Strategic Timing Keeps Girl from Dad

December 4, 2014 permalink

Vern Beck has posted an affidavit from a foster teen (pdf). She is the same girl who recently reported dog poo in her foster home.

The girl wants to return to her father, her good parent. On November 19 she was in court on an application brought by Toronto's Catholic CAS through its worker Karen Saligman. Her children's lawyer did not show, so the girl tried to address the judge herself.

107. A child in care has a right to be consulted and to express his or her views, to the extent that is practical given the child’s level of understanding, whenever significant decisions concerning the child are made, including decisions with respect to medical treatment, education or training or work programs and religion and decisions with respect to the child’s discharge from the placement or transfer to another residential placement. R.S.O. 1990, c. C.11, s. 107; 2009, c. 2, s. 10.

Source: Child and Family Services Act

Instead of speaking, she was silenced by judge Roselyn Zisman, herself a former CAS lawyer. This hearing date was strategically selected by CAS to be eight days before the girl's sixteenth birthday. That way she lost the protection of another legal provision:

43. (1)In this section, “parent” includes, (a) an approved agency that has custody of the child, ...

Warrant to apprehend runaway child

(2) A justice of the peace may issue a warrant authorizing a peace officer or child protection worker to apprehend a child if the justice of the peace is satisfied on the basis of the sworn information of a parent of the child that, (a) the child is under the age of sixteen years; ...

Source: Child and Family Services Act

The court has ordered the girl into CAS custody, and issued a restraining order against her father. Now if she runs away and rejoins her dad, he will be arrested. As she left the courtroom police asked whether she intended to cooperate with social workers. When she refused she was humiliated as police paraded her through two public buildings in handcuffs.

On November 27, her sixteenth birthday, she took advantage of the law exempting her from apprension as a runaway, and left foster care. The affidavit does not say where she is now, but even after age sixteen she is prevented from returning to her father through CAS strategic timing.

Source: Facebook, Canada Court Watch

Addendum: In an additional document (pdf) the same girl says legal aid staff at the 47 Sheppard Ave East courthouse refused to notarize her affidavit. Her document includes a photo of a court staffer.

Source: Facebook, Canada Court Watch