Mother admits to abandoning three children

Left 17 hours, 2 toddlers covered in feces

A mother who left her ninemonth-old baby and two toddlers alone overnight while she drank and did drugs pleaded guilty Wednesday to child abandonment

The three children had been alone in the apartment for more than 17 hours on March 4 when neighbours spotted the 31/2- year- old daughter naked and covered in feces in the front window of the locked townhouse crying for her mother.

Police were called, and when they couldn’t get the child to open the front door, broke in through a rear balcony door of the Lebrun Street residence in Vanier at 5:30 p.m.

Inside, an officer found a two-year-old girl, clad in nothing but a T-shirt and covered in feces.

A screaming nine-monthold infant girl was found perched at the top of a flight of stairs when police found her, said prosecutor Mike Boyce.

The apartment was filthy and in “complete disarray” — toilets filled with feces and covered in urine, an overflowing ashtray and large empty bottle of red wine nearby.

The smoke detector was disconnected, and toys, clothes and food were strewn across the floor. Half a loaf of bread, a tub of margarine and a butter knife were left on the sofa.

There were two single mattresses on the floor with no sheets or covers in one of the bedrooms.

The mother was nowhere to be found, although she eventually told police after calling her landlord that she had left the children with a babysitter she had met the day before. She didn’t have a contact phone number for the babysitter. That was a lie, Boyce said. The truth, according to the woman’s lawyer, Jason Gilbert, was that the woman left the house around 11 p.m. the night before after an argument with the children’s father.

The woman, who can’t be identified to protect the identity of the children, went to a friend’s house in Sandy Hill, where she drank alcohol and did drugs until she passed out. She didn’t wake up until the next day.

It wasn’t until an unrelated family court appearance four days later that the woman was arrested by police.

The children — who were hungry and tired but otherwise unhurt — were seized by the Children’s Aid Society.

The woman, who has been in treatment since March 13, has been having supervised visits with the children since July.

The woman spent five days in jail before entering treatment.

She can have semi-supervised visits at the Children’s Aid Society offices and may eventually be able to see the children with CAS supervision at her mother’s house, where she now resides.

The potential the woman could be alone with the children away from the CAS didn’t sit well with Ontario Court Justice Peter Wright, however.

“We’re changing that now,” said Wright.

“Given the horrible facts that have been provided, Children’s Aid may be comfortable. I don’t think I am,” he said.

“I’m not prepared to be as liberal as the people at the CAS.”

Gilbert explained that the woman has been attending alcoholics and narcotics anonymous.

“She’s been clean since March of this year,” said Gilbert, despite a “slip-up” that saw her sneak off to Montreal for a weekend when she left the treatment program for what was supposed to be a supervised visit with the children.

She admitted the mistake and a urine test came back clean, Gilbert said.

The woman was also kicked out of another residential treatment program after she had a relationship with a male patient.

The woman, who had straight brown hair, a piercing on her lip and wore a brown pantsuit Wednesday, sat quietly in the front row of the courtroom next to her mother. She earlier stood with her hands crossed in front of her as she pleaded guilty to a single count of child abandonment.

The woman is expected to return to court Jan. 22 for a sentencing hearing.