Death, anger and a three-decade crusade
“THE LAST TIME WE DID THIS, I CRIED ... I FEEL LIKE WE NEVER MEASURED UP NO MATTER ALL THE WORK WE DID. AND NOTHING HAS
CHANGED.”
BRENDA DUBOIS
Brenda Dubois can’t forget a little boy named Christopher, a child she came to know through death, not life.
Three decades have passed since the limp, bruised toddler, only 22 months old, was rushed to hospital from a Regina foster home. Beyond any medical help, Christopher Mathew Asaican was pronounced dead that same night, on Jan. 13, 1983.
“He would have been 32 years old today. And he just stopped,” says Dubois.
Sitting in her Regina home all these years later, she reflects on how Christopher’s death became a call to action for her and others pressing for child welfare changes. But with each death, and with the passage of time also comes frustration.
“You know what it feels like all these years, I’ll tell you?” says Dubois, rising from her chair. “Every once in a while you take a big jump and you run into the wall — then you bounce down,” says the 57-year-old mother and grandmother, hurling herself at the wall of her cozy living room.
“And then you go, ‘Aw shit, I’m still going to try to f----n’ move that wall.’ ”
At times, she’s felt like that old children’s toy, the clown that keeps popping up when you knock it down. But weariness is inevitable.
“The last time we did this, I cried ... I feel like we never measured up no matter all the work we did. “And nothing has changed.” Christopher’s death isn’t reflected in the child welfare statistics recently released by the province to the Leader-Post.
His death predates 1992, when Social Services formally began its policy of Child Death Reviews — probing the death of every child in its care or in receipt of services for the previous 12 months.
But it’s the graves of children like Christopher and three-yearold Charlene Rae Friebus (shot by her mother in 1990 in Mortlach after being returned to a home that had proven dangerous for other children) and 23-month-old Thomas Michael Crane (beaten to death in 1990 for touching a stereo when left in his unsafe Regina home despite child welfare concerns) that paved the way for the formal system of reviews, the first comprehensive report on foster care by the Ombudsman, the creation of a Children’s Advocate’s Office, more vigilance and accountability, recommendations and improvements — and yet there’s still a terrible feeling of déjà vu when children, decades apart, suffer a preventable death, just like Christopher.
He had been in foster care only one month, surrendered voluntarily and temporarily by his mother who was grappling with personal problems.
Christopher died after somehow suffering “blunt force trauma” to the abdomen, resulting in internal bleeding when his large intestine ruptured. A pathologist told an inquest the boy had also been injured about two or three weeks earlier, weakening the tissues in and around his intestines. “The injury he received is not uncommon to that found in abused children,” she said.
The coroner, the pathologist, even the deputy social services minister of the day suspected foul play — but no one was ever charged.
The foster father — the only adult home with Christopher, one of seven preschoolers (six foster children) in his care that night — never attended the inquest to testify. A journalism student, from the University of Regina, tracked him down a couple years later. “It’s a dead issue,” he replied tersely to the student’s inquiries. “And it’s going to stay dead.”
But it was only the beginning for people like Dubois.
She first heard about Christopher through a friend. His death inspired a conference that grew into an organization, called Peyakowak. It helped reunify families who had children apprehended and also offered support at times of crisis, in hopes of keeping children out of the system.
“It was the families that taught us how to help them,” says Dubois, who ran Peyakowak for some 10 years.
After about two decades, Peyakowak folded. Dubois didn’t.
Today, the plain-spoken, feisty crusader still advocates on behalf of children, like Christopher, as part of the Aboriginal Family Defence League.
She supported Chris Martell in his walk to the Saskatchewan Legislative Building in 2010 following the death of his son Evander Daniels. Accidentally scalded and drowned in an overcapacity and overwhelmed foster home, he was 22 months old, like Christopher.
Resembling a living tombstone, Dubois wore a T-shirt bearing Evander’s name, date of birth, and the day he died when she joined a different family at an inquest a year later probing the preventable death of a three-year-old foster child. With duct tape, she added the little boy’s name to the shirt.
It’s a name that can’t be reported, but for his initials A.P.G., because of a publication ban sought by Social Services at the inquest. He died on Dec. 17, 2009 of a treatable chest infection inside a Pense foster home that left a seasoned police investigator shocked by its filthy and unsafe state. Some of the rooms were never even seen by visiting social workers because the foster parents refused to allow access.
Her voice rising with emotion, Dubois asks, “When (workers) were going out to assess the quality of her home and hire someone for 35 hours (to assist with cleaning and organizing), how much time was spent talking about (A.P.G.) and his needs?”
The inquest revealed a litany of communication breakdowns, missed opportunities, and a morethan-forgiving stance toward the foster parents — who also can’t be named due to the publication ban — because of their reputation and standing within the foster care community. They were trainers for other foster parents, but their own home left children at risk with unsecured medications and no baby gate.
“I’d get numb and I’d try to forget,” recalls Dubois. “Then it would come back again and I’d say, ‘No, I’ve got to do something.’” She and the boy’s grandmother tried to press for criminal charges — to no avail. Police and prosecutors concluded there wasn’t sufficient evidence of a crime. Still, Dubois remains grateful to the RCMP officers who photographed the house. “Those pictures were disgusting.” They may not have proven a crime, but exposed gaps in the child welfare system.
She is sympathetic to overwhelmed social workers — but not to the system that allows it to happen.
“They’re taking away too many children — and they don’t know what to do with them. And that’s so sad,” says Dubois. She wants more resources and efforts put into keeping children in their own homes.
As of September 2013, the ministry reported 4,559 children were in out-of-home placements — a number that has fallen over the past five years. It includes 2,916 children directly under the ministry’s care and 1,643 who are considered “non-wards,” placed by court order with “a person of sufficient interest,” or PSI, usually a relative.
Social Services says change has been and is occurring, for example reducing overcrowded foster homes.
But just as Christopher wasn’t the last child to die in appalling circumstances, Dubois knows the best of intentions and policies don’t always guarantee results.
“Your change is f---ing too slow and painful,” she says.