Here is an older story out of Canada that shows how idealization and societal views of a "mother" can negatively impact an entire system. In this case to the point of a child being killed by his mother:
CANADA - The social services system in Newfoundland and Labrador failed a 13-month-old boy, who drowned along with his mother in a 2003 murder-suicide, a review has found.
Zachary Turner died when Shirley Turner, 42, clutched him to her body and jumped into Conception Bay, several kilometres outside of St. John's.
"Nowhere did I find any ongoing assessment of the safety needs of the children," coroner Peter Markesteyn, referring both to Zachary and Turner's daughter from another relationship, wrote in a three-volume report released Wednesday.
Turner, a general practitioner, fled to Newfoundland after her estranged lover Andrew Bagby, 28, was shot to death in a Pennsylvania parking lot on Nov. 5, 2001.
Turner had obtained bail from the Newfoundland Supreme Court, and gave birth to Zachary, Bagby's son, while fighting extradition to the United States to stand trial for the murder of Bagby. About two months before the murder-suicide, a judge cleared the way for Turner's extradition.
Bail and released on a murder charge. And then I would think they would revoke bail once the extradition was cleared seeing as how she had already fled previously. It gets worse though:
Darlene Neville, Newfoundland and Labrador's child and youth advocate, called immediately for an external review of the child, youth and family services program.
"The fact that a whole organization could be so out of touch with the reality everyone else was wondering about is baffling," she told reporters.
Neville said two things were evident from reading the report. "One: Zachary Turner's death was preventable. And two: Zachary was in his mother's care when he should not have been."
Markesteyn found that officials, who were working on the presumption of Turner's innocence, were more concerned about the welfare of the woman than for her infant.
"Given the amount of resources that were put in to meeting Dr. Shirley Turner's needs and demands, and what she identified as necessary, if those same resources had been taken and put in to assessing what Zachary's needs were and how could his rights would be best protected, I would suggest there would be a strong likelihood we would have had a different outcome," Neville said.
Markesteyn found that social workers worked co-operatively with the review and that "the impression they conveyed was they believed they had done everything they could, given their legislative and policy mandate, to assist the children's mother, Dr. Turner, in caring for her children."
Markesteyn's research, which involved interviews and reading scores of documents about Turner, found numerous cases indicating that she had personality and emotional problems, including during her medical training at Memorial.
A supervisor there described her as "putting on a show" for superiors, and found she was confrontational, manipulative and unwilling to address negative evaluations. Markesteyn noted that the Turner experience led to changes in how residents are evaluated.
Among other things, the report found Turner had ingested drugs in either an attempted suicide or what Markesteyn said could have been a "suicide gesture." In a 1999 letter sent to a would-be paramour before she ingested prescription drugs, she described herself: "I am not evil, just sick."
Markesteyn also found that Turner had been under the care of at least four psychiatrists during her lifetime. - Read the entire article here
All of those red flags and still nothing was done to protect the children. You can buy the documentary made about this case at http://www.dearzachary.com/
Friday, May 8, 2009
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