Family Break-up Video

March 17, 2008 permalink

An anonymous family has posted a YouTube video of the children's aid society gradually separating mom and dad from their three children. CAS wants the youngest, a three-year-old blond blue-eyed boy, to become a crown ward. The family was informed by children's aid that it was illegal to bring friends or recording devices to visitation (the kind of law they make up themselves). The family secretly recorded the meetings anyway. Here are some notable points:

• In one visit parents photograph their toddler's injury, and CAS workers terminate the visit. In a later visit, the boy is afraid to talk because he doesn't want the visit to end. When the parents try to speak to the boy about an injury a laughing social worker interrupts to give their side. They do not allow the parents to talk to the child about the injury. Do they think a good parent should be unconcerned about their son's injury? Four days later another social worker gives a different explanation for the injury. With the evidence suppressed, the CAS lawyer tells the court this is "phantom bruising".
• The father points out that children's aid has made frequent changes in visitation times, causing the mother to lose one job and lose time from another. In one case, the parents were stood up with the excuse that this was not a visitation, only a meeting to discuss visitation. In court CAS tells the judge that the parents were chronic no-shows. The father makes a plea for understanding from the CAS worker. The plea is futile — ending the parents employment is the goal of this kind of disruption, which is routine in child protection cases. It is easier to get a judge to award crown wardship from unemployed parents than from parents earning a living. While dad was pleading, the CAS worker was congratulating himself on his success.

The persons mentioned on the video are Cory B DeYarmond CAS lawyer, Rodrick Rolston children's lawyer, Melanie foster mother, and CAS workers Pat St Germain, Jennifer Kloosterman, Paul Brown, Linda Howard and Ms Troy Gardiner. The children's aid society is the one in Hastings (Trenton) Ontario, the same one that recently committed a half million dollar stick-up of the taxpayers. Perhaps at this moment some Hastings area couple able to pay premium legal fees to adopt a cute blond blue-eyed boy is keeping an eye on this case.

Addendum: In April the YouTube video was removed. YouTube only says: "This video has been removed due to terms of use violation". Fortunately we obtained a copy before it was removed, and you can watch it here (12 megabytes wmv).