Inquest jury rules boy's starvation death a homicide
By Michele Mandel ,Toronto Sun
First posted: Friday, February 14, 2014 09:46 AM EST | Updated: Friday, February 14, 2014 05:35 PM EST
TORONTO - We will remember his name.
Jeffrey Baldwin is now seared into our conscience, the cherubic five-year-old who died emaciated and forgotten more than 11 years ago in the midst of our busy city, starved to death by his own grandparents while child welfare workers and even the adult relatives in his own home looked the other way.
Those grandparents have long been locked away in prison for second-degree murder and now the lengthy inquest into Jeffrey’s death has concluded with 103 recommendations designed to prevent a similar tragedy.
The first duty of any inquest jury is to reach a verdict on the death and in this case, their decision was an obvious one: Jeffrey died Nov. 30, 2002 as a result of a homicide, caused by “pneumonia and septic shock secondary to chronic starvation.”
The horrific details are well known: In the mid-1990s, Jeffrey and his three siblings were taken from their inept young parents by the Catholic Children’s Aid and placed in the eager care of master manipulator Elva Bottineau and hubby Norman Kidman. No one in the child welfare agency bothered to run even a cursory background check on the children’s grandparents; If they had, they would have discovered both were convicted child abusers.
The CCAS’s last contact with Jeffrey was in the summer of 2000 during a brief investigation into a tipster’s allegations of sex abuse. They concluded “he and his siblings appeared to be healthy and well.”
They were far from it.
After more than four years in his grandparents’ care, Jeffrey’s body was caked with bacteria a millimetre thick, fecal bacteria clogged his lungs, scabs covered his ***** and scrotum and he was too weak to battle the pneumonia that finally killed him. Jeffrey weighed just 21 pounds, still wasn’t toilet trained and was so tiny for his age that he was a head shorter than his brother who was two years younger.
He was, the coroner said at the time, “like a 90-year-old person in a five-year-old body.”
The boy’s eldest sister and youngest brother were the chosen ones — they enjoyed a warm bedroom and regular meals. Jeffrey and his younger sister were “the pigs” — kept captive in a fetid, locked and unheated room. With no access to the bathroom, their bare mattress was covered in urine and feces. In convicting the grandparents of Jeffrey’s murder in 2006, Justice David Watt described the children’s living conditions as so cruel that the Toronto Humane Society wouldn’t tolerate them for a household pet.
“Jeffrey’s death was preventable,” acknowledged CCAS director Mary McConville following the inquest recommendations Friday. “Finding this information in our records would have led to a different outcome. I am deeply sorry for the suffering and death of Jeffrey and for the harm caused to his siblings. I cannot change the past, but I have made every effort to change the future.”
Family members offering to care for children in need of protection are no longer a “blind spot” for child welfare agencies, she said. They are now subject to the same screening and criminal background checks as other foster parents.
The inquest called for better record keeping and information sharing across child protection agencies. “There was a call for a shared database after Jeffrey died and it’s more than a decade later,” complained Irwin Elman, provincial advocate for children and youth. “Just do it, for goodness sake.”
The jurors also recommended a mandatory investigative training and testing program for child welfare investigators that should include such basics as asking for identification.
But while the CCAS was often cast as the only demon in this horrible story, the jury’s wide-ranging recommendations suggest there were many other players who failed Jeffrey, including neighbours, school staff and members of his own family.
There were four other adults living in that east-end home — Jeffrey’s two aunts and their partners — who did nothing to save him as he was slowly starved to death. There was a teacher and an educational assistant who taught his six-year-old sister and though she reeked of urine, was ravenously hungry and frequently absent, they also failed to report what they saw. A neighbour noticed that Jeffrey had practically disappeared and when she finally saw him in public, he seemed really sick and unnaturally small.
She figured children’s aid was dealing with it, and reported nothing.
That blindness cannot continue. The jury has called on the Toronto District School Board to run annual mandatory training on the duty to report child abuse and neglect for all staff, including caretakers and lunchroom supervisors.
And one of their most interesting, and likely contentious, recommendations is that like doctors and teachers, members of the public should be subject to penalties if they fail to report their suspicions of abuse. It’s unconscionable that Jeffrey’s aunts and their partners will never be punished for watching him die before their very eyes.
More than a decade after he died, we remember Jeffrey Baldwin. That blond, angelic little boy wanted to fly; he wanted to be Superman. Let his name now soar — a reminder that no child should ever be so invisible again.
********
After 300 exhibits and more than three months of testimony, the four-member inquest jury delivered 103 non-binding recommendations to prevent further deaths like that of Jeffrey Baldwin.
Among them:
Inquest jury rules boy's starvation death a homicide | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto Sun
By Michele Mandel ,Toronto Sun
First posted: Friday, February 14, 2014 09:46 AM EST | Updated: Friday, February 14, 2014 05:35 PM EST
TORONTO - We will remember his name.
Jeffrey Baldwin is now seared into our conscience, the cherubic five-year-old who died emaciated and forgotten more than 11 years ago in the midst of our busy city, starved to death by his own grandparents while child welfare workers and even the adult relatives in his own home looked the other way.
Those grandparents have long been locked away in prison for second-degree murder and now the lengthy inquest into Jeffrey’s death has concluded with 103 recommendations designed to prevent a similar tragedy.
The first duty of any inquest jury is to reach a verdict on the death and in this case, their decision was an obvious one: Jeffrey died Nov. 30, 2002 as a result of a homicide, caused by “pneumonia and septic shock secondary to chronic starvation.”
The horrific details are well known: In the mid-1990s, Jeffrey and his three siblings were taken from their inept young parents by the Catholic Children’s Aid and placed in the eager care of master manipulator Elva Bottineau and hubby Norman Kidman. No one in the child welfare agency bothered to run even a cursory background check on the children’s grandparents; If they had, they would have discovered both were convicted child abusers.
The CCAS’s last contact with Jeffrey was in the summer of 2000 during a brief investigation into a tipster’s allegations of sex abuse. They concluded “he and his siblings appeared to be healthy and well.”
They were far from it.
After more than four years in his grandparents’ care, Jeffrey’s body was caked with bacteria a millimetre thick, fecal bacteria clogged his lungs, scabs covered his ***** and scrotum and he was too weak to battle the pneumonia that finally killed him. Jeffrey weighed just 21 pounds, still wasn’t toilet trained and was so tiny for his age that he was a head shorter than his brother who was two years younger.
He was, the coroner said at the time, “like a 90-year-old person in a five-year-old body.”
The boy’s eldest sister and youngest brother were the chosen ones — they enjoyed a warm bedroom and regular meals. Jeffrey and his younger sister were “the pigs” — kept captive in a fetid, locked and unheated room. With no access to the bathroom, their bare mattress was covered in urine and feces. In convicting the grandparents of Jeffrey’s murder in 2006, Justice David Watt described the children’s living conditions as so cruel that the Toronto Humane Society wouldn’t tolerate them for a household pet.
“Jeffrey’s death was preventable,” acknowledged CCAS director Mary McConville following the inquest recommendations Friday. “Finding this information in our records would have led to a different outcome. I am deeply sorry for the suffering and death of Jeffrey and for the harm caused to his siblings. I cannot change the past, but I have made every effort to change the future.”
Family members offering to care for children in need of protection are no longer a “blind spot” for child welfare agencies, she said. They are now subject to the same screening and criminal background checks as other foster parents.
The inquest called for better record keeping and information sharing across child protection agencies. “There was a call for a shared database after Jeffrey died and it’s more than a decade later,” complained Irwin Elman, provincial advocate for children and youth. “Just do it, for goodness sake.”
The jurors also recommended a mandatory investigative training and testing program for child welfare investigators that should include such basics as asking for identification.
But while the CCAS was often cast as the only demon in this horrible story, the jury’s wide-ranging recommendations suggest there were many other players who failed Jeffrey, including neighbours, school staff and members of his own family.
There were four other adults living in that east-end home — Jeffrey’s two aunts and their partners — who did nothing to save him as he was slowly starved to death. There was a teacher and an educational assistant who taught his six-year-old sister and though she reeked of urine, was ravenously hungry and frequently absent, they also failed to report what they saw. A neighbour noticed that Jeffrey had practically disappeared and when she finally saw him in public, he seemed really sick and unnaturally small.
She figured children’s aid was dealing with it, and reported nothing.
That blindness cannot continue. The jury has called on the Toronto District School Board to run annual mandatory training on the duty to report child abuse and neglect for all staff, including caretakers and lunchroom supervisors.
And one of their most interesting, and likely contentious, recommendations is that like doctors and teachers, members of the public should be subject to penalties if they fail to report their suspicions of abuse. It’s unconscionable that Jeffrey’s aunts and their partners will never be punished for watching him die before their very eyes.
More than a decade after he died, we remember Jeffrey Baldwin. That blond, angelic little boy wanted to fly; he wanted to be Superman. Let his name now soar — a reminder that no child should ever be so invisible again.
********
After 300 exhibits and more than three months of testimony, the four-member inquest jury delivered 103 non-binding recommendations to prevent further deaths like that of Jeffrey Baldwin.
Among them:
- Within two years, implement the long-promised Child Protection Information Network, a database which would contain and share records across the province’s 46 children’s aid societies, and have it accessible to all child protection workers at all hours.
- Consider amalgamating all Ontario children’s aid societies into one co-ordinated agency and in the meantime, have one 1-800 referral line.
- Allow around the clock access for child protection workers to run criminal checks on potential caregivers through the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC),
- Allow child protection workers to ask for “identification for reasonable inspection” from any adult living in a home with a child under CAS protection.
- Annual home visits for any child under five placed with a relative, even after the case file is closed.
- The province should develop a public awareness campaign about the duty to report concerns about child abuse or neglect.
- Introduce penalties for members of the public who have “direct and substantive” knowledge of abuse or neglect but fail to report it.
- All new child protection workers should have to go through an intensive training program, participate in field practice assignments and pass exams.
- The Catholic Children’s Aid Society should develop a case study on the lessons learned from Jeffrey Baldwin to be included in future training.
- Children’s Aid Societies should ensure that professionals who report abuse or neglect are notified that their report has been received so it doesn’t fall through the cracks.
- The Toronto District School Board should have mandatory annual training for all staff on recognizing the signs of abuse and the duty to report.
- Parents, especially minors, should be informed that they have a right to a lawyer when a child welfare agency is seeking to place their kids in care.
- A press conference should be held in a year for agencies to report their progress in implementing the inquest recommendations.
Inquest jury rules boy's starvation death a homicide | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto Sun
