The Crown takes on Serenity case
RCMP continues to investigate matter, assistant commissioner tells panel
The case of a four-year-old girl who died while in government care in 2014 has been handed to a Crown prosecutor, but that doesn’t necessarily mean charges will be laid in Serenity’s death, MLAs heard Thursday.
RCMP Assistant Commissioner Marlin Degrand said it’s still “very much a live matter as to where the investigation will go.”
While he wouldn’t go into details about Serenity’s case, he said unlike some other jurisdictions, complex investigations in Alberta involve a consultative process between police and the prosecutors’ office. “It will be either a simple drop of information to them and a response back to us, or it could result in a dialogue back and forth over the course of days, weeks, months, as we continue to seek other information or continue our investigation,” Degrand said.
Degrand was one of a handful of presenters to the legislative child intervention panel Thursday.
Others were from the Edmonton Police Service, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and the Child and Youth Advocate.
The panel is charged with fixing Alberta’s broken child intervention system, through improving the death review process and examining the root causes of family involvement with child welfare.
It was created in the wake of Postmedia’s coverage of Serenity’s case.
The girl died from a traumatic head injury while in kinship care.
When she arrived in hospital, she was suffering from serious hypothermia, catastrophic malnutrition, anal and genital bruising, and weighed just 18 pounds.
Child and youth advocate Del Graff outlined Serenity’s death in a report last year, but told the panel Thursday his office is currently at capacity. An independent officer of the legislature, he’s charged with examining cases of children who died or were seriously injured while in government care, or within two years of receiving intervention services.
In the 2015-16 financial year, his office received 71 reports. So far in 2016-17, it’s received 63.
His office has had to contend with marked increases in the past; it doesn’t stop investigations, Graff said Thursday, merely delays the process.
With the legislation that governs Graff ’s office under review, he said it would be premature to request more resources, and is hopeful the panel will find solutions.
“I have to remain optimistic we’ll get to some place positive, but that’s tempered by reality,” he told reporters. “These are complex issues, so I struggle with that.”
Progressive Conservative Ric McIver and Wildroser Jason Nixon were unimpressed Thursday when asked by interim NDP chair Cam Westhead to refrain from talking specifically about the Serenity case.
Nixon said later he was concerned the government isn’t taking the panel seriously, though Alberta Party Leader Greg Clark said the biggest impediment to progress would be “bickering over process.”