FASD, Now What?

I was jailing profoundly disabled kids: judge on FASD cases
Jul. 31, 2007
Provided by: Canadian PressWritten by: DIRK MEISSNER

VICTORIA (CP) - Early in her career as a judge in Saskatchewan provincial court, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond was distressed to realize that many of the young offenders who appeared before her were disabled and didn't understand the consequences of their actions, let alone why they were in court.

They were kids with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, brain damaged because their mothers drank during pregnancy.

"They don't even know what a judge is," Turpel-Lafond said in an interview. "How can they be guilty?"

"They don't know if you're the friend, the judge or why they're here," she said. "They can't read. They can't write. These are some very profoundly impaired children."

Turpel-Lafond, who took a five-year leave from the bench earlier this year to work in British Columbia as the province's children's representative, said FASD doesn't get nearly enough attention, despite being a leading cause of mental impairment of Canadian children.

"It was very difficult for me," she said.

"To be a judge, I felt more like a jailer. I felt fundamentally like I was jailing these profoundly disabled kids where society had in many ways failed these kids."

In Saskatoon, she helped pioneer a FASD prevalence project that examined 300 young people in trouble with the law. After what Turpel-Lafond described as a conservative analysis - researchers had to get mothers to confirm that they had consumed alcohol while pregnant - 85 per cent of the 300 were diagnosed with FASD.

Many of these children had never been diagnosed prior to the Saskatoon study, she said. Another smaller study found that up to 40 per cent of the young people in Saskatoon's youth jail were likely to have FASD.

"I felt very uncomfortable morally as a judge that I was using the harsh penal machinery of a jail on a disabled child," she said. "I tried not to send them to jail. I tried to say, 'Is there someone who can take them? Can we find some family? Can we get some health-care people?' I really pushed to try and have a more wrap-around approach."

It was the case of a 12-year-old Saskatoon girl who was facing multiple arson charges that caused Turpel-Lafond to have what she described as an "Aha!" moment in the courtroom.

"There's something not right about this child," she said she realized.

The girl was 12, but about the size of a six-year-old. She wanted to plead guilty to setting a number of fires in dumpsters in a Saskatoon neighbourhood.

No one was hurt in any of those fires, but on another occasion she broke into a flophouse where her estranged father was living and lit a fire. Sometimes she would meet the fire trucks and guide them to the fires she'd set.

"She'd light the fire just to see the fire trucks come. It was exciting," said Turpel-Lafond. "She was without any concept that someone could be hurt. She didn't have the cause and effect that you light a fire, you get hurt. She just couldn't get that. It was part of the impairment that she experienced."

What confounded her about the girl in court was that she had been diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome as an infant, but nothing had been done to help her.

"Here she was 12 and had never been in treatment or support or care," said Turpel-Lafond. "It really caused me to fundamentally ask some questions."

In another case, a 15-year-old boy from northern Saskatchewan tried to rob a Saskatoon police officer for a cigarette, Turpel-Lafond said. He was charged with attempted robbery.

She even presided over cases where mothers and their daughters, both diagnosed with FASD, were in court on separate charges.

Turpel-Lafond, 44, is a member of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. She is a lawyer and was chosen by Time magazine in 1999 as one of the Top 20 Canadian Leaders for the 21st Century. In 1994, Time also chose her as one of 100 global leaders. In 1998, she became the first aboriginal woman named to the Saskatchewan bench.

But Turpel-Lafond herself grew up poor, with domestic violence, abuse and alcoholism in her home.

She said she decided early in her life she wasn't going to let anything prevent her from realizing her dreams.

Turpel-Lafond said she decided to come to British Columbia to work with children because the Liberal government admitted it had experienced system failures in child protection. A report more than two years ago by a former judge concluded government budget cuts and constant upheaval in the Children and Family Development Ministry had stretched B.C.'s child protection system to the breaking point.