CAS CASES

CAS cases March 01

February 28, 2001
http://www.odyssey.on.ca/~balancebeam/cas/candy_splits_family.htm
Candy splits family
BOY ALLEGES BEATING, CAS STEPS IN
By THANE BURNETT

MISSISSAUGA - Bobby has always said he didn't steal the licorice. And that he didn't need to get hit for eating it.

He told his stepmom that - after she found the crumpled wrapper under his bed linens.

He told it to his dad, before he spanked him hard on the backside for taking yet another piece of candy and lying about it afterward.

And it's what he told his teacher the next day, and the Peel Region Children's Aid Society workers who, that night, came to his house and walked over his stepmother's white carpet with their shoes. And then again to the police, who followed soon after to arrest his father.

He even told his grandma, who warned Bobby - even as the Children's Aid social workers were quietly taking him from the home - that he better start telling the truth or he'd get a whuppin'.

And it's what Bobby told the court, right before his dad was convicted in April 1999 of striking the 11-year-old child with the angry metal end of a belt.

But the father, who can't be named because Bobby's identity is protected under law, has always said he didn't use the belt on the boy. Only his hand.

The father told that to the children's aid workers who testified against him and the police who put him up against the wall. He even told it to the first judge, who found him guilty of assault with a weapon and gave him two years probation.

Now, in an appeal decision, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has found the father not guilty.

Not that the higher court necessarily believed he didn't use his belt to punish his son for stealing the licorice. Rather, according to the just-released decision, "what was at issue was theft; the appellant was entitled to conclude that theft is a serious matter in principle, worthy of a serious sanction, despite the minimal value of the thing stolen.

"If there is doubt whether the force is not used by way of correction and whether the force is excessive, then can the belt be a weapon?"

The lower court, it's been decided, made a mistake when it came to assessing parental conduct.

Bobby's father feels vindicated. He estimates they've spent $65,000, including lawyers and lost time at work, to fight the allegations of child abuse.

They say Bobby has a history of crying wolf.

He and his wife have filed a lawsuit against the Children's Aid Society of the Region of Peel and Peel Police.

In a statement of defence filed by police, officials say they acted properly and justly in arresting Bobby's father. A spokesman for the local Children's Aid Society said yesterday they were unaware of the lawsuit and couldn't comment further.

The parents want nearly $1.5 million for being falsely accused. But they no longer want Bobby.

"I said all along I spanked him, but I've said all along it was with my hand and never with a belt," says his dad, a thin, bony, hard-working and hard-smoking Peel Region resident.

"No one believed me. They all wanted to believe Bobby," he says, scarred and dirty workpants held up by a thick brown belt.

"We don't want him back home with us. What's to stop him from doing it all again?"

As he speaks, his third wife - Bobby's stepmom - organizes the mountain of legal documents they've collected from the day he was arrested.

On the cover of one of the large binders they've written "Bobby," then added a large atomic bomb mushroom plume below it.

He's always been trouble, say the parents. Especially when it comes to stealing candy. He even hogged the Easter eggs one year and blamed the dog for some missing treats another time.

He once told a teacher his parents stuffed chocolates down his throat.

"He could be a charming kid though sometimes ... heart of gold," says his stepmom, who once told him to write 1,000 lines after he stole some candy.

Bobby's still under the control of Children's Aid, living at a local group residence after several foster homes.

His father says Bobby's not doing very well.

If there is any real justice in this world, someone today will back a truckload of sweets at the door of that group home and tell Bobby to take it all.

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Toronto Sun - March 11, 2001
http://www.odyssey.on.ca/~balancebeam/cas/sex_letter.htm
Sex-letter teacher tied to dad's ordeal
By MICHELE MANDEL

While sex letters teacher Annie Markson was under College of Teacher charges of abusing a student, she was still working as a volunteer with the Catholic Children's Aid Society. Under a cloud of suspicion, she was still taking his kids out for jaunts around the city.

But then theirs is a story of many ironies, this father and Annie Markson, two lives that intersected in the year 1998, a year that would see both haunted by the spectre of child abuse. Yet he would not learn how parallel were their problems until more than two years later, when he saw her face on the TV news.

Until then he had only known her as Annie the volunteer who took his son and daughter out on excursions -- and then as Annie, the woman who felt she was compelled to report him to the Catholic Children's Aid after his common law wife said he may have abused his little girl. All the while keeping her own troubles to herself.

We will call him John because we cannot use his real name. He is a single dad with a checkered past who was struggling to make a better life for his son, then 7, and his daughter, then 9. Markson was a "Special Friend" sent over by the Catholic CAS to spend some time with his children, take them to the zoo, have them over on some weekends.

"She was a properly constituted volunteer with the Catholic Children's Aid Society from 1993 until June of 1999 when she moved out of the country for a while," says spokeswoman Caroline Di Giovanni.

"She, as all our volunteers, was subject to a screening process: She had to supply references, the references went through the police record check -- they not only check the individual but they check the references as well -- and she participated quite actively in the training for new volunteers and other events for volunteers through the time that she was a volunteer with us."

NO WARNING

But it seems no one informed the Catholic CAS that Markson was facing abuse charges by the College of Teachers over her relationship with a 14-year-old student. And so there was no system in place that warned John or any other parent that the lady taking out their children was accused of abusing a student "physically, sexually, verbally, psychologically or emotionally."

An Ontario College of Teachers discipline committee found Markson not guilty of that charge March 1. It ruled her secret meetings and sexually charged letters to the Grade 8 boy she'd befriended at a Unionville high school constituted professional misconduct, but not abuse.

During the spring and summer of 1998, the student told the hearing, his clandestine meetings with the supply teacher never progressed beyond hugging and kissing. Their letters, though, told a more disturbing story: "I can't even think of you going on a 'date' with someone else," Markson wrote the boy. "You can experience new things with me and only me. I'm feeling quite possessive! Sorry, I would have to hurt someone if they came near you."

He in turn e-mailed her about "three spots" on his body that she could touch and how he wanted to touch her "breasts, butt, and ... I don't know."

Later that summer, the boy's parents would discover their secret tryst and Markson was reported to the police and the school board. York Regional Police would launch an investigation -- ultimately no charges were laid -- and she was dropped from the York Catholic board's roster of supply teachers. But incredibly, she still remained a volunteer with the Catholic CAS. "We have nothing in her file at all about the College of Teachers," Di Giovanni says. "I don't have that anywhere."

And Markson was certainly not volunteering the information.

As a volunteer, she had been taking John's son and daughter at least once a month on outings around the city. She often invited them home for sleepovers as well. "She seemed a pleasant person," John recalls. "She dressed in nice expensive clothes. She would take my kids to places I couldn't afford like the zoo or McDonalds."

He was never told that she was under investigation for abusing a student, then or later. "I don't think she should have been working with children at all," he insists now.

Instead their lives were destined to cross in a way that seems even more ironic now that he has learned Markson's secret past. For in November 1998, his common-law wife told Markson that she suspected John may be molesting his daughter. She begged her not to report anything until she had a chance to question him, but Markson insisted she had a duty to inform the Catholic CAS. And so she did. The family "was referred to the society again on Nov. 19, 1998, by Annie Markson, a volunteer working with the family," reads the family court document.

Soon after, John would receive a phone call from the Catholic CAS. His children would not be coming home from school that day or any day soon. They had taken his children into care and it would take him two long years before he would convince the CAS that his wife's suspicions had been wrong.

FALSELY ACCUSED

So he knows only too well the stigma of being falsely accused of child abuse. No one would give him a job. His offer to take a lie detector test was turned down. He was allowed to see his children only 90 minutes a week while being watched behind a glass window. "You don't know what it's like when people accuse you of being a pedophile when you know you're not. But how do you prove that?"

Even with his children recently returned to him he is still haunted by the Society's investigation. Friends don't look at him the same way. Past employers find reasons why he can't join them again. Each day is a struggle of anger and bitterness as he lives on social assistance with his children in the basement apartment of a rundown rooming house. Still, he was slowly trying to piece his family back together and move beyond the past, when he turned on the six o'clock news.

And there was Annie, herself accused of sexual misconduct with a child at that very same time. "I couldn't believe it," he says, reaching angrily for another cigarette. "My kids were still seeing her while the investigations were going on."

How he seethes at the difference he sees in their treatment. "You know that if it had been a man parked with a 14-year-old girl, kissing and hugging her, his ass would be in jail. She's just going to get a slap on the wrist."

While his family is in tatters.

So many ironies in two lives that crossed more than two years ago. Ultimately, both would be accused and cleared of sexual abuse. And now its shadow is destined to follow them both for the rest of their lives.