Call for Inquriy into Foster Care Abuse

Call for Inquiry into Foster Care Abuse
Women claim abuses occurred while they were under Child and family services care

Wawatay News June 01, 2006
Joyce Hunter
joyceh@wawatay.on.ca

Three women who claim they were abused both sexually and physically while under child and family services care have come forward declaring the system failed them.
Sherri-Lynne McQueen, Diane Ogima Moir and Debi O'Kane are also claiming today's child-care system remains a failure.

On May 19 the trio walked approximately five kilometers from Children's Aid Society of the District of Thunder Bay to the offices of Liberal MP Joe Comuzzi and Liberal MPP Michael Gravelle to raise awareness about their concerns.

"I was raped and beaten while I was a Crown ward," McQueen told Comuzzi and Gravelle. Ogima Moir said she was raped by a foster parent while in care. O'Kane said her foster father prostituted her to his friends during drunken parties.

Rob Richardson, executive director of Thunder Bay Children's Aid Society, the agency that had care of the women when they were children, said the issue of abuse is something the agency takes very seriously. "It goes against everything we stand for," he said. "The cases (from the women) go back as far as 40 years." Richardson said children's aid programming has changed dramatically in the last 40 years.

"Forty years ago, the sexual abuse of children wasn't talked about," he said. "Today we take the issue of child abuse more seriously. We have better screening and better training. If someone came forward with allegations today, it would be thoroughly investigated."

Richardson met with the women prior to their walk to hear their stories. "How do we bring closure to these women?" he said afterward. "That is a big question. I've spoken with the organizers of the walk and we've agreed that we will talk." Richardson said the CAS welcomes the opportunity to sort out the women's issues.

Upon arriving at Gravelle and Comuzzi's offices, McQueen read a prepared statement to them. McQueen said she was so negatively affected by the system she never recovered from it. Her own children were taken by Children's Aid in 2003, she added. "This is a disease that affects one generation and is carried down to the next either indirectly or directly."

After years spent being abused sexually, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually, McQueen said she had no meaning left in her life. "I used alcohol and drugs so I wouldn't have to face the truth," she said. McQueen's drug and alcohol use led to her separation from her five children. Three of them were adopted out. The other two are
still in care but McQueen is not allowed to visit with them. "My children will grow up without a sense of identity," she said. "They will know they don't belong where they are today."

McQueen said she would like to see a "family preservation program" become part of the Child Welfare Act, noting that parents need to be able to spend enough time with their children in care to bond with them. McQueen also said she would like to see programs specially designed for foster children who are survivors of sexually, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual abuse.

"I would also like to see people who encountered this failure by the system to work in these programs," she said. "It is hard sitting in front of a counselor who has never experienced anything like this and hear them say 'I know what you mean' when they really have no clue how it feels to be left to struggle through life alone without an identity."

Had the child-care welfare system been better organized and structured, McQueen said she, and others like her, would ot have had to go through what they did. "Since I came back (from Winnipeg) a lot of the people I grew up with in foster care have died as a result of drug and alcohol abuse and suicide," she said. "I'm here today on behalf of the people who cannot speak for themselves because they have not yet found the strength to do it and for the people who cannot because they have died."

McQueen wants an inquiry called to define how pervasive the issue of abused foster children is. Because child-care is provincially legislated and administered, Gravelle said he would take McQueen's recommendations to Mary-Anne Chambers, Minister of Children and Youth Services, and to Premier Dalton McGuinty on behalf of the women who came to him for answers.

"They deserve to be heard," Gravelle said. "And beyond that, they deserve answers and solutions."

Questioning The Child Welfare System

As part of a prepared speech May 19 in Thunder Bay, Sherri-Lynne McQueen directed these questions to Liberal MP Joe Comuzzi and Liberal MPP Michael Gravelle:

Why can't we as parents visit our children in care?

Will the government assist in building a community-based program so that it can oversee our child welfare system and our child welfare agencies as a third party?

Will the government allow a third party such as a community-based program to advocate for children in care when the agencies are saying it is in the best interests of the child that all family ties be severed?

Will the government legislate under the Child Welfare Act a family preservation program?

Will the government implement funding for education of former foster children?

Will the government implement a reunification program so our children don't have to grow up without a sense of identity or without a sense of belonging?

Some of our children should have gone to family members or our agencies should have helped us when we needed it. Our agencies have taken our children and left us to fend for ourselves. We went through programs, and in the end, they said it is in the best interests of the children that they become permanent wards. Will the government open our cases on children who have been adopted in Manitoba because some of these adoptions shouldn't have happened?

Will the government see this as a healing of the children, healing of the parents, healing of the products that we have all become and a healing of the victims that we are?