While this story has its beginning in a reign of terror visited on two helpless young children, it’s what happened afterwards, or more to the point didn’t happen, that should concern us.
Last month, a judge in Chilliwack sentenced both foster parents of an 11-year old Indigenous boy to 10 years in prison for torturing and eventually beating him to death.
The parents also beat and tortured his eight-year-old sister.
The treatment meted out to these children passes human comprehension.
Some readers may find what follows disturbing.
The children were bound with zip ties, kept naked for long periods with their eyes taped shut, starved, forced to eat feces and vomit, and frequently kicked and whipped.
The boy died of a traumatic brain injury after being beaten by the mother, possibly with a two-by-four piece of wood found at the scene. All this and more was captured on video cameras throughout the home.
In passing, 10 years in prison is nowhere near sufficient given the shocking nature of these crimes. But it’s what happened after the trial that demands attention.
When the facts were publicized, Children’s Minister Mitzi Dean put out a statement deploring what had happened, then refused to take questions, and essentially ran and hid.
After that proved inadequate, and calls were made for Dean to resign, an unknown number of staff members were fired. In contravention of policy, it appears no social worker visited the foster home for 10 months before the boy was killed.
This is beyond troubling. Passing the blame to staff in no way relieves Dean of her ultimate accountability as minister, a job she’s held since 2020. She should resign.
Then again, a reasonable person might wonder if only front-line staff were fired to protect higher-ups.
Was this in fact the case? Simply put, we don’t know.
When we asked the ministry how many staffers were fired, and what seniority they held, the ministry refused to say, citing the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
Yet if these staffers were indirectly responsible, through negligence, for a child being murdered, what right to privacy have they? Shouldn’t future employers know their work history?
Then again, supposing the staff fired were social workers, it’s well known that duties of this kind must be supervised. In particular it would be indefensible for junior staff to be left to their own devices over a 10-month period with no oversight.
Indeed, it’s well nigh impossible to suppose senior management didn’t know what was going on. And if they did not know, that too is problematic.
So was anyone further up the management ladder let go? The ministry won’t say.
There’s another matter for concern. The government has said on several occasions that ministries are having difficulty hiring staff. This has been given as a reason for allowing 50 per cent of the province’s employees to work from home.
So did unfilled vacancies contribute to the lack of oversight? If so, that’s no fault of the staffers who were fired.
What we’re seeing here is the all-too-common readiness of public bodies to use nonsense claims of “confidentiality” or “privacy” to cover their errors.
Yet the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act legislation was brought in precisely to bring an end to this sort of thing.
Here’s what the act says about releasing confidential details: “Information about … [the] functions or remuneration [of] an officer, employee or member of a public body or a member of a minister’s staff is not an unreasonable invasion of personal privacy.”
So where is the excuse for this coverup?
A young boy was murdered under the ministry’s supervision, and his sister beaten half to death. Spurious claims of privacy simply won’t do.
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