If it's always the system's fault why isn't the whole system on trial..

 

Does anyone really believe their horrifying combined conduct was was restricted to their use of Motherisk only as portrayed in the media and the Report??

 

Or it really representative of their conduct in general?

 

 

The Motherisk Commission came out with its report: The review of more than 1200 cases out of hundreds of thousands.

 

The Report is required reading for everyone who has any role to play in child welfare – politicians, social workers, lawyers, courts, teachers, daycare workers, police and the media.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Sick Kids urged to take more responsibility for forcing tens of thousands of parents to take the Motherisk test for decades."

 

After forcing families to take the test for over twenty years the Children’s Aid Societies say hospital must help more with aftermath of testing probe.

 

 

After improperly conducting the test for over twenty years many who work in child protection claim the Motherisk bombshell caught them off guard (never thinking they'd get caught) despite having conduct the test improperly for over twenty years. For years, children were removed from their families based on flawed hair testing (or for refusing to cooperate) for drugs and alcohol at the Motherisk lab at the Hospital for Sick Children.

 

The detailed breakdown and the specific case references make the injustice of it sickeningly vivid.

 

 

G. Peters blasted the review as a “secretive” process that looked at only a fraction of the thousands of known cases.

 

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What happens when you call the CAS?

 

Calls are answered by a trained child protection worker. These ‘front-line’ workers are part customer service rep, part counselor and their role is to listen carefully so they can understand how to help. There are several teams who work together to provide services 24/7 to the Peel community.

 

When you call, you will be asked questions to help us determine how much support a family may need. Sometimes we can provide assistance over the phone. Other times, we will recommend that one of our workers set up a time to visit with a family to see if there are any other ways we can help or an induction worker may visit a family right away based on the nature and severity of the concern without a warrant with police assistance to intimidate parents and bully their way in to conduct a surprise search of the home while threatening to remove any children if the parents fail to cooperate and sign consent forms, service agreements and submit to various forms testing. Asking for a second opinion is asking to be taken to the Ontario family courts.

 

 

It is not necessary to be certain that a child is or may be in need of protection to make a report to a children’s aid society. “Reasonable grounds” refers to the information that an average person, using normal and honest judgment, would need in order to decide to report.

 

This standard has been recognized by courts in Ontario as establishing the lowest threshold for reporting.

 

Who or what determines if the caller is the average person using normal and honest judgement or if there are any reasonable grounds?

 

The Children’s Aid Societies feel it is their role to investigate calls made by the public using a professional and internalized standardized process that avoids all the normal checks, balances and judicial oversight, in others words, all the procedural safeguards guaranteed in the Constitution, Charter of Rights and in so doing violates fundamental justice (due process).

 

 

NOT ALL SOCIAL WORKERS ARE CREATED EQUAL.

 

"From the right to know and the duty to inquire flows the obligation to act."

 

Since it began operations in 2000, the OCSWSSW has worked steadily to address the issue of child protection workers. Unfortunately, many CASs have been circumventing professional regulation of their staff by requiring that staff have social work education yet discouraging those same staff from registering with the OCSWSSW.

 

The new regulation was updated to only require Local Directors of Children’s Aid Societies to be registered with the College so it's up to all of us now to encourage the employees of the children's aid societies that enter family homes, schools and hospitals to be registered and their credentials checked before they are allowed to enter said places.

 

The majority of local directors, supervisors, child protection workers and adoption workers have social work or social service work education, yet fewer than 10% are registered with the OCSWSSW.

 

Meet Kim Morrow: Former unregistered director of service FCSLLG.

 

Meet Lesley Wollenschlager: Unregistered child protection social worker.

 

IN A HISTORIC MOVE THE ONTARIO COLLEGE OF SOCIAL WORK JOINS THE FIGHT TO REGULATE THE CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETIES.

 

If you have any practice questions or concerns related to the new CYFSA, please contact the Professional Practice Department at 416-972-9882 or 1-877-828-9380 or email practice@ocswssw.org.

 

Submission-re-Proposed-Regulations-under-the-CYFSA-January-25-2018. OCSWSSW May 1, 2018

 

 

WHO WOULD BE AFFECTED ACCORDING TO CUPE?

 

The report, Towards regulation: Child protection and professional regulation in the province of Ontario, notes that the CAS workforce has expanded beyond social workers since 2000 to include child and youth workers and those with general degrees and diplomas. A 2013 OACAS survey found that only 70% of relevant job classifications would qualify for registration with the College of Social Workers. CUPE members working as child protection workers could suddenly without any kind of warning be deemed unqualified if they could not register with the College of Social Workers.

 

Social Work and Social Service Work Act, 1998, SO 1998 ... - Ontario.ca

 

IMPACT ON STAFF:

 

It is unfair and unjust that staff who are currently deemed qualified by the society to do their work, some of whom have decades of on-the-ground experience ruining lives, would suddenly and arbitrarily be deemed unqualified.

 

"If the employers (government) are moving forward with professional regulation, it’s likely they will bring this issue to the next round of collective bargaining so CUPE members (unqualified child protection social workers) will have to be prepared to fight."

 

The report also notes that the “clearest path forward” would be for the provincial government to legislate the necessity of professional regulation, which would be an appallingly heavy-handed move.

 

AND DRAGGING TENS OF THOUSANDS OF FAMILIES THROUGH THE FAMILY COURTS WASN'T HEAVY-HANDED?

 

 

Silenced, discredited, stripped of powers of moral appeal, and deprived of the interpersonal conditions necessary for maintaining self-respect and labeled "disgruntled" many people suffer from serious but subtle forms of oppression involving neither physical violence nor the use of law.

 

Civilized Oppression and Moral Relations: Victims, Fallibility, and the Moral Community.

 

In Civilized Oppression J.Harvey forcefully argues for the crucial role of morally distorted relationships in such oppression. While uncovering a set of underlying moral principles that account for the immorality of civilized oppression, Harvey's analyses provide frameworks for identifying morally problematic situations and relationships, criteria for evaluating them, and guidelines for appropriate responses. This book will be essential for both graduates and undergraduates in ethics, social theory, theory of justice, and feminist and race studies.

 

This book discusses how civilized oppression (the oppression that involves neither violence nor the law) can be overcome by re-examining our participation in it. Moral community, solidarity and education are offered as vibrant strategies to overcome the hurt and marginalization that stem from civilized oppression.

 

Ontarians have a right to assume that, when they receive services that are provided by someone who is required to have a social work degree (or a social service work diploma) — whether those services are direct (such as those provided by a child protection worker or adoption worker) or indirect (such as those provided by a local director or supervisor) — that person is registered with, and accountable to, the OCSWSSW.

 

The new regulation was updated to only require Local Directors of Children’s Aid Societies to be registered with the College so it's up to all of us now to encourage the employees of the children's aid societies that enter family homes, schools and hospitals to be registered and their credentials checked before they are allowed to enter said places.

 

The absence of a requirement for CAS child protection workers to be registered with the College: ignores the public protection mandate of the Social Work and Social Service Work Act, 1998 (SWSSWA); avoids the fact that social workers and social service workers are regulated professions in Ontario and ignores the College’s important role in protecting the Ontario public from harm caused by incompetent, unqualified or unfit practitioners; allows CAS staff to operate outside the system of public protection and oversight that the Government has established through professional regulation; and fails to provide the assurance to all Ontarians that they are receiving services from CAS staff who are registered with, and accountable to, the College.

 

The existing regulations made under the CFSA predated the regulation of social work and social service work in Ontario and therefore their focus on the credential was understandable.

 

However, today a credential focus is neither reasonable nor defensible. Social work and social service work are regulated professions in Ontario.

 

Updating the regulations under the new CYFSA provides an important opportunity for the Government to protect the Ontario public from incompetent, unqualified and unfit professionals and to prevent a serious risk of harm to children and youth, as well as their families.

 

As Minister Coteau said in second reading debate of Bill 89, "protecting and supporting children and youth is not just an obligation, it is our moral imperative, our duty and our privilege—each and every one of us in this Legislature, our privilege—in shaping the future of this province."

 

The ministry sidestepped a question emailed by the Toronto Star on whether it would impose the requirement to register their 5000 plus employees with the College of Social Work, stating instead that it is funding the authorization process and leaving the society to police themselves with secret internal processes.

 

Motherisk is a symptom of a larger problem in child protection work.

 

The Motherisk scandal came about because of the failure of the legal system to protect parents and families. Somehow, the society has forgotten that the desire to do good cannot be done at the expense of rights violations.

 

The balance between protecting children from the risk of harm and protecting parents' and children's basic rights to fairness is a challenging one.

 

It is easy to fall too heavily on the side of overriding a parent's rights in favour of efficiency and expediency. But to ensure that something like Motherisk never happens again, it is something to which everyone involved in child welfare — lawyers, judges and caseworkers — must strive.

 

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees procedural fairness when the state interferes with fundamental personal rights, such as the right by parents to care for their children.

 

Ironically enough, the issue of taking body samples (such as hair for testing) without proper consent for the purpose of criminal investigations was found to be an infringement of the Charter 20 years ago by the Supreme Court.

 

It is unconscionable that these protections are available to accused persons, but were never considered applicable to parents at the mercy of child protection services in the family courts.

 

There is nothing new about the commission's finding that many parents were explicitly or implicitly told that there would be negative consequences if they did not undergo hair testing. In fact, this type of coercive action continues to happen: parents are often given messages that if they do not consent, for example, to a finding that the child is in need of protection, that there will be negative consequences. For example, they may be prevented from bringing further motions, or — more damning in CAS work — labelled as being "uncooperative."

 

“Motherisk testing was imposed on people who were among the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society, who were targeted with scant regard for due process of their rights to privacy and bodily integrity,” because they couldn't fight back the report states.

 

Tammy Law is a lawyer practicing in child protection, family and criminal law in Toronto.

 

This column is part of CBC's Opinion section. For more information about this section, please read this editor's blog and our FAQ.

 

One would have thought that post-Motherisk, we would want parents and children to have more procedural protections and safeguards, and yet, it looks like the opposite is happening again.

 

 

“Harmful Impacts” is the title of the commission report written by the Honourable Judith C. Beaman after two years of study. After reading it, “harmful” seems almost to be putting it lightly. The 56 cases the commission examined in which the flawed Motherisk tests, administered by SickKids Hospital between 2005 and 2015, were determined to have a “substantial impact” on the decisions of child protection agencies, led to children being permanently removed from their families.

 

The report also points to the larger problem that allowed the the CAS's use of the Motherisk lab to cause so much damage: the system unfairly targets poor families — especially, the report details, Indigenous and racialized families; the legal deck is stacked against those families, denying them due process to a staggering degree; and authorities are too quick to take children from their parents in the absence of evidence of severe abuse or neglect.

 

Removal from the home — permanent removal — is not supposed to be a move taken lightly. The report goes over the legal principles, laying out that it should be a last resort. It is the “capital punishment” of child protection, according to one citation, absolutely devastating to parents, and for children it is “often the beginning of a life sentence.”

 

Yet in the cases reviewed here, it is imposed, often apparently cavalierly and without even a trial, for reasons that amount to a punishment for being poor.

 

Rich parents who are alcoholics, after all, are not having their children taken from them after a single relapse. Few rich parents, in fact, are having their children taken from them at all.

 

Lives were ruined. Parents’ lives, and quite possibly children’s lives. Siblings and grandparents and other family members’ lives, too. Irreversibly ruined. And in many cases, it seems this was allowed to happen primarily because people were poor.

 

It is hard to think of anything more harmful than that.

 

The Motherisk lab was shut down in 2015 — too long after the problems with it were known, exposed in part due to the reporting of my Star colleague Rachel Mendleson, after far too much damage was done. But reading the report, it becomes clear that shutting down the lab solves only one small part of the problem. The entire system needs to be overhauled.

 

The problems detailed in the report’s 278 pages are too numerous to go into in detail. They document the many problems with the SickKids lab’s testing and with the child protection system’s overreliance on those results. The hair testing process produced inconsistent and untrustworthy results despite being perceived as carrying the unimpeachable weight of scientific authority. That much we pretty much knew because of earlier reporting, though the detailed breakdown of it and the specific case references make the injustice of it sickeningly vivid.

 

“There are lots of kids in group homes all over Ontario and they are not doing well — and everybody knows it,” says Kiaras Gharabaghi, a member of a government-appointed panel that examined the residential care system in 2016.

 

Short video. Remember Motherisk: Helped or Traumatized?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Report of the Motherisk Commission:

 

The Honourable Judith C. Beaman

Commissioner

 

February 2018. Available in French.

 

This report is available at Motherisk Commission

© 2018 Ministry of the Attorney General

 

To recognize the broad harm caused by the unreliable Motherisk hair testing, the Commission considered “affected persons” to include children, siblings, biological parents, adoptive parents, foster parents, extended families, and the bands or communities of Indigenous children.

 

This Report is dedicated to everyone who was affected by the testing.https://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/about/pubs/motherisk/

 

If you have any practice questions or concerns related to the new CYFSA, please contact the Professional Practice Department at 416-972-9882 or 1-877-828-9380 or email practice@ocswssw.org.

 

Submission-re-Proposed-Regulations-under-the-CYFSA-January-25-2018. OCSWSSW May 1, 2018

 

 

SO MUCH FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE CHILD..

 

In its appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, the prosecution maintains the Appeal Court’s view of privacy was far too narrow.

 

“The students had a reasonable expectation that they were in circumstances where their privacy interests related to their sexual integrity would be protected,” the government says in its written filing. “Here the impact of the recording on the students’ dignity and sexual integrity was significant.”

 

Jarvis, however, maintains the students were in classrooms or other common areas where anyone could observe them. Concluding they had a reasonable privacy expectation, he says, could see the criminalization of a wide range of conduct, such as staring at someone from behind tinted sunglasses.

 

NOT EXACTLY PUTTING THE BEST INTEREST OF THE CHILDREN FIRST IS HE...

 

 

NOT REALLY THE SAME THING AS VIDEO RECORDING THEM.

 

Police in London, Ont., charged the English teacher, Ryan Jarvis, over secret recordings he made in 2010 and 2011 of the students while he was chatting with them. The images, captured in various places in and around the school and lasting from seconds to a few minutes, involved 27 female students aged 14 to 18.

 

Another teacher spotted what was happening and alerted the principal, who observed the same conduct and called in the police.

 

 

Massive Child Pornography Bust.

 

TORONTO – Crimebeat – On Thursday, November 14, 2013, Toronto Police Service Chief William Blair announced the results of Project Spade, a three-year, international investigation involving the making and selling of child exploitation videos and images over the internet. The investigation has rescued 386 children and has resulted in 341 arrests around the world. Arrests included teachers, and other individuals who normally would be thought of as being in positions of trust to protect children.

 

How Police Cracked Canada's Largest Child Pornography Ring

Inside the years-long lack of effort to take down a criminal organization hiding in plain sight.

 

Project Spade arrests by the numbers.

 

Ontario: 50. Rest of Canada: 58. United States: 76. International: 164.

 

What was most alarming, Inspector Beaven-Desjardins said, was that many of the arrests were of people who worked with or closely interacted with children HAD NO PAST CRIMINAL HISTORIES OF ANY KIND. They were pillars of their communities.

 

40 School teachers, 9 doctors and nurses, 9 pastors and priests, 6 law enforcement personnel and 3 foster parents are among those facing charges in the wide-ranging operation that can be traced back to a business operating out of Toronto’s west end, police said.

 

Project Spade, massive international child porn bust centred on Toronto, nets 348 arrests in ‘horrific sexual acts’. The Toronto man at the heart of the investigation was allegedly running a company since 2005 that distributed child pornography videos.

 

Police say the sheer amount of images and videos seized in their investigation — 45 terabytes worth — was staggering.

 

They included a school employee who allegedly placed a hidden video camera in a student washroom, a youth baseball coach who pleaded guilty to making more than 500 child exploitation videos and a police officer, he said.

 

Gerald O’Farrell, acting deputy chief inspector of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, provided an unflinching snapshot of some of those arrested in the investigation.

 

 

2013: TORONTO.

 

"In leaked memo, Peel CAS staff asked to keep cases open to retain funding." By KATIE DAUBS Feature Writer Thu., March 14, 2013.

 

An internal memo asks Peel Children’s Aid Society staff to complete as many investigations as possible and not close cases in March.

 

March is the end of the fiscal year for the agency and in the memo staff are instructed to complete as many investigations as possible (no fewer than 1,000), transfer as many cases as possible to “ongoing services,” (FAMILY COURT) and not close any ongoing cases during March.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Bad teachers: Ontario's secret list."

 

By KEVIN DONOVAN Staff Reporter Thu., Sept. 29, 2011.

 

A Star investigation finds the Ontario College of Teachers, the teachers' watchdog, shields bad teachers from public scrutiny. They might as well be the unregistered child protection social workers they work so closely with.

 

Here are some of the people licensed in Ontario to teach your children. Would you trust any of them to work with the CAS?

 

Parents, these teachers could be in your school.

 

A teacher who disciplined students by warning they would “spend time with a pedophile” and if the behaviour got worse it “would be without vaseline.”

 

A high school teacher whose female students said he called them “sluts,” “pole dancers,” “whore” and commented that tongue studs were for “oral sex.”

 

A teacher who shut Grade 8 students in a storage cupboard to discipline them.

 

A teacher who repeatedly took photos of Grade 8 girls with his cellphone.

 

A drunk teacher who sexually assaulted a store clerk.

 

A teacher who stole money students deposited with her for school trips to Europe.

 

A teacher who scared female Grade 6 students by drawing pictures depicting one girl’s death and tacking them to her dormitory window during a three-day outdoor education trip.

 

A principal and vice-principal who did not report a child’s allegations of sexual abuse, as required by law.

 

A gym teacher who frequently came late to school, smelled of booze and fell asleep in class.

 

The identity of scores of bad teachers and dozens more each year is kept secret by the profession’s watchdog — the Ontario College of Teachers.

 

That’s because the watchdog — a self-regulatory body — granted them anonymity after the teacher pleaded guilty or “no contest” to certain allegations. Typically, the teachers received a reprimand or short suspension.

 

In its investigation, the Star also found teachers who help students cheat on provincial EQAO tests; a teacher who ridiculed students’ religious beliefs; a teacher who repeatedly hit or manhandled students; a teacher who flirted with a Grade 7 girl, sending her what a judge ruled (though the teacher was acquitted of sexual assault and exploitation charges) were “sexually charged” text messages including “lots of love” and “can’t stop thinking about you, I didn’t want you to leave today.”

 

In some cases, a summary is published on the watchdog’s website and in its quarterly newsletter, without the teacher’s name or school. Some of the cases — particularly those dealing with incompetence — are never published at all.

 

Parents, these teachers could be in your school.

 

The Star has found that three years ago the backlogged Ontario College of Teachers began making more and more of these secret deals. These are not the worst of the worst — cases where a teacher was convicted of a criminal sexual assault on a student — but they are still serious abuses of trust. The Star reports on the more serious cases Saturday and the teaching profession’s inability to reduce the attacks 12 years after retired judge Sydney Robins probed that problem.

 

When it comes to keeping secret the names of some offenders, College Registrar Michael Salvatori said it is done if the teacher had a “momentary lapse of judgment.” Salvatori said that they make the decision in “the public interest.” Salvatori said College rules prevented him from commenting on any of the cases.

 

After the Star raised this and other issues with the College this summer, it hired respected retired judge Patrick LeSage just before Labour Day to examine its disciplinary practices. One of LeSage’s jobs is to “consider whether the College’s communication and publication practices prior to and following a hearing meet current standards of transparency.”

 

To determine how many teachers’ identities are kept secret, the Star first obtained all published decisions of teacher wrongdoing.

 

Each year, the Ontario College of Teachers makes a finding of wrongdoing in about 90 cases. The Star obtained copies of all decisions that the College makes public on its website or in its magazine. The College said it publishes these decisions to educate members and show to the public that it is doing its job of protecting students.

 

More and more, we found, problem teachers are shielded from the public.

 

Of the 49 cases published in 2010, 35 did not identify the teacher.

 

Of the 43 cases published in 2009, 20 did not identify the teacher.

 

Of the 38 cases published in 2008, 5 did not identify the teacher.

 

In most of these cases, the College also did not identify the school board and the school was never named.

 

In addition, between 40 and 50 College cases per year are not published at all.

 

The discipline decisions are made by committees comprised of teachers elected to the College’s governing council and members of the public. The college has three main committees that sit in judgment — investigation, discipline and fitness to practise. Typically, a three-person panel has two teachers and one public member.

 

The Star found that most teachers on the panels were previously members of a local bargaining unit of a teachers’ union.

 

The panels hear cases, decide if punishment (anything from an admonishment to revocation of licence) is necessary and determine if the teacher’s name should be published.

 

If Ryan Geekie was your son or daughter’s teacher you would not know that a very serious investigation was carried out into his conduct.

 

You would have no way of knowing that a summary report the College published in April 2010 about a teacher who used profane language was related to 36-year-old Hamilton teacher Ryan Geekie.

 

It took time but the Star was able to identify Geekie. We were then able to obtain a copy of the College’s original allegations and an agreed statement of facts between Geekie and the College.

 

Reached by the Star’s Jesse McLean at his Hamilton apartment, Geekie said he was “really tired” and could not answer questions.

 

Geekie was licensed by the College to teach in 2001. A well-known hockey goalie (Ontario Provincial Junior League) in the Hamilton area, Geekie attended McMaster University for his undergraduate degree and teachers college at Brock University. He became a high school English teacher at the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board.

 

According to a school board investigation done in 2008, and allegations subsequently made by the College, Geekie was an abusive, lecherous teacher from 2003-2008 who:

 

• stuffed rolled paper balls down the shirts of female students

 

• called students “retarded,” “hooker,” “pole dancers,” “slut” and “whore”

 

• challenged a female student to a fist fight, then made a sexual suggestion that he would “find something for her to do with her fists”

 

• asked the class if an absent student’s mother had died of a sexually transmitted disease

 

• gave a female student extra marks for work she did not do

 

• told a female student with a tongue stud that they were for “oral sex”

 

• spoke in class about having sex in the back of his car, drank with students at parties, swore constantly in class and called people “gay” if he thought they were “stupid,” slapped female students on their buttocks with sticks or his hand, took showers with the boys hockey team and brushed a female student’s breast with his arm.

 

The Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic school board had heard complaints about Geekie over the years and they were dealt with at the school level, said board chair Pat Daly. In 2008, following an investigation into more serious allegations Geekie was put on paid “home” duty in February 2008. He was fired by the board just before the 2008-2009 school year began.

 

Geekie did not respond to three interview requests. He is listed as a teacher in good standing in Ontario after serving a one-month suspension in 2010. It appears he has taken a break from teaching and is delivering mail.

 

The case went to the College’s discipline committee and a deal was reached. Geekie pleaded no contest to a modified list of allegations (a perception among female students that he leered; that he questioned girls about their relationships; that he suggested female students stop talking about tongue studs “as they were for oral sex”; that he slapped the thigh of a female student with a metre stick; that he swore often and called students “whore,” “retard,” “gay” and “ditsy”). The committee said it published a summary of the case, keeping Geekie’s name secret, to “demonstrate the transparency of the discipline process” and as a “general deterrent” to teachers.

 

The committee kept Geekie’s name secret due to the contents of two “teacher evaluations” it received (the College does not say what was in them). The committee also heard from lawyers on both sides that his actions were “on the low end of the spectrum” of problem teachers. Finally, the committee noted that Geekie is likely not to reoffend because he has been told to take a course on “boundary issues.”

 

In a second case the Star was able to identify Peel District School Board teacher Massimo Tallarico, who was acquitted in 2009 of sexual assault and exploitation charges by a criminal court. The College’s own process found that he committed professional misconduct related to a female student in her Grade 7 and 8 years.

 

According to the College, Tallarico, who hung up when the Star contacted him, engaged in “an inappropriate relationship” with a student who was shy and introverted and suffered from a social anxiety disorder. He frequently emailed and instant messaged her, saying things like “lots of love,” “miss you lots,” “I wish I could talk to you all the time,” “can’t stop thinking about you, I didn’t want you to leave today” and “I always love it when you come and talk to me.” At his trial (two years before the College hearing), the judge called his communication with the girl — which he initially denied to police — “flirty and even sexually charged.”

 

The judge said she could not find that any sexual touching occurred (the student alleged it had) but she chided Tallarico for his behaviour. She said he was seen as “young and cool” and he “cultivated his image of being the most fun and popular teacher in the school.”

 

In his defence, Tallarico said his emails were innocuous and sent as a way to encourage a shy girl to communicate.

 

The judge found that Tallarico’s online chatting with the girl “did a grave disservice in her quest to become an adult.”

 

The teacher was reprimanded by the College and told to complete a course on appropriate boundaries.

 

The discipline committee voted two to one not to name him. One committee member argued he should have been identified because “publication of the findings and order without the member’s name amounts to suppression of information and raises questions in the minds of the public regarding the transparency of the process.”

 

One teacher the College did identify was a teacher whose only crime was to break their secrecy rules.

 

James Black, a teacher and former discipline committee member, was publicly named by the College and suspended for two years because the College suspected he leaked information to the media.

 

The committee suspected (but could not prove) that Black gave information to a CTV reporter in 2006 who was probing the College’s practice of allowing teachers convicted of sex crimes to be reinstated after their licence was revoked. The College claims Black leaked information to CTV News about a teacher convicted of sexual exploitation in 1990, who was jailed 15 months and later sought reinstatement.

 

In 2009, the committee fined its former member, Black, $1,000, and suspended him for two years.

 

The College ruled that Black was guilty of a serious “breach of confidentiality” which “may have damaged the professional image of the College and its members. The need for a strong general deterrent is imperative in this matter.”

 

Black, reached by the Star, said he could not comment on his case.

 

The teacher in the case that led to Black’s suspension, Rodney Palmer, was suspended in 1991 and reinstated in 2003 in a closed-door hearing. He taught for a time east of Toronto, then retired.

 

Data analysis: Andrew Bailey

 

Kevin Donovan can be reached at kdonovan@thestar.ca or (416) 869-4425

 

 

There are many smart, hard-working teachers, the ones you are about to read about in Ontario's school system are not among them.

 

Predator teachers: Students ruined by teacher sex assaults.

 

Sadly, a Star investigation has found the number of known sexual assaults has held steady or increased most years, and most importantly the severity of the attacks has increased. Grooming — the term used to describe adults who charm, flatter and court children for months or years before the assault — is a factor in many cases.

 

 

College of Teachers raises alarm over proposed law.

 

TORONTO - Ontario’s College of Teachers says that under a proposed law, a teacher who marries a student would be exempt from allegations of sexual misconduct in cases where the relationship began when the pupil was younger than 18.

 

 

BUT WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE ALL OF THAT?

 

Everyone was busy looking for the pedophile ring in the 1980s instead of looking for one in the present.

 

Huge inquiry fails to find RESPECTABLE pedophile ring in Cornwall.

 

(Strangely enough, this inquiry was also plagued with suicides.)

 

By ROBERT BENZIE, ROB FERGUSON, Queen's Park Bureau

Wed., Dec. 16, 2009.

 

There were 34 victims in a Cornwall child-molestation scandal, but even after a four-year, $53 million public inquiry no one knows if an organized pedophile ring was operating in Eastern Ontario.

 

Commissioner G. Normand Glaude released his 2,396-page report Tuesday, exposing "a combination of "systemic" failures, insensitivity to complaints, and a reluctance to act" on the part of church, school, children's aid, police and justice officials.

 

In his report, Glaude makes 234 recommendations to various government ministries, Cornwall police, Ontario Provincial Police, the local children's aid society, Catholic Church diocese, and area school boards.

 

-

 

Forgetting the victims of child abuse. National Post September 26,2007.

 

(AND MORE SUICIDES)

 

In the 1980s, Canadians were shocked into awareness of the widespread evil of child sexual abuse. In Ontario alone, the names Cornwall, Prescott and London became synonymous with "respectable" pedophile rings -- lawyers, doctors, police officers and Catholic clergymen -- that for decades preyed on society's most vulnerable boys.

 

 

 

"I cannot accept, your canon that we are to judge pope, king and social worker unlike other persons, with favorable presumption that they do no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way against the holders of the public trust, and it for us to remember... Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

 

Not 100% Lord Acton..