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	CAS Let Kids Down, Cornwall Inquiry Told For Almost 20 Years, Agency Wasn't Set up to Handle Serious Abuse Cases Ottawa Sun [Canada] April 4, 2006 http://ottsun.canoe.ca/News/OttawaAndRegion/ 2006/04/04/1519466.html CORNWALL — For decades, children who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of caregivers were not properly identified by the very agencies established to protect them, an inquiry heard Monday. Despite the fact the Children's Aid Society was established in the 1960s, it was years before sexual abuse victims were treated differently than children suffering other forms of abuse, the inquiry into the response to historical allegations of child sexual abuse in this eastern Ontario city was told. "In the 1960s, it was about protecting neglected children," said Bill Carriere, special assistant to the executive director of the local CAS. "There was no reference to children who were being abused." Carriere said the agency was set up to protect children who were suffering neglect, a term which seemed to encompass any form of maltreatment reported to case workers. Carriere, who began working with the local CAS in 1973 as a child protection worker, said he recalled a case early in his career where it was obvious abuse had occurred but was treated as neglect. "A child had a badly broken leg, and it was clear it had been broken by the father; it was (labelled) a serious case of neglect," he said. "I couldn't get my head around it because it was obvious it was abuse, but they (CAS officials) didn't have the language (to identify it as such.)" Commissioner Normand Glaude questioned Carriere on how the agency would have handled abuse cases which were sexual in nature. "There must have been cases of incest reported to the CAS," Glaude said. "Were they treated as cases of neglect?" Carriere said the agency may have lumped those cases in with other cases of neglect as there was no structure in place to identify them by type of abuse. In the 1970s, standards were established that allowed child protection workers to properly identify cases of abuse. The agency did not begin addressing the specific problem of child abuse, including sexual abuse, until 1979. A lawyer for a priest is asking for portions of certain documents to be expunged. Guiseppe Cipriano, the lawyer for Rev. Charles MacDonald, plans to ask inquiry staff to remove portions of documents currently in the commission's possession. The specific portions of which documents Cipriano will ask to be expunged from the record isn't known. Last week, inquiry staff revised some of the documents contained in applications for standing made by some of the groups taking part in the hearings. An affidavit contained in the application filed by the Victims Group contained the names of a number of clergy members who have never been charged with a criminal offence, and attorneys for the Alexandria-Cornwall Roman Catholic Diocese asked they be removed. It also included statements which were not attributed to any individual. Those names and unattributed information have been blacked out in the documents. Cipriano's motion must be filed by April 13 and is expected to be argued in front of the commission April 24.
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