Tragic Tales of Child Abuse

"She received inadequate screening and assessments, which potentially enabled the sexual abuse of the child to continue."
"Had appropriate measures been taken when this child presented to terminate her pregnancy, or when child protection concerns were reported, the abuse may potentially have been detected and stopped."
"There were many opportunities to intervene with this little girl and her siblings; but they were missed." 
"The children's rights were not adequately protected. Based on the experiences and lessons from this case, a collective effort is required to do better for and by these children."
Jacqueline Lake Kavanagh, child and youth advocate, Newfoundland and Labrador

Jacqueline Lake Kavanagh, the province's child and youth advocate, speaks to reporters following the release of her investigative report. (John Pike/CBC)

"The surgery was performed despite two sections of the consent form being incomplete, one of which included the legal capacity of the stepfather to sign for consent."
Report, child and youth advocacy, Newfoundland and Labrador

It elicits a gasp of horror, reading that a ten-year-old little girl in India was delivered of a child. Her parents became aware their child was pregnant when she complained of a stomach ache. They were of course, more than slightly upset, but were unwilling to cause the child alarm, so told her some nonsense about something foreign growing in her stomach. A request for abortion had been denied because under Indian law she was too far advanced into pregnancy. She went full term, and a baby was delivered by Cesarean Section to a ten-year-old little girl.

It was the child's uncle who had raped her repeatedly. Not only this child but others as well. He was arrested and will now serve what one can only hope will be a substantial jail term. How this event will impact that child introduced to adult behaviour at her vulnerable age is anyone's guess, let alone the other children who were also so horribly abused by this monster of a man. And then one thinks: 'Only in India' could this happen, where rape of women and girls is so common, let alone their murder in what can only be seen as a rights-primitive society.

Well, it isn't just in India. How about a first-world country, a wealthy, 'socially-progressive' country like Canada? Well, how about Canada? The newly-released report out of St. John's, Newfoundland states its condemnation of the child protection system whose inadequate response to a unique case where a child had been in the custody of a man who was her stepfather from a failed marriage -- sought an abortion for the twelve-year-old, posing as her father, while the authorities made no effort to investigate -- damns the province's Department of Children, Seniors and Social Development.

Questions failed to be asked, there was no risk assessment of the child at her presentation for abortion services, and nor were officially recognized consents obtained to validate anything about the story given when the little girl explained her pregnancy came about as the result of consensual sex with a teenage boyfriend. This, from a twelve-year-old, obviously prompted by the man who had accompanied her, to convince those in authority that nothing untoward involving the man had occurred to the child.

"The marriage broke down in 2007, and by 2008 the mother was a full-blown crack/cocaine addict. She was incapable of raising the children. She succumbed to the misery of the drug world and turned away from her children."
"T.O. [the stepfather] was raising four children [three younger boys of his own with the girl's mother] when he started raping his stepdaughter, who was then just 11 and a half: It started just before the child was in Grade 6. The first occasion of sexual assault was anally raping her, causing bodily harm. After, as often as five to six times a week over the next years, he sexually assaulted her anally and vaginally. He told her he would marry her, that she would have his babies. The child grew used to this, as if such relations between a father and daughter were typical or expected."
"He warped her and traumatized her so badly that upon his arrest for assaulting her friend, she tried to shield her family, her brothers, and would not reveal what Mr. T.O. had done to her for nearly another year."
Judge Chris Martin, Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench - at sentencing

The man who was the little girl's stepfather had brought her to Newfoundland and Labrador, taking her to a Planned Parenthood medical clinic for the purpose of seeking out an abortion. The girl's mother lived outside the province.The explanation that the mother of those four children was no longer involved in their lives resulting from a degrading dependence on drugs and a resulting inability to live a semblance of normal life, responding to a mother's responsibility to look to the welfare of her children, is pathetic beyond belief, setting off a chain of dreadful events.

 The mother's former husband took possession of the children, taking them to Newfoundland and there they lived for five months before moving on to yet another province. And in the second province the girl informed authorities two years on of the repeated sexual attacks her stepfather had submitted her to, taking place over a period of over two years. Two abortions resulted from those rapes. Referred to the Health Authority for abortion, no age-appropriate screening, nor counselling ever took place under these tawdry and unusual conditions. After the first abortion the little girl was discharged into the care of her stepfather.

It took a month for the Department of Children, Seniors and Social Development workers to be involved in the wake of a number of protection referrals; one alleging that the stepfather had physically abused the twelve-year-old and one of her siblings. Four months later, after nothing had been established through lack of cooperation with the stepfather who claimed he was being harassed, the family moved again. It took two years for the law and justice to catch up with this odious man.

He has since pleaded guilty to the sexual abuse of the twelve-year-old as well as to other sexual assaults perpetrated on others. He was sentenced to 16 years imprisonment.