Thursday 17 December 2015

How the system and the law failed me:

     I first became involved in the child welfare system when my parents filed for divorce when I was six years of age. In the almost five years that they were a part of my life, I believe they failed to provide me with the support and protection that the child welfare system was set up to provide for children. When I was twenty years old I involved the law in my case, stepping beyond my intense fear of what that would mean, and again, I felt the same lack of support and protection that the legal system is meant to give victims of abuse.  In both circumstances the people and laws that were put into place to protect children from being victimized, and to give them a means to find justice when they are, failed me in every possible way.
     In the custody battle of my parents divorce case my mother expressed concerns to her lawyer that my father may have been molesting her two oldest daughters, me and my sister, a year younger than me. He had been caught molesting my mother's five year old sister before I was born, and was made to seek counselling for his "problem" before my mother would take him back. After some questionable comments that my sister and I made, she now suspected he had done the same to us. My sister and I were sent to a child psychologist to attempt to determine if we were being sexually abused by him, but the sessions were inconclusive. According to the rules regarding evidence in court, a child cannot be directly asked about whether or not they were being abused as the questions could be leading the witness to answer in a certain way, causing enough doubt as to the truthfulness of the statements in the court of law. Instead, we were given a doll house and dolls representing our family, and we were encouraged to act out certain scenes as they would happen in our household. I remember being so careful not to paint my father in a terrible light (as I knew he could be if I were totally honest) because I didn't want to be responsible for him getting into trouble and being taken out of our lives. I knew the decisions being made as a result of these sessions would determine how our life with our mother and father would be from then on, and all I wanted as a six year old girl was for my family to be together again. Even though our father was an abusive man, he was our father and we loved him dearly, as all children love their parents. He was the only father we had. 
     While there was not enough conclusive evidence to prove that we had been sexually abused by our father (although the psychologist greatly suspected it), he was not granted custody of his daughters due to his having to admit to receiving counselling after he was caught molesting my aunt (psychiatric records could be brought up in court). While the courts were right not to allow him custody, he still had full visitation rights and could take us for weekends. Not only were the allegations of sexual abuse of his daughters not investigated any further, my sisters and I were allowed to be placed directly in his care for visits where he could potentially harm us again. At that time he had remarried and had a new family and did not have much time for us anymore. Fortunately, we did not have to suffer any more abuse by his hands.
     Not long after my parents divorce, the lives of me and my siblings were completely ripped apart. My mother, suffering from serious health issues, found it increasingly difficult to care for her four children. She decided to give up custody of my little brother to my father and his new wife. She then placed her three daughters into foster care until she could get well enough to care for us. From that point on, the system had control of our futures. My youngest sister was placed in a home on her own, while my other sister and I were placed in a family together. The family had two teenage sons and a number of other foster children. We were completely neglected by the parents who let their teenage sons parent and discipline us as they saw fit. Living there was nothing like having a family should be. I remember my sister and I being so miserable and all we wanted was to go home again.
     Within a short while after being put into care, Children's Services informed our mother that due to her health and financial instability, she would only be granted custody of one of her three daughters, and that the other two would be put up for adoption, a terrible decision for any mother to have to make. When my mother discovered that her youngest daughter was being beaten in the family she had been placed in, she couldn't bring her back to them and so she made the decision that she would be the daughter she would keep. My mother's side of the family fought hard to get custody of her other two daughters again. Even my grandparents tried to get approval to adopt us, but they were denied. My sister and I could never go home again. 
     Not only did Children's Services make the decision to tear us away from our family, our mother, they then made the decision to tear my sister and me apart. After six months of living in care, we had been fighting a lot, taking out our frustrations about the situation we were in. Our mutual love and familiarity made us easy targets for each other. They decided to place me into another home on my own to separate us. Now, I was torn away from everyone that I loved! 
     I was in my next foster home for two years before being adopted. They seemed like a nice family, and they had a biological son who I became very close with. On the outside it appeared that I was happy in a loving family environment. What no one else knew though was that my foster father molested me almost daily during the two years that I lived there. 
    Needless to say, the families I was placed in who were supposed to provide a safe and protected environment for me, were worse than the family they had taken me away from! 
     Although I had a really nice social worker who did her best to look out for me, she did not have the time to be my therapist. I never felt like I could really open up to her about personal feelings and experiences I was having. I did not talk to her about the abuse I was suffering at the hands of my foster father. By this time in my life, I was trained well to keep my mouth shut about the pain I was suffering inside and out. From my experience, it did no good anyway. Suffering was just a part of living, and it was something I had learned that I had no control over. 
     Thankfully, after my adoption at ten years of age, for the first time in my life, I found myself in a loving, stable, and secure environment and I flourished. However, my experiences with abuse, especially sexual, had left their mark on me. 
     When I was eighteen I reunited with my birth family, including my father who I wanted to reconnect with so I could have a relationship with my brother. That reunion ended up triggering some well buried emotions about what had happened to me as a child, when I confronted my father about the abuse that I remembered, and he adamantly denied ever having touched me that way. He claimed that my mother's side of the family put those ideas into my head so that they could prevent him from getting custody of us. 
     My anger over his denial turned into a desperate need to take action against the men who had done me wrong as a child and I decided to take my stories to the law, and to charge both my biological father, and my foster father with sexual abuse. I wanted to make sure they could never harm another child the way they had harmed me and likely others. I also decided to try seeing a therapist for the first time in my life, to help me work through the feelings all of this was bringing up for me, although I only went to a few sessions. I was really not ready at that time in my life to address the emotions attached to the abuse I had suffered. 
     Making my statements to the police/RCMP about what had happened to me at the hands of these two men was terrifying and caused me considerable stress. The officers needed every last detail about what I remembered of the abuse, and I was shaking uncontrollably while telling my stories. The two cases were separate and so I had to go through the experience twice. Thankfully a very close friend of mine sat with me through it all, offering his unending support and comfort. I could not have done it without him by my side. 
     A few weeks later I was informed by the officers dealing with the case against my biological father that since I was the only one of my siblings who remembered being molested by him, it would end up being my word against his, and with no other evidence, the charges would not hold up in court. Then, my aunt, who my father had molested before I was born, came forward to lay charges, hoping that her case would add weight to mine. However, because the situations happened at different times, the charges had to remain separate. My charges were dropped, but since the evidence of my father seeking psychiatric counselling after it was discovered he had been molesting my aunt had been brought up in court during my parents custody battle, there was proof that he had molested her, and her charges could be brought to court. He got two years of probation, and a small paragraph mentioning the case in the back of the local newspaper. 
     In the case of the charges I had laid against my foster father, I never heard from the officers again. After how the case against my biological father turned out, I had no faith in the process, and no more energy or confidence to pursue it any further.
     Around ten years later in my late twenties, after I had taken on my journey of healing, I began to wonder why the case against my foster father appeared to have gone no where, and I decided to investigate. Not only was I upset about not getting justice for myself, I was also riddled with guilt over how many other children this man may have harmed since me, and I wanted him stopped.
     After many phone calls I was finally put in touch with an officer who was familiar with the case and who could answer my questions.When asked why the charges against my foster father appeared to have been ignored, he explained that the investigation was closed after it was determined that there was not enough evidence to take him to court. Again, it would have been my word against his, and without any other evidence (physical or unsolicited disclosure to others while in his care or shortly afterward), the case would not hold up in a court of law. I was also told that because I had sought and received counselling outside of the court appointed system (someone approved and regulated according to the court of law), it could be argued by the defendant's counsel that I may have been led to believe I had been molested during those therapy sessions, and that they would have argued false memory syndrome as a defence. Again, my story would not hold up in court. I was told that the charges were dropped because the crown determined there would not be enough evidence to convict him, therefore the case was not worth going to court.
     My anger and frustration over this information led me to go at the situation from a different angle. If the law couldn't take the case any further, maybe something could be done through Community Services (used to be Children's services), the people who put me in his care, and who allowed many other children to be put into his care over the years he and his wife fostered children. While I had been told they no longer fostered children, I had hoped Community Services (CS) would do some sort of investigation into the years children were in his care, and possibly come up with some more information that could lead to actual justice being done, not only for me, but for others he may have harmed, or may be harming still. I called the CS office that was entrusted with my care when I became a part of the system and I told my story to someone I was told could help me. She said they would open up an investigation, but that nothing could be done until they requested and received  my files from the years I was in care through The Freedom of Information Act. After a month, I did not hear from them and when I called they said they were still waiting on the information to be released. After getting the same response from them for almost a year, I finally gave up that avenue for help as well, and have not pursued any other means of justice since then. It had become obvious to me that no one else really cared enough to attempt to keep this man from harming other children, something I can say with absolute confidence that he has done many more times in the thirty five years since I was in his care. While my biological father had impulse control issues, which is bad enough, my foster father was different. He was a predator of children, the type to put himself into a position of power with vulnerable children, and to constantly seek out new victims to victimize. I often think about my foster brother who I was so close with in the years that I lived there, and I wonder if he ever had children. The guilt I feel when I think about his daughters and what they have most likely suffered at the hands of their grandfather because I was not able to stop him, overwhelms me sometimes!
     While I would like to think that someday I will find a way to not only receive justice, but to stop a child predator from victimizing any more innocent children, the reality of the situation, made obvious by my unsuccessful attempts, is that justice is simply not an option for me. Both of the men who did me wrong and affected my life in seriously detrimental ways are left to be free to harm others the way they harmed me, and I am left dealing with the pain and guilt, a lifetime sentence, even as healed as I have become.
     I would love to be able to offer up a solution here, some way that we can set up a system that not only protects children from becoming victims of abuse, but also gives them an effective means to receive justice when they are, and to ensure the people who harmed them are punished and not allowed to victimize others. However, all I can give is a place to start.
     In my experience, the system that is supposed to be set up to protect and provide justice for victims of abuse has been made much less effective due to efforts made to avoid false allegations on accused perpetrators of abuse. It seems that the system cares more about protecting those that are falsely accused, than protecting those that are actual victims, the number of falsely accused being almost nothing compared to those accusations that are valid. Something needs to change. How, I cannot tell you. I don't know enough about the Child Welfare System or the law to know just how it can be made better for victims, but I do know that as it stands now, it does not work! Victims are not being protected and they are afraid to speak out, and when they do, they are not being heard, and the perpetrators are allowed to be free to victimize others. I suppose the first step would be to acknowledge that there are serious flaws in the system, and to start taking steps to learn how to make it better.

Peace and Love to Everyone. Kristina. <3

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