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From our archives
So angry I sometimes
forgot my manners.
Bad Reporters:
Lazy liars, Gutless Wonders or Just Plain Bland
Maggie Siggins made Serge Kajawa
into a legal hero as the prosecutor who bent the rules to put
Colin Thatcher away in her book Canadian Tragedy: JoAnn and
Colin Thatcher -- A Story of Love and Hate. and the
mini-series Love and Hate. Kajawa was no stranger to breaking
rules -- as David Milgaard's prosecutor he suppressed evidence,
setting the tone for future generations of prosecutors who operate
as laws unto themselves, without regard for ethics, integrity
or the law. Now that Maggie Siggins has made her mark by exploiting
Thatcher's high-profile murder trial, she seems content to bolster
the stereotype of Saskatchewan's as a province of down-home grassroots
political peasants trying unsuccessfully to dent the armour of
the noble NDP and their Roi Romanow. She has certainly done her
part to lend credibility to the cover-up by endorsing
Frann Harris's book on Martensville!
Can
the new party duck the scandals?
Thursday, February 11, 1999
MAGGIE SIGGINS Globe
and Mail
IN SASKATCHEWAN -- It's just
as well that the Saskatchewan Progressive Conservative Party
has gone into hibernation for the next two elections. Scandals
continue to plague what was once a proud political force in this
province.
On Feb. 3, Tim Embury, a prominent
banker, former Regina councillor, former MLA and onetime minister
of the environment in then-Premier Grant Devine's government,
pleaded guilty to concealing welfare payments while he was filing
for bankruptcy. The provincial court judge gave Mr. Embury a
conditional discharge with 100 hours of community service.
In January, the trial of Cypress
Hills MLA Jack Gooshen, who was elected as a Tory, was played
out on the front pages of the province's newspapers. In May,
1997, he was charged with paying a girl under the age of 18 for
sexual favours. An RCMP officer testified that he saw Mr. Gooshen
frantically pulling up his pants while he sat in a car and that
the 14-year-old beside him was half dressed. She claimed the
politician gave her $40 for a blow job. Mr. Gooshen, 56, testified
that his only crime was in being a Good Samaritan. He said he
thought he was helping a distressed young girl who flagged down
his car and wanted a ride. Court of Queen's Bench Justice Darla
Hunter adjourned the case until April 19 to give the defence
time to muster its arguments. Mr. Gooshen sits as an independent
in the legislature and continues to collect his MLA's salary.
Senator Eric Berntson's three-week
trial finally wound down on Feb. 1. Two weeks from today he will
learn whether a Queen's Court judge believed him or the prosecutor.
Mr. Berntson, a former deputy premier and a powerful and controversial
member of the Devine cabinet, is accused of submitting false
invoices to his various MLA expense accounts to the tune of $68,055.
He is also charged with committing a breach of trust by diverting
$125,000 from the Conservative caucus bank. One of the allegations
against him is that when allowances of constituency secretaries
were doubled in 1988, Mr. Berntson kept the $1,000 a month himself.
His secretary testified that she never saw a cent of it. Mr.
Berntson is the 21st Saskatchewan Tory politician or official
to be charged in the past few years with cheating taxpayers out
of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
(Seventeen trials have so far
taken place, with 13 convictions and four acquittals. Charges
in one case were dismissed, and another two trials are pending.)
Finally, the spectre of Colin
Thatcher has again reared its ugly head. The media this week
suddenly became hot and bothered because the convicted murderer
and former Conservative cabinet minister has been transferred
to a minimum-security prison in Mission, B.C. Not only can he
enjoy amenities such as a nine-hole golf course, but apparently
his horse was allowed to join him. The animal has been sent away
in disgrace, but not before the Saskatchewan electorate was reminded
once more of the whole sordid affair involving one of the great
political dynasties in this province.
The question is how much of
this infamy will stick to the Saskatchewan Party, the political
animal created in 1997 when the provincial Conservative Party
turned itself into a Sleeping Beauty by suspending the organization
for 10 years.
The Saskatchewan Party consists
of four former Conservative MLAs and five Liberals. None of them
has yet tested the waters to see whether the hybrid ship will
sink or swim. Cowards is what the New Democratic Party calls
them, insisting that they should all resign and then resign themselves
to their fate in by-elections.
While the NDP government's
favourite pastime is ridiculing the Official Opposition, it does
have a point. For example, in the last election Arlene Julé,
the MLA from Humboldt, was elected as a Liberal, then sat as
an independent, and now has joined the Saskatchewan Party. Her
constituents must be very confused.
In many people's minds, the
link between the Saskatchewan Party and the Tories has not been
severed. Perhaps its MLAs are hoping the scandals will all blow
over before they have to face the voters; but with a spring or,
at the latest, fall election in the offing, there seems little
hope of that. It could make for an interesting race, for in the
countryside right now the NDP is hardly popular and the Liberals
have hardly made a mark.
Maggie Siggins wrote Canadian Tragedy: JoAnn and Colin Thatcher
-- A Story of Love and Hate. Her latest book is Riel:
A Life of Revolution.
Nancy Radcliffe
slashpiece on the McCarthys
Couple's Tale Doesn't add up:Why
would government cross borders to abduct their child?
After the shock of hearing
a 7 year old boy spent last Monday in a car outside a Mississauga
Ont. mall the skeptics among us were left with the foregone conclusion
that his current safety is only temporary. We shook our heads
and resigned ourselves to the inevitability he'll eventually
be returned to his 31 year old mother. The same woman who after
being arrested for shoplifting neglected to tell police or her
legal aid lawyer she left the child in the car Miraculously he
didn't freeze to death in -13 degrees temp. The boy and three
siblings who were later found at home were placed in the custody
of Children's Aid Society. Our disdain for the CAS comes from
all too frequent news reports of it's tendency to reunite negligent
and utterly unworthy parents with their children. I don't believe
the Ont. woman deserves a second chance. This incident doesn't
qualify as a mistake. It demonstrates her incredibly flawed and
irreparable character.
How bad does a parent have
to be before his or her rights are permanently revoked? Unfortunately
we've already discovered the answer lies in the death of two
severely neglected New Brunswick children -- The two year old
girl who died of dehydration in 1996 and the 3 year old boy who
was starved to death in 1994.
The sickening facts of these
cases are still relatively fresh in my mind. So my disgust turned
to curiousity Wednesday when a different brand of CAS criticism
emerged. Lisa and Bernard McCarthy of North Sydney recently distributed
disturbing pamphlets alleging the Children's Aid Society of Cape
Breton abducted their daughter while they were living in Florida.
The couple claim they fought a two year legal battle but lost
their daughter to adoption on Christmas eve.
They have also taken their
plight to the internet. A website called injusticebusters.com
contains the couples' grandiose accusations against officials
of tampering with court files, tapes, documentation and transcripts
as well as committing perjury and apparently international child
abduction is a booming business in our welfare system.
Can you say conspiracy theory?
Most of us would naturally
wonder why the McCarthys lost their daughter in the first place.
Children's Aid can't discuss the case but a CAS lawyer said the
allegations are slanderous and could bring criminal charges.
For now however the CAS is only planning to charge the McCarthy's
with identifying a child involved in a family court dispute.
Since cases often show the
CAS tends to err on the side of the side of parental right, occasionally
to the demise of the child, I have to question how bad a home
environment would be for staff to tackle international laws,
remove a 2 year old from a foreign country bring her back to
Nova Scotia and put her up for adoption.
Lisa McCarthy told the National
Post the family's involvement with CAS began several years ago,
partly because of her problems with alcohol. The CAS later claim
that the girl had been abused by the father, McCarthy said.
But according to the website,
which McCarthy told me is accurate, she was the source of the
original complaint. The allegations of sexual abuse she made
against her husband have since been redirected -- the couple
claim abuse occurred after the child was placed in fostercare.
But what earned their case
national headlines is the fact a government department plans
to fight back against criticism.
I'll leave others to pontificate
the implications for free speech. I just wanted to take a closer
look at the couple's claims before the McCarthys are canonized
as victims of the system.
There it is. . .
Two weeks
after doing her damage, Ms Radcliffe made a grudging retraction,
two lines at the bottom of a column discussing ethics, noless!
Lisa McCarthy responded with a notice of intention and eventually
filed a lawsuit.
These remarks
became the subject of litigation: we leave them up here. They
are now fairly irrelevant as the damage was done. It is well
known in newspaper circles that the initial story is what sells
the papers and that is what sticks in people's minds. Retractions
never undo the damage. Just ask the people from Martensville!
Nonetheless, Radcliffe's bosses countersued Lisa McCarthy and
won a judgment against her -- and us! -- based solely on the
words on this website. Lisa McCarthy has no control over the
website. We were not informed that we were being sued nor were
we given an opportunity to present a defence.
Steele's response:
Nancy Radcliffe is a freelancer
who won't be getting much work by the time injusticebusters get through with her! If she was half as clever
as she thinks she is, she would have checked some facts. She
is not to be trusted and makes up sources. She quoted us as a
source for a terrible allegation. She probably isn't losing any
sleep, though, because there is no evidence that she ever woke
up! This piece originally was on our free
speech page, but we are not sure speech should be his free!
And we don't think the Courts think so, either. Maybe we've run
into someone who really is irreparably flawed!
injusticebusters
hopes Nancy Radcliffe will learn the difference between fairly
criticizing public servants who fail to do their jobs and taking
cheap and hurtful shots at people who have already been terrorized
by the "system," as she calls it. As we point out on
the Nova
Scotia CAS Abducts Child page, the woman in Toronto will get her hearing
and we will leave it up to the CAS there to do the right thing.
We would also like Nancy Radcliffe
to think about this: the Toronto woman whose character she claims
is "flawed and irreparable" may be a genuine victim
of poverty and bad circumstance. What happens with her case remains
to be seen and it will possibly depend on whether anyone in "the
system" gives her a fair and compassionate hearing.
We also know that there are
Child Protection agencies who do their jobs properly -- In Red
Deer, Alberta, for instance, Sheila Verway runs a clean shop.
injusticebusters does not get
sentimental about victims who do nothing to help themselves.
We took on Lisa and Bernard McCarthy's case after we were satisfied
they had been genuinely mistreated and were willing to go the
distance for justice. Nancy Radcliffe, if your circumstances
should suddenly change, and such things can happen in a heartbeat,
you might discover that you do not always receive fair rewards
and fair punishments for the acts you do. And at that moment,
you just might want to call injusticebusters. In the meantime
you are a journalist who took some cheap shots. injusticebusters'
allegations that Cape Breton children's aid acted high handedly
and criminally by abducting Emma McCarthy are not grandiose.
They are the simple truth. Furthermore, Emma McCarthy is not
involved in any court proceedings so there is no legal reason
why we should not publish her name. Unwittingly perhaps, it would
seem that the Florida authorities were a party to the abduction.
Nancy Radcliffe has promised
the McCarthy family she will retract the lies. We are still waiting,
Nancy.
After allowing Radcliffe time to make a proper retraction and
to do a full column telling the truth about the McCarthys as
she had promised, injusticebusters published the following, here,
on this website, and nowhere else.
(March 16,
2001 - We will soon be reposting the full details of the McCarthy
case as an anatomy of Nova Scotia injustice. The case is still
going on -- Cape Breton CAS has got away with kidnapping! Emma
is now 7. This story must not be forgotten.
injusticebuster
Sheila Steele responds to Radcliffe smear
Nancy Radcliffe is the most
recent smug, chirpy, callous, clever, entertaining establishment
shill in Canadian print media. It used to be Barbara Amiel. Then
Barbara married Conrad Black and went to England where I understand
she now hobnobs with royalty. Maybe she has even mellowed: age
and experience can do that. Nancy Radcliffe should live so long!
Nancy Radcliffe has dug in
her heels to smear me and my friends. She insinuated my friend
Bernard McCarthy was a child molester. Then she said she got
the information from my friend Lisa McCarthy. Then she told Lisa
McCarthy she got it from injusticebusters.com which is run my my friend Richard Klassen and
me. She told Lisa McCarthy she would print a retraction.
Her explanation for the slash/piece
was that since two other papers had sided with the McCarthys,
she thought that she would write an article on behalf of the
Agency. Duh? Just a funloving journalist who likes to play devil's
advocate? In this case she may well be working for the devil.
First she agreed to see Bernard McCarthy to allow him an opportunity
to the record straight. Now I'm told she is not going to retract
any of it because she has discovered that Lisa McCarthy was sexually
abused as a young woman! I bet she flunked Logic 101!
Sexual abuse of children is
disgraceful. unconscionable and criminal. On that, Nancy Radcliffe
and I agree. I was abused myself, by a retarded neighbour named
Cy McKenzie and it is all on file with the Rosetown RCMP. I didn't
give the incident much thought, but I didn't forget it, either.
When I grew up I became an ardent spokesperson for choice, the
rights of children to be wanted and cared for, and against violence
against women. Maybe I became an advocate because I was molested
as a four year old or maybe I looked at the world around me and
concluded these were just causes. Who knows? I don't and Nancy
Radcliffe does not. Lisa McCarthy also became a public spokesperson
against sexual abuse. It was only in the course of studying the
matter that she remembered her uncle. We grow up in an abusive
society where the molesters and if every incident were blown
into a major crisis, we all would have perished by now!
The point is that we don't
have to experience something to understand or empathize with
others who have experienced it. And the idea that someone is
more likely to become an abuser if they were abused themselves
is specious. Statistics bedamned! The statistics are drawn on
testimony about a sensitive topic and are totally unreliable.
The President of the United States lied to a Grand Jury about
an area which was sensitive to him. Is Nancy Radcliffe aspiring
to be the Ken Starr of the underclasses? If so, she will find
the dirt on my friend Lisa.
In the course of facing her
present, dealing with her past and creating her future, Lisa
McCarthy has met nothing but opposition from the agencies who
were supposed to help her. Instead of helping her with her alcoholism,
they apprehended her child. Lisa and Bernard McCarthy's story
is full and rich. The sexual abuse she experienced at the hands
of an uncle is something that happened. When asked about it at
her appeal, she answered the questions honestly. The Court record
shows a battered woman all right. A woman who was battered by
the streets, the "life", by alcohol, and then by the
Court. The Court record also portrays Bernie as a criminal who
should not receive a second chance. His "extensive record"
is a fairly short list of inconsequential run-ins, clearly poverty-driven.
It seems that police, social
workers, crown prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges and newspaper
columnists can make mistakes, get another chance, and even make
the same mistakes again. How forgiving they all are of each other!
But struggling young people, trying to make ends meet who stumble
into the justice system, or the child protection system do not
get more chances. They get their children stolen from them. The
Court record goes on ad nauseum about all the chances
Lisa McCarthy received. As the true facts of this case come out,
such statements sound like Hitler talking about the fair shake
he gave the Jews!
We do not know if Emma is "happy"
now. We do know that if she was with Lisa and Bernard, she would
not be molested. And that while she was in the care of CAS, she
was sexually molested. This, quite frankly, is the bottom
line with me! I wouldn't give CAS a second chance at protecting
Emma! And I would give Lisa and Bernie. They have progressed;
CAS has not! We make a large mistake when we imagine those in
charge of making decisions about children to be grown up folks
with wisdom and insight. Many of their psyches are still in diapers!
Certainly many of the judiciary have failed to grasp the elements
of prudence and wisdom! Are all their children model citizens?
No. But they can bail out their mistakes. And cover them up.
As my brothers and sisters in the Church of the Universe say,
it's not justice, it's JustUs!
Nancy Radcliffe is guilty of
sloppy reading among her other sins. She extrapolated from the
record that because Lisa was sexually abused, her allegation
of straight physical abuse against Bernard (made when drunk)
was an allegation of sexual abuse against Emma. She is terribly,
dreadfully wrong. Even CAS has not gone that far! If CAS seriously
thought that Bernard McCarthy was a child molester, would Jenelle,
9, Mitchell 6, and Corbin, 9 mos. still be in his custody? Not
for a heartbeat! CAS has attempted to apprehend the other children
and failed. This family has demonstrated that it is a good family..And
Emma deserves to be part of it!
How many details of her "past"
is Lisa McCarthy expected to disclose, to satisfy the investigative
desires of Nancy Radcliffe and her hungry readers? When is enough
enough? Lisa McCarthy has nothing to hide and I believe she has
nothing to be ashamed of, either! I am proud to be her friend
and I am proud of her courage in telling the truth and exposing
the lies of the bullies. Lisa and Bernard McCarthy also keep
their promises, and don't jerk people around with qualified apologies.
Nancy Radcliffe: Come clean.
Retract your story about Bernard being a molester. Apologize
to injusticebusters! for citing us as a source. Bite the
bullet and join the human part of the race!
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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
