Turning Back Time...

"My mistakes shouldn't be impacted on them. I beg your honour to consider a conditional (sentence)."
Amanda Rousseau

Concerned for her two children, Amanda Rousseau, a single mother dissolving in tears, informed a courtroom judge that her children need her presence, and she has a need to be with them, as their loving mother. Their mother was an exceptional provider for her two children. She had a high-profile, and trusted position as director at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Care Group. Amanda Rousseau had the good fortune to haul home a yearly salary of almost $100,000.

She must have been very good at what she was hired for. Certainly, much trust in her capabilities was placed in her hiring, with that generous salary. A responsible position, no doubt about it; director of a large city's major mental care hospital. Unfortunately, Ms. Rousseau, capable administrator and single mother of two children who love and need their mother's presence, must have considered her salary inadequate compensation for her efforts.

What else might explain the trouble she took over a two-year period modifying cheques, doctoring expense claims, redirecting cheques meant for the possession of other employees into her own account. Ah, there is a simple explanation, and she rendered it for the court. A series of mistakes. In the sense, most certainly, that they represented a severe and serious error of judgement.

The Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre on Carling Ave

On the other hand, Crown prosecutor Caroline Thibault seems to find it difficult to have much compassion for Ms. Rousseau. Feeling that she is entitled, as a result of her criminal offence, to spend a year in jail. Not only did Ms. Rousseau defraud the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Care Group -- which operates mental health and addiction programs for the vulnerable in the community -- of $20,000 but that also included its volunteer association.

Mr. Rousseau also managed to make off with $12,000 that the Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa had invested on behalf of an early intervention program. Icing on the $100,000 cake of her salary. She has been denounced by Crown prosecutor Thibault for not having made restitution to the groups whom she deprived of tens of thousands of dollars that "live by donations".

"They're quite vulnerable and what they do is help the most vulnerable in our society", explained the Crown prosecutor. And she found it "rather disturbing" that after having pleaded guilty to fraud and forgery, Ms. Rousseau made an attempt to deflect blame from herself, and directly implicate responsibility to her supervisors.

The Crown's argument rests on the fact that Ms. Rousseau appears to lack the ability to empathize with her victims; empathy seems missing into the manner in which her actions had affected others victimized by her actions. And that would include former colleagues whose signatures she forged to her financial advantage.

Resulting from her base actions, Ms. Rousseau was suspended from her position as director of patient-care services once those irregularities were identified. And fired a month later.

An audit covering a two-year period, April 2007 to February 2009, revealed that several schemes were utilized by Ms. Rousseau to take possession of funds that were not hers to take possession of. In her defence, Ms. Rousseau claimed to feel remorse for her actions, unidentifiable to probation officers because of her state of nervous tension.

"I do truly regret all of this. If I could turn back time, I would", she said. Case closed? Not quite. She was also convicted in an entirely separate criminal matter in 2013 for stealing and misappropriating thousands of dollars belonging to a patient. The hospital and Ms. Rousseau are being sued for the $13,126.11 that was stolen from Tamara Lee Wyman over a period of two years.

Could an addiction to other peoples' money causing an individual to use wiles and denials, craft and cunning be characterized as a mental illness? If so, the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Care Group might consider the feasibility of commencing treatment on their former director of patient services.