Stupendously, Criminally Inept

"You see something like this and ... it's just soul-destroying. It was the complete and utter destruction of dignity to any child, or human being, in my opinion.
"No one cared."
Paramedic Marc Dugas

The Ontario Coroner has called an inquest into the death of Jeffrey Baldwin.

"However, after the grandparents were granted custody of each child by the court, the (CCAS) closed their file and no worker oversaw or checked in on the family.
"Moreover, no worker performed any background checks on Elva and Norman prior to the transfer of a child -- no criminal record checks and no internal checks of past Society files.
"Had proper checks been done, they would have revealed a horrific history of incapable parenting and child abuse ... including past criminal convictions."
Jill Witkin, counsel to the coroner

These revelations are taking place during an inquest into the death of a desperately neglected and horribly abused child approaching his sixth birthday, who was in the loving custody of his maternal grandparents, Elva Bottineau and Norman Kidman. Their concern for the child was such that when he died he weighed 21 pounds, his death attributed to bacterial bronchopneumona, a side-effect of chronic starvation.

Little Jeffrey Baldwin was taken from the care of his parents, and he along with his three siblings, were given over by the courts into the capable hands of their mother's parents, in 2000. Back in June of 1970 his grandmother was convicted of assault causing bodily harm in the death of a baby daughter, five months old. Then nineteen years of age, Elva Bottineau was sentenced to a year's probation.

Her husband, Norman Kidman was convicted in 1978 of two counts of assault causing bodily harm inflicted by him on two of Bottineau's children, five and six, from an earlier relationship. And he was sentenced at that time to two years' probation, fined $150 for each offence. Little Jeffrey's mother Yvonne Kidman had been sexually abused by her father as a child.

All of this sordid data was available had anyone thought to look for it. But no one did. Not the Catholic Children's Aid Society of Toronto which was involved in the family's situation, nor the York Region Children's Aid Society which had taken custody of Yvonne Kidman's newborn baby very soon after her parents had been given custody of Jeffrey and his little sister.

The Toronto Police Service had been asked by the York agency for background checks on the Bottineau-Kidmans. "There appears to have been no response to the request and no followup" commented Ms. Witkin. Workers from the Toronto CAS went to the home and "the children were assessed together and found to be healthy and safe", and the file was closed.

Jeffrey died on November 30, 2002. He was covered in bruises and crusted-over sores. The child's belly was distended, his joints swollen, and his limbs were skeletal. He and his sister were imprisoned in a locked, unheated room. No one bothered exercising any level of hygiene to maintain the children in a clean and healthy state.

Like abused, neglected and overlooked household pets, their food was dumped in a bowl, placed on a mat for them to consume. The corner where they ate from a bowl sitting on a mat on the floor was fondly named "the pig corner", by their loving grandparents.

The function of the inquest over a decade after the death of a helpless little boy is to come to a conclusion on the preventability of deaths. To focus the community on what transpires behind closed doors, and just incidentally, pause in reflection over the usefulness to vulnerable children of child welfare groups who have failed in their responsible functioning.

The purpose of the inquest, stated Dr. Peter Clark, the coroner presiding, is "that the death of no one of its members[the community] is overlooked, concealed or ignored".  At the inquest the agency is represented by a lawyer. Another lawyer is there also, acting for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 2190, representing 315 Catholic Children's Aid Society of Toronto child-welfare workers.

Nice that their interests are being looked after. Tragic beyond measure that some of them failed so spectacularly in their professional calling to look after the interests of young children whose own family preyed horrendously upon them, subjecting them to pain and misery instead of loving support. It would be nice to think that this type of tragedy is a one-off. It's painful to know it is not.

In 2006 the grandparents of little Jeffrey Baldwin were convicted of 2nd-degree murder, sentenced to 22 (Elva Bottineau) and 20 (Norman Kidman) years in prison.