Sublimely Ridiculous

Children are so adorable in the way that they express themselves. Of course, to get at the whole meaning of what it is they are expressing, requires the mind of a child. Failing that, an adult who understands how a child's mind works.

Before suspicions leap into action, it is always wise to speak quietly, one on one with a child to winkle out the meaning of a child's expression. That might have assisted hugely in the case of a four-year-old kindergarten child and her teacher's leap of imagination bringing the child's family to an unfortunate encounter.

This was not a child whose condition in any way might elicit alarm that she had been physically abused, there were no bruises or marks of abuse on her little body, nor was she hesitant to speak when asked to.

Furthermore, there was the very telling fact that her father, 26-year-old Jessie Samsone, faithfully appeared daily at Forest Hills public school in Kitchener, Ontario to pick up his little girl and her sibling to bring them home, a caring, nurturing father.

But little Neaveh had drawn a picture of her daddy while in her kindergarten classroom. And in that picture her daddy was holding a gun. "I'm picking up my kids and then, next thing you know, I'm locked up", said Mr. Sansone, explaining to the local newspaper what he had been exposed to.

"I was in shock. This is completely insane. My daughter drew a gun on a piece of paper at school."

At her concerned teacher's prodding, Neaveh satisfied her teacher's curiosity by informing her that the gun was at home, and her siblings played with the gun. Not her, the gun made her fearful. Which was when her teacher dutifully called child welfare.

And child welfare called police. And police were then present at the school when this father of three young children arrived to pick up two of his oldest.

Mr. Sansone was escorted out the back of the school in handcuffs into a police car and driven to, where else, the local police station. And while Family & Children's Services took charge of the children, including the couple's fifteen-month old child, Mrs. Sansone was also brought to the station. For questioning.

Of course, the questioning of Mrs. Sansone could have been taken care of by telephone, or in the comfort of her own home, her husband alongside her. Just to verify, for example, Mr. Sansone's explanation that the gun in question was a clear plastic toy the children played with, and that he used to 'protect' them from mean ghosts attacking them at night while they slept in their beds.

Only as it happened Mr. Sansone hadn't been questioned quietly out of sight of his children in an office in the school to clarify the situation and clear up frightening suspicions. Instead, he was bundled off to the police station, stripped and searched and informed he would be remaining there overnight while the police did their duty.