Couple facing jail time over malnourished four-year-old

REGINA A 911 call reporting domestic violence led police to the discovery of an emaciated four-yearold boy locked inside a bedroom of a Regina home.

On Thursday at Regina Court of Queen’s Bench, the couple involved sat side-by-side, emotional and alternately holding hands, leaning into each other and occasionally exchanging brief kisses as they awaited what they anticipated would be jail sentences.

Instead, they were given a brief reprieve as Justice Ellen Gunn decided she wanted a few days to consider things, setting the case over to Dec. 7 for sentence.

The couple — who can’t be identified under a court-imposed publication ban intended to protect the identity of the young victim — pleaded guilty in September to unlawfully causing bodily harm to the boy, who is the 26-year-old woman’s son and the 30-year-old man’s stepson.

Crown prosecutor Kim Jones told the court police were called on April 13, 2015, to the couple’s home, where the intoxicated woman alleged her husband had hit her.

She didn’t want police to come in but they did anyway, as per usual practice, to ensure the safety of those inside. Officers found a home littered with garbage, clothing, feces, urine and old food, as well as being infested by bugs and mice. They also discovered the young boy.

Jones said the child was very thin and had bones visibly protruding along his back. The boy’s eyes appeared pale and sunken, and he was wearing a diaper and sweatpants.

A second child, a nine-monthold boy, was also in the house, although police and mobile crisis workers, and later medical staff, determined he was in good health.

The older boy didn’t fare so well at the start, with a dangerously low blood-sugar level and badly dehydrated body. He weighed just 12 kilograms (approximately 26 pounds). While there were no signs of physical abuse, the boy was severely underweight and lethargic, as well as developmentally delayed.

“(He) was initially scared to take food. However, he did eventually eat and his blood-sugar spiked so high they had to stop feeding him,” Jones said. “Doctors noted that (his) blood work came back normal, but he was living off his body fat and muscle.”

A pediatrician later found the boy to be within the 0.1 to three percentile of acceptable weight. He’s reportedly doing better since.

The mother said the boy had a high metabolism and was hypoglycemic, and reported having taken him to specialists several times, court heard. But upon checking, police discovered no record of the boy having seen any specialists, nor any evidence he had been to a doctor after July 2013.

Jones said extended family reported the boy ate a lot at Easter dinner, but threw up after. One recalled “he looked like an alien.”

Neither the mother nor stepfather had a previous criminal record, but both are facing incarceration should Gunn decide to impose the sentences jointly recommended by Crown and defence: two years in a federal prison for the mother and 18 months in jail for the stepfather.

Noah Evanchuk, representing the mother, and Jeff Deagle for the stepfather told the court their clients love their children and were at a loss to explain what led to this.

Court heard the boy was born of a sexual assault and that his mother had suffered bullying at school and at home as a child, although that was not held up as an explanation for the boy’s malnourishment.

“Sometimes, my Lady, good people do bad things or fail to act,” Evanchuk said.

While the stepfather said he was “lost for words” when asked if he had anything to say, the mother offered up an apology.

“I want to see my kids again,” she added.