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A B.C. Supreme Court Judge has handed down a startling ruling that says the Ministry of Child Protection abused its power in a case where a father sexually abused his infant children.
The 341-page report was released on Tuesday by Justice Paul Walker. Walker calls the actions of the ministry egregious, saying they were in breach of fiduciary duty and negligent as agents failed to assess and investigate reports of sexual abuse. The father, referred to as B.G. in the ruling for privacy reasons, was permitted unsupervised access to the children despite a supervised access court order, which resulted in the children being repeatedly sexually abused.
In 2009, the father was arrested and removed from the family home for assaulting his wife, J.P., and his daughter, who was five years old at the time. The father was charged with uttering death threats. Shortly after the incident, the two divorced and the mother was given custody of the children. During court proceedings, the mother claimed that B.G had sexually assaulted their one-year-old child.
The ministry believed that there was no merit to the mother’s report of sexual abuse and did not investigate the allegations. The ministry social worker went as far as to contact the Vancouver Police Department to disparage the motives and mental health of the mother.
“Fault for the ongoing failure of the Director and her agents to carry out their obligations to act in the best interests of the children and to protect them from harm is not attributed solely to a single Ministry employee,” said Justice Walker in his ruling. “The Director had many opportunities to carry out a proper assessment and investigation of the reports of sexual abuse and to assess the information and evidence provided to her on an ongoing basis, including during the Apprehension Proceeding. Different employees are at fault for different and not necessarily mutually exclusive reasons depending on the point in time.”
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The claims went on for several years, and the children themselves described the sexual touching and partial penetration by their father, yet the ministry still failed to intervene and concluded the allegations were fabricated. The children were ultimately apprehended and placed in foster care for over two years because the ministry wrongly thought the mother’s mental state was a concern for the children. The director of the ministry even advocated that B.G. was the fit parent for the children and helped him work toward gaining sole custody of the three children. No investigation or assessment was ever conducted regarding the mother's mental state by the ministry.
“The Province is liable for misfeasance, breach of the standard of care, and breach of fiduciary duty on the part of the Director and her agents,” Justice Walker concluded. “The Director failed to assess and investigate reports of sexual abuse as required by the CFCSA and the standard of care. The Director had no reasonable basis to apprehend the children. The Apprehension was wrongful. As early as February 2010, the Director encouraged B.G. to apply for custody in order to return the children to him, regardless of information adverse to B.G. and even though she acknowledged the possibility that B.G. had sexually abused his children.”
According to the judgement, some ministry witnesses were openly hostile towards J.P. when giving their testimony. Many of them refused to accept the findings of fact made during the first trial, despite the claim made by some of them that what they wanted all along was to have an independent third party examine all of the evidence and determine if sexual abuse had occurred.
Justice Walker has ordered the director of the ministry to pay for special costs for the initial first trial that the mother went through. That amount has yet to be determined. The judge finished by saying that the mother used “Herculean efforts” to protect her children, and if she had not done so, the father who sexually and physically abused his children would have custody of them.
The B.C. Ministry of Children and Family Development has yet to comment on the case and the ruling.
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