Subject: C.A.S. Scandal - Please Read!

From: [email-masked] (A Concerned Citizen)
Date: 18 Oct 1994 17:30:52 GMT

"Society" Covers Up Abuses
                             C.A.S. Scandal
                 Workers' Crimes & Abuses of Authority

Part 4 of 4

This is published by (Name Censored).  No other person bears any
responsibility for the content, publication or distribution of this
material.  The publisher's name is left off not from cowardice but
because the law prohibits its publication.  Facts presented in this
document can be confirmed by documentation and by eyewitness accounts.
Reader concerns regarding the Children's Aid Society may be addressed by
telephone calls and letters to the media, your political
representatives, or Raymond J. Muldoon, C.A.S. Executive Director.  For
further information or to see documentation, the publisher may be
contacted anytime at (613) 546-5114.

Many other parents and children have endured abuses of authority and of
individual's rights by the Children's Aid Society for the City of
Kingston and County of Frontenac.  The author has had direct contact by
telephone or mail with a number of these victims.  Many of these,
including some who have had their children returned and have no current
allegations against them, have gone underground so the C.A.S. will not
be able to find them.  These parents are terrified of the Kingston
Children's Aid Society and its Gestapo tactics.

The source for the following information is articles written by Gillian
Sadinsky and Julia Sarwer published in The Kingston Whig Standard on May
9, 1992.

"Watch out for your children" - Julia Sarwer

Julia had been an international chess celebrity for several years, after
winning the world chess championship for girls 10 and under in 1986.
Home-schooled by her father...she led an unorthodox, nomadic life,
playing, competing and studying all over North America.

It was a highly satisfying and happy existence, she says, until the
Frontenac County CAS ruined it all.

Her family was based in Kingston when the CAS siezed her, citing
allegations of physical and emotional abuse.  Their action came just
after publication of an article in the international magazine Vanity
Fair.  It contended that she had been brain-washed and abused by her
father, a charge she has consistently denied.

Usually vivacious and cheerfully opinionated, she becomes very angry
when discussing these allegations.  Not only are they not true, they are
insulting because they make irrelevant, she says, everything she has
accomplished.

About six weeks after the CAS took her, Julia escaped and went
underground.

And she couldn't tell her story.

The press and media are forbidden by law to identify youngsters under
the age of 16 who are involved in a child protection proceeding....

Julia became free to speak out...when she turned 16.  In her story...she
describes how: * The CAS tore her away from her father, refusing to tell
her why; * The CAS kept her imprisoned in an Ottawa hotel apartment for
over a month, driving back and forth sometimes under dangerous
conditions between Ottawa and Kingston's family court where the CAS had
to justify her apprehension; * The CAS prevented her from contacting a
lawyer for five hours after she arrived in Ottawa; * The CAS officials
initially refused to tell her father and extended family where they'd
taken her, and they spent almost two days frantically trying to find
her; * The CAS promised her a speedy resolution to the proceedings, but
asked the judge if they could keep her for six months; * And, she
contends, the CAS charged into its court case determined to win no
matter what kind of tactics it had to resort to or at what cost to her.

"In a small town like Kingston, you're not supposed to rock the boat."
    - Julia Sarwer

(Before the CAS took Julia) "...my father began volunteer work helping
fathers who were denied their rights as parents.... He was in the
process of writing an article about a mother whom he felt had had her
children unfairly removed by the Kingston Children's Aid Society and
permanently adopted by strangers. He was also on the tracks of one
worker, whom he felt particularly was causing unnecessary problems for
innocent families.  This made my father very unpopular in the eyes of
the Kingston CAS. I guess in a small town like Kingston, you're not
supposed to rock the boat."

"We (attended) Kingston Family Court Clinic to clear up some personal
matters left over from our custody battle with my little sister, and to
speak on behalf of a man who had had his 10 month old grandson ripped
away from him, even though the boy seemed to have been receiving the
best of care."

"(The law gives workers) the enormous power to remove children from
their parents. This power is meant to be reserved for helping abused
children...the child must be in immediate danger of (physical,
emotional, or sexual abuse) before the worker is allowed to 'protect' a
child by removing him or her to a place of safety. A worker is certainly
not allowed to snatch a child because he has a grudge, any more than a
policeman is allowed to use his gun to shoot someone he takes a personal
dislike to.  A policeman understands that if he fires his gun there'll
be a lot of questions...and the possibility of a serious
investigation....  There is much less public scrutiny for child
apprehension workers and no specific disciplinary process."

"Nobody, from the director of services down, would tell us on what
grounds I was being apprehended.  It was like Kafka's story The Trial."

"I was put in a hotel apartment, with two CAS guards.  They had
notepads, and I think they even recorded when I went to the bathroom.  A
phone call to my lawyer was refused for five hours, and the phone was
yanked out of my hand when I tried anyway...I spent a night and a day
imprisoned with absolutely no contact from outside with any friends,
family, or people who mattered to me."

"(At court) missing was the (positive) psychiatric report from the head
psychiatrist of the Children's Hospital.  Instead, the CAS had somehow
managed to find a psychiatrist who was willing to submit a lengthy
report on us, even though he had never even seen myself, my father, or
anybody else in my family."

"...CAS lawyer's game of never getting to the point, and tactic of
delaying as much as possible, so that nobody could see that there was no
point to be gotten to.  Illusion by confusion, litigation by
inundation....  If the facts support you, you argue facts; if the law
supports you, you argue law; and if neither support you, confuse the
issue!"

"Throughout this whole case, from beginning to end, the CAS has
consistently refused to talk with our family--an incredible betrayal of
their mandate--and to this very day they have still refused to hear any
of our information that might set their files straight."

"I have travelled all over the world, and seen repressed countries....
But in 1989, as the Berlin Wall came down, I was held political prisoner
in my own province."

Three children--ages 6, 7, and 11--are now being held by the Kingston
C.A.S., not for legitimate reasons but because a supervisor, since
fired, acted in bad faith and with malice against these children.  Now
management and staff at the C.A.S. feel compelled to continue this
malicious persecution of an already battered family in order to protect
their own posteriors (C.Y.A. Syndrome) and will not admit to the abuses
of authority, criminal acts, and terrible wrongs which have been
committed under the umbrella protection of Ontario's Child and Family
Services Act.

Your children may be next.  It is common practice of the Kingston C.A.S.
to go after the children of anyone who dares question them or their
practices.  These children are indeed, as Julia Sarwer says, "political
prisoners" held to silence their parents.

Your voice, raised in protest and joined by a thousand others, can force
the public investigation the politicians have been too cowardly to begin
on their own.  Your voice--the voice of the people--can ensure that our
children receive justice and protection.  Call Raymond J. Muldoon at the
C.A.S.--(613) 542-7351--and call as many politicians and news-media as
you can.  If there are other ways you can help, call the publisher--the
father of the Kingston three--anytime at (613) 546-5114.  Please help
protect these children from a few C.A.S. workers and supervisors
betraying their mandate, abusing their authority, and hiding behind the
law.