The Liberal government has been in power 10 years, presiding over the worst child poverty in Canada, the lowest minimum wage, misdirected priorities and a host of mismanaged ministries, but none worse than the Child and Families Ministry.
This case is so appalling heads should roll, but probably won't. It sickens me to know how badly the most vulnerable people can be consistently let down by their supposed protectors.
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The severely ill mother and her mentally challenged daughter hadn’t been seen for days.
So on Sept. 14, 2010, Lawrence Jewett, manager of the Cultus Lake Village trailer park, walked over with another tenant and put a ladder up to their front window.
Jewett climbed up and looked inside. He saw the 15-year-old girl sitting on a couch with her mother on the floor beside her. Neither was moving.
“It was clear [the mother] was dead,” Jewett recalled. “We called police and they said to just leave the scene as it was. But no one who was a parent could leave the girl that way, so we got the door open and took her out.
“She was in really rough shape,” Jewett said. “She’d lost about 35 to 40 pounds. Her Depends [adult diaper] hadn’t been changed and she was pretty upset. Just kept saying, ‘Mommy’s sleeping.’ I took her back to our house and my wife Edith cleaned her up, gave her a bath. Then she started saying, ‘Mommy’s gone to heaven.’”
An investigation by B.C.’s child-welfare watchdog that finds “stunning neglect” by childcare workers says the teen girl with Down syndrome, who can’t be named, had cuddled up to the rotting corpse of her mother for about seven days, trying to wake and feed her, tortured by buzzing flies and filthy rashes.
“Empty boxes of uncooked macaroni and bottles of her mother’s prescription medicine were strewn around,” says the report by Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, B.C.’s representative for children and youth.
“It appeared that the girl had been trying to feed herself and care for her mother. The girl had been curling up in a dirty blanket, huddling tight against her mother’s decomposing body. The trailer was full of flies, and the smell made it difficult for people to remain inside.”
Turpel-Lafond says it is remarkable the teen, now recovering in the care of expert foster parents, didn’t die. She continues to fear flies and “experience a range of emotions in response to what happened, including both grief and anger, according to her foster family.”
This case is so appalling heads should roll, but probably won't. It sickens me to know how badly the most vulnerable people can be consistently let down by their supposed protectors.
-------------------
The severely ill mother and her mentally challenged daughter hadn’t been seen for days.
So on Sept. 14, 2010, Lawrence Jewett, manager of the Cultus Lake Village trailer park, walked over with another tenant and put a ladder up to their front window.
Jewett climbed up and looked inside. He saw the 15-year-old girl sitting on a couch with her mother on the floor beside her. Neither was moving.
“It was clear [the mother] was dead,” Jewett recalled. “We called police and they said to just leave the scene as it was. But no one who was a parent could leave the girl that way, so we got the door open and took her out.
“She was in really rough shape,” Jewett said. “She’d lost about 35 to 40 pounds. Her Depends [adult diaper] hadn’t been changed and she was pretty upset. Just kept saying, ‘Mommy’s sleeping.’ I took her back to our house and my wife Edith cleaned her up, gave her a bath. Then she started saying, ‘Mommy’s gone to heaven.’”
An investigation by B.C.’s child-welfare watchdog that finds “stunning neglect” by childcare workers says the teen girl with Down syndrome, who can’t be named, had cuddled up to the rotting corpse of her mother for about seven days, trying to wake and feed her, tortured by buzzing flies and filthy rashes.
“Empty boxes of uncooked macaroni and bottles of her mother’s prescription medicine were strewn around,” says the report by Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, B.C.’s representative for children and youth.
“It appeared that the girl had been trying to feed herself and care for her mother. The girl had been curling up in a dirty blanket, huddling tight against her mother’s decomposing body. The trailer was full of flies, and the smell made it difficult for people to remain inside.”
Turpel-Lafond says it is remarkable the teen, now recovering in the care of expert foster parents, didn’t die. She continues to fear flies and “experience a range of emotions in response to what happened, including both grief and anger, according to her foster family.”
