THEIR NEWBORNS WERE TAKEN AT BIRTH; YEARS LATER, THESE WOMEN STILL DON'T KNOW WHY

Canadian News

 

CBC News

 

Their newborns were taken at birth. Years later, these women still don't know why

3 Ottawa women say 'birth alert' practice left them grappling with trauma decades later

Priscilla Ki Sun Hwang · CBC News · Posted: Sep 29, 2022 3:00 AM CDT | Last Updated: September 29, 2022

 

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

 

Three Ottawa women say they were left traumatized after giving birth in hospitals across Canada, where child welfare authorities threatened to, or actually took their newborns away without explanation.

 

Today, these women say they are victims of birth alerts but the path to answers isn't easy.

 

Birth alerts are notifications issued by child welfare agencies to local hospitals about pregnant people who they deemed "high-risk." In turn, health-care providers are required to alert welfare authorities when the subject comes to seek medical care or deliver their baby.

 

The alerts often include directions to take additional action — such as medical testing on the parent or baby, or to prevent the baby from leaving the hospital with the parent. It can lead to newborns being taken away from their parents for days, months or even years.

 

"They're problematic in the sense that unfortunately they were most often deployed against Indigenous, racialized and disabled parents," said lawyer Tina Yang with Waddell Phillips PC in Toronto. She is helping lead a proposed class-action lawsuit against several Ontario children's aid societies and the province.

 

Ontario ended the controversial practice in 2020, while several other provinces and territories stopped between 2019 into late last year. Quebec is the only remaining province to practise birth alerts.

 

"It's unconstitutional and illegal," said Yang.

 

Often, birth alerts are issued without letting the pregnant person know and without evidence of real risk, according to Yang.

 

That's why it's hard to know exactly if someone was subjected to one, she said — and in some cases, one of the only ways to tell is to request records from these institutions.

 

It was just horrific.

- Kathleen Rogers

 

Several years, even decades, have passed since Audrey Redman, Kathleen Rogers and Neecha Dupuis gave birth, and with proposed class-action lawsuits on birth alerts underway, they say they're ready to seek records on what exactly happened to them and why.

 

"I don't know why [Children's Aid Society] had red-flagged me. I still don't know to this day," said Dupuis, whose son is now 11 years old.

 

"That's something I just kind of lived with."

 

Redman, Rogers and Dupuis — who have become friends living in Ottawa — are all survivors of the Sixties Scoop, when child welfare authorities took thousands of Indigenous children from their families and placed them with non-Indigenous foster or adoptive parents.

 

As some of them open up for the first time publicly about their own birthing stories, they say the systemic taking away of Indigenous children in Canada needs to stop with their generation.

 

"Hands off," said Redman. "You've taken our children, you've taken our babies. Enough."

 

"I want to make sure this stops so it doesn't come after my children, my grandbabies," said Rogers.

 

"It's going to stop with us."

 

Kathleen Rogers was feeding her son when social workers and security guards showed up to her hospital room at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre.

 

It was Dec. 20, 2010, just three days after he was born.

 

"They literally took my son off me while I was breastfeeding," said Rogers. "Panic. I felt trapped. I felt cornered."

 

Rogers had travelled down to Winnipeg alone to give birth, after going on maternity leave from her job as an educational assistant at a school at Norway House Cree Nation in Manitoba.

 

"It was just horrific. And I didn't know what to do," she said.

 

Her baby was transferred from the care of Child and Family All Nations Coordinated Response Network (ANCR) to Kinosao Sipi Minisowin Agency (KSMA) — both Manitoba child welfare agencies.

 

A 2011 letter from KSMA to the province admitted the two agencies learned "Ms. Rogers posed no threat to the child," and she was "well able to provide the necessary care" for her baby.

 

Rogers spent three months in court and regained custody of her son.

 

She calls herself "lucky" because she was able to hire a Winnipeg lawyer with the help of her adoptive brother.

 

Through her laywer, Rogers was able to understand a little more about why her son was taken, but she said many things remain unclear.

 

"Basically they thought I was this drunken Indian," she said. "It was a wrongful apprehension and there was no proper explanation for this."

 

Rogers shared this photo of her adoptive parents holding her son, left, and her birth mom Rose Evans. She says it was devastating having to tell her parents her son was taken away shortly after she gave birth. She says they were her supporters when she fought for three months to get back custody of her son. (Submitted by Kathleen Rogers)

 

Rogers and her son have since moved to Ottawa, but she said Children's Aid Society of Ottawa have shown up at her door multiple times.

 

"I have a target on me and on my son," she said, getting emotional. "And I'm tired of it."

 

She plans on joining the class-action lawsuit for birth alerts and just began her journey to seek documents about her case. After initially inquiring, Rogers learned she has to make a formal request for records from the hospital.

 

"The whole thing was traumatic and it's really scary because I built them up to be … this huge monster."

 

Rogers, who plans to seek counselling before digging for more answers, said governments and institutions need to be held accountable.

 

"I'm just one of the many stories that this has happened to," she said. "The truth needs to come out."

AH: Another old article that needs to keep being read.

Also, there are no pregnant men.