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| Elizabeth
Loftus | Coverage of Klassen/Kvello
civil trial | Claudette Grieb
| Michael Cardamone
| Phil Bourgelais |
Alain Andre
Claudette Grieb
Murders bring
back terrible memories for grandmother: Still haunted by Grieb
murder-suicide
Liz Monteiro, RECORD STAFF,
July 7, 2000
The moment Claudette Grieb
heard about the death of four young children, she started to
cry.
The 52-year-old Kitchener woman
lost her two-year-old granddaughter two years ago.
The toddler was just a month
shy of her third birthday when Grieb's daughter killed her and
then took her own life.
Jackie Grieb, 26, committed
suicide by hanging herself. Dagmar was found hanging from her
mother's boot lace in their Shanley Street apartment.
Police said Jackie Grieb, who
was a local artist known for her vibrant surrealistic paintings,
had been depressed over a deteriorating relationship with her
lover.
"I've been crying all
morning," said Claudette Grieb in an interview Thursday.
"The entirety of what
happened came flooding back to me," said Grieb.
"I was at my wit's end."
Despite more than two years
since the deaths, Grieb's tragic loss is never very far away.
A photo album stuffed with
pictures sits on the dining room table in her Kitchener apartment.
The album marks many of her
daughter's milestones, including her first communion, confirmation,
high school graduation, her many tours with a local drum and
bugle corps and family barbecues.
The most recent photographs
celebrate her successful art shows and the birth of her baby
girl.
Cottage trips
Grieb pauses when she sees
a picture of a smiling Dagmar sitting naked in a water basin
getting ready for a bath at the family cottage in Kincardine.
"Oh, we had so much fun
up there," she said.
Other reminders include a self-portrait
of Jackie which stands against a nearby chair, and a school picture
taken when she was 16.
"I know the nightmare
ahead for the survivors. It's an ongoing nightmare."
Grieb, who also has a 27-year-old
son, said it's a daily struggle trying to understand why her
daughter would kill herself and her child.
Jackie was depressed and seeing
a therapist, and months before she died, she accused her parents
of sexual abuse.
Grieb categorically denies
the allegations. She believes her daughter may have been suffering
from schizophrenia.
Siblings with
illness
Claudette has a brother with
the mental illness, and another sibling suffering depression.
"When mental illness creeps
into a family, it's like somebody comes behind you with a two-by-four
and hits you across the head," she said.
"This is another two-by-four
hitting me again," she said of the deaths of the four children.
Grieb said more has to be done
to "stop the carnage.
"We have to start protecting
these kids," she said, adding more care needs to be taken
on the part of social workers to watch out for these children.
"For a person to do this
to a child, they have to be insane," she said.
For those left behind, such
as the children's grandparents, Grieb says only time will heal
some of the pain.
But Grieb says even she doesn't
know how much time.
"The other day I was walking
through Sears at the mall and I saw a little girl with blond
hair holding her grandmother's hand. I had to run out of the
store," she said. "It hurts so much."
Murder-suicide
prompts mom to lobby for better access to mental health records
Anne Kelly RECORD STAFF,
February 26, 2001
Claudette Grieb holds a photo
of her daughter Jackie, a local artist who killed herself and
her daughter Dagmar two years ago. In the background is Jackie's
self-portrait.
A Kitchener woman whose daughter
killed her toddler and then herself in 1998 agrees that health
records should be kept private, but not if there's reason to
suspect a mentally ill patient's condition is declining as a
result of their therapy.
Claudette Grieb was to appear
before a provincial Ministry of Health standing committee today,
which is into its second week of hearings on Bill 159. The proposed
bill, introduced by then-health minister Elizabeth Witmer, is
called the Personal Health Information Privacy Act and is intended
to bring health records into the electronic age. But it's come
under fire from dozens of health organizations because it would
allow access to some personal health information by police, bureaucrats
and researchers.
At her dining room table yesterday
surrounded by photos of her late daughter, Jackie Grieb and grand-daughter
Dagmar, Grieb flipped through her 60-page submission to the committee.
It includes the suicide note left by her daughter who was 26
and a local artist when she hung her two-year-old with her bootlace
and then hung herself in their Shanley Street apartment. Police
said she had been depressed over a deteriorating relationship
with a lover.
Her mother contends that a
type of therapy aimed at recovering hidden memories of incest,
which she said Jackie was receiving from an uncertified Kitchener
therapist, helped push her over the edge.
And that is what has prompted
her to become politically active. "What I want is a safety
net for the mentally ill and their offspring -- innocent babies
who can get killed."
Months before her death, Jackie
accused her parents of sexually abusing her when she was two.
Grieb flatly denies the allegations and notes the Canadian Psychological
Association, the Canadian Psychiatry Association and the Royal
College of Psychiatrists have all spoken out against the therapy
and the suggestive measure it uses to uncover past sexual abuse
of which the patient has no memory.
Grieb, who belongs to an international
group called the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, said countless
suicides have resulted from the procedure, which she considers
malpractice.
She said she wants a provision
in the new legislation that would allow friends and family of
a mentally ill patients to call for the release of records when
they have reasons to fear therapy is threatening the patient's
safety and possibly that of their children.
"Third parties should
be able to access a mental health ombudsman or a government committee
or judge to investigate," she said. "You can't close
the door on access to medical records if it means the public
is going to be harmed."
Grieb, who believes her daughter
suffered bi-polar disorder and possibly schizophrenia, said Jackie's
family doctor turned over her medical records and an autopsy
report to her without problem. But the therapist, whom she said
worked through a government-funded program, refused to co-operate.
"While client confidentiality
is of prime concern, such confidentiality should not be allowed
to hide malpractice," she writes in her submission. Withholding
records should be punishable by law, she argues.
Mother of a daughter, the a
victim of malpractice The latter received improper care, and
murdered her infant daughter before committing suicide herself.
Introduction:
Many leading figures in psychology
and psychiatry have noted for decades that Canada's mental health
system is in desperate need of reform. The most serious and widespread
problem is the continued use of "psychotherapies" that
have never been proven safe and effective by credible scientific
research. Many of these "psychotherapies" are harmful
or even dangerous.
Hundreds of Canadian families
have been destroyed by these increasingly bizarre "psychotherapies"
or "Mind Games". The most damaging of these quack treatments
involved the controversial and unscientific notion of "repressed
memories" of childhood abuse. Ignorant that they were using
subtle methods of brainwashing and coercion, believing themselves
to have found the secret to tapping the unconscious of their
clients, therapists convinced thousands of depressed and therefore
vulnerable patients that their mid-life problems were caused
by hidden or lost memories of child abuse. These malpractitioners
have escaped sanctions, because it was believed that these therapists
were dealing with actual child sexual abuse that was always remembered,
but not acted on by the clients.
Problem: Licensed and unlicensed
mental health therapists have resorted to these intuitive, esoteric,
unproven and outright dangerously suggestive therapeutic practices
that are frowned upon by mainstream professional bodies. These
practices not only harm clients, but third parties, the families
that are destroyed by false accusations.
Recommendation: The government
should pass a Standard of Care / Informed Consent bill that mandates
mental health therapists to specify to the clients and patients
which particular treatment they intend to pursue and what the
possible outcome of the treatment may be, before the patient
/ client consents to continue therapy. An example of such a bill
could be The Indiana Senate Bill 309. Most dentists use informed
consent in their practices before embarking on major work, why
should psychotherapists be exempt from this.
Problem: A specific concern
are highly suggestive childhood trauma search therapies that
became a fad in the late eighties, early nineties. These therapies
have been condemned by both the Canadian Psychological and Psychiatric
Associations as well as the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Recommendation: The Government
should post the specific guidelines and warnings issued by these
professional mental health bodies about these controversial and
experimental therapies.
Problem: As a result of malpractice
in this area clients have been led to believe that their mid-life
problems were the result of incest or other childhood abuses
that never took place and for which they had no memory. This
has led in many cases to innocent parents and others being dragged
through the courts, in some cases even to wrongful convictions.
Judges who have presided over such court cases and have seen
the transcripts of the therapeutic records are now well aware
of such cases. Suicides among such clients as well as the falsely
accused parents, and serious declines in health, and ability
to function as well as early deaths have resulted from these
misguided practices.
Recommendation: The government
should not only make public and fully support the guidelines
of these professional bodies, but inform the therapists and clinics
it subsidizes that funds will be withdrawn if professional guidelines
are not adhered to. Primary victims of malpractice as well as
injured third parties should be able to claim victim compensation.
Problem: Incompetent and unqualified
therapists have failed to recognize underlying serious mental
illnesses, have failed to refer such clients to properly qualified
professionals, assumed that these disorders were the result of
childhood trauma and proceeded instead with unproven experimental
and intuitive practices that are nothing less than the equivalent
of "knife and fork brain surgery" causing the client
to deteriorate seriously .
Recommendation: When a relative
of the client or another third party recognizes that a client
is not receiving proper care and is deteriorating as a result
of malpractice, third parties should have access to a mental
health ombudsman or commissioner who has the powers to make a
speedy intervention to prevent clients and the children in these
clients' care from coming to grave harm.
Problem: The College of Physicians
and Surgeons and other governing colleges have often been slow
or loath to take appropriate actions against members when third
parties complain about the therapy that is harming a family member,
taking a "buyer beware" attitude.
Recommendation: Aggrieved parties
should likewise have the right to avail themselves of the services
of a mental health ombudsman in order that the Government as
a power of last resort re-assert ultimate control over the professions
when they fail to properly regulate themselves.
Problem: Therapists should
be made aware that when a client discloses childhood sexual abuse,
their records may become legal evidence that may be open to scrutiny
by a judge.
Recommendation: When such records
are subpoenaed by a judge who finds that unprofessional practices
were used to contaminate the memory of the client such as has
happened again in a very recent Manitoba case, the Government
should take action to put the therapist or the counseling centre
out of business and certainly stop government funding. The judge
in the Manitoba case was left to wonder what the qualifications
were of the therapists in this particular counseling center who
encouraged the client to believe dreams about events that had
never taken place.
Problem: Many therapists whose
records were demanded in evidence in the courts have been found
to keep inaccurate or shoddy records.
Recommendation: Professionals
must keep accurate records indicating the specific methods and
practices used to help their clients. Not keeping records, destruction
or withholding records must be made punishable by law. This should
also apply the group therapies. While client confidentiality
is of prime concern, such confidentiality should not be allowed
to hide malpractice.
Problem: Many unsupervised
counselors have crossed the thin line from merely listening and
giving advice into the area of psychotherapy, sometimes using
heavy psychodynamics, without having been properly trained to
do so. The unregulated and uncertified practice of such mental
health counselors is a grave danger to society which has caused
the destruction of innocent families and often the deaths of
vulnerable and mentally ill individuals in our society. Victims
of such therapies have been set back for years, while the problems
for which they entered therapy were left undressed.
Recommendation: All mental
health practitioners, therapists and counselors must be licensed
after having passed proper examinations as well attend refresher
courses to maintain their competence. They should be trained
to recognize problems they are not qualified to handle, refer
them to specialist qualified to deal with mental illnesses and
should in all cases where problems arise consult with two other
fully qualified professionals.
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
