Slap on the face nets slap on the wrist

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

A former school teacher has escaped a potential criminal record, despite being found guilty of repeatedly slapping and punching her foster child in Cambridge Bay.

Justice Earl Johnson gave the woman a conditional discharge during a hearing on June 24 at the Nunavut Court of Justice in Iqaluit.

The woman cannot be identified under a court-ordered publication ban protecting the identity of her former foster child.

The discharge means the 50-year-old woman can avoid carrying a criminal record that would have prevented her from continuing to work in education. Instead, she must stick to the rules of a six-month probation.

The woman, originally from Nova Scotia, has taught school children for more than three decades. She taught the 13-year-old Inuk girl before taking her as a foster child two years ago.

In his written verdict, Justice Johnson had to choose whether he believed the foster child or the woman, who denied hitting the girl more than once.

When social workers investigated in June 2003, the girl stuck with her foster mother’s version of events – there had only been one slap, one time. The social workers considered the incident to be within a parent’s rights within the law.

But the girl later changed her story, and said the woman actually hit her multiple times on several occasions, once hard enough to break her glasses.

A social worker said in court that the attacks were likely brought on by the foster mother’s “perfectionism” and frustration with the girl’s perpetual lying.

The girl said she lied to the social workers, at first, because her foster mother asked her to cover up the multiple attacks, and promised to stop hitting her.

The woman’s defence lawyer, Euan Mackay, claimed the girl fabricated the beatings to convince social workers to send her back to her previous foster mother.

Johnson said the girl was more credible than her foster mother, who he found “aggressive” and angry towards the child.

Johnson noted the teenager admitted she had a bad temper and a habit of lying, even though the confession could have hurt her case.

But Johnson said he was impressed by the girl’s consistent testimony, and the compliments she received from her Grade 8 teacher, who described the girl as her best behaved and brightest student.

Before her sentencing, the woman apologized, but didn’t retract any of her claims.

“I truly tried to the best of my abilities to do the right thing,” she said on a speaker phone from Pangnirtung. “Everything I did, I did with the belief… that I was helping her.”

Until now, the woman was working as an early childhood worker in Pangnirtung, for Nunavut’s department of health and social services.

But she lost her job and housing, as a result of the conviction, marked by an eviction notice delivered by the government of Nunavut, last week.

At the time of the trial, the girl had been returned to her former foster parent in Cambridge Bay.