inhumane.”
Cleve Casimir Geddes — “Cas” to his friends and family — died Feb. 10, 2017, at The Ottawa Hospital, two days after guards at the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre found he hanged himself in his cell using bedsheets.
An inquest is mandatory whenever a death occurs in custody. The nine-day inquest, under presiding coroner Dr. Michael Wilson, is expected to look at why Geddes wasn’t admitted to hospital; what training police and correctional officers receive and the procedures they follow when dealing with mentally ill, suicidal people; and what other services are available in such cases.
Geddes, 30, had been arrested in Killaloe on Jan. 30 on a warrant issued after he had failed to appear in court on charges of uttering threats and causing a disturbance in the Pembroke Public Library the previous month. It was the same day that Geddes had a confrontation with his father, Donald Dunning, that had prompted Dunning to go to police and ask for a peace bond against his son.
Dunning told the inquest that he had frequent run-ins with his son, and that Cas had threatened to burn down his father’s house, “fill his head with bullets” and “put him in his coffin.”
Cas Geddes was the youngest of six children. He was a healthy kid, athletic, “super popular” and excelled in school with a fondness for Shakespeare, his sister said. That changed when he was 19 and began showing signs of mental illness.
“He would get a strange look in his eyes. He’d laugh at inappropriate times and go off on psychotic ramblings,” she said.
Eventually, Sigrid and another sister took him to the emergency department at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. The experience was disastrous, but it was the first time that Cas was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a disorder that also affected an older brother.
“It was very difficult for him to accept. It was like a death sentence for him.”
Cas held various jobs after that point, but his life was a roller-coaster. He lived in a group home for a while, but was thrown out for breaking the rules. He lived on the streets for a time, but was living in an apartment in Killaloe when he was arrested.
He could often be aggressive with people, swearing, screaming and yelling, but had never tried to harm himself, she said.
After he was arrested, a judge in Pembroke ruled Cas should be admitted to hospital. But there were no free beds at The Royal, Ottawa’s psychiatric hospital, so he ended up instead at the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre.
Sigrid learned Cas was in jail the day after his arrest, but the family was unable to contact him. Inmates aren’t allowed to receive calls in jail, and can only call collect. Sigrid only has a cellphone and collect calls aren’t allowed to cellphones.
Her mother called the jailed and begged the guards to bring Cas to the phone, which they did.
“Cas told her he just wanted out,” she said.
The next communication Sigrid got came from a social worker at The Ottawa Hospital, who told her Cas was “non-verbal.” A doctor came on the phone to clarify that Cas had hanged himself and was on life support.
Coroner’s counsel Tom Schneider asked Geddes if she had any recommendations for the jury.
“I’ll just state the obvious: No one deserves what happened to him. This was not the appropriate path for him. It was a very difficult 10 years of him being ill, and then it got even more difficult. We lost him twice.”
If someone identifies as suicidal and you put him in a room alone? That’s cruelty.