A Mississauga Ontario father recently took his 3-year-old son to a pool for his weekly swimming lesson. When the little boy removed his top, his father noticed that he had a heat rash on his chest. The lifeguard noticed it too although the pool employee thought that the marks on the child’s chest might have been as a result of the boy having been abused. In a rush to determine whether or not there actually was abuse, the lifeguard and the pool director took the 3-year-old away from his father and grilled the little tyke until they got the boy to say that his mother had hit him.
Children’s Aid were called, attended at the home, examined the child, cleared the family of any abuse allegations and then closed their file. Having a child who has a heat rash is not abuse in Ontario, at least not yet. Michel Villeneuve, the boy’s father was angry and he has every right to be so. What happened should never have happened, especially in a society where rights seem to trump all else. What Mr. Villeneuve is upset about is not so much the fact that pool personnel thought that the child might have been abused but the way they handled things by grilling the youngster until he said that his mother had hit him. This incident is reminiscent of the 1980s’ hysteria when it seemed that several daycare centres were believed to be places where children were used in satanic rituals. All of this proved not to be true and resulted from unqualified people with preconceived beliefs that abuse had occurred questioning children with vivid imaginations. When children are improperly questioned, they will eventually give answers that they think their interrogators want to hear.
What is even more troubling is the fact that the Children’s Aid Society sees nothing wrong with what happened at the pool that Friday evening. They seem to brag about the fact that lifeguards are trained to deal in detecting abused children. If that training involves questioning children, it doesn’t say much for Children’s Aid staff who have had serious training in these matters and are thought of, at least in some circles, as professionals. Ontario is suffering from a shortage of doctors; perhaps those without a family physician could just meander down to their nearest swimming hole and see a lifeguard. Children’s Aid seems to think that everything that was done was okay because the lifeguard could have been in trouble for not reporting the possible abuse of a child. Reporting or not reporting had nothing to do with it.
There were much better ways that the situation could have been handled. As the boy was taking regular swimming lessons, the pool staff probably knew his address. They could have simply called the Children’s Aid Society who would have then sent someone to the house and the situation would have been speedily resolved as it was when the Society did get involved. The 3-year-old would have been spared having been grilled by a “trained” lifeguard and Mr. Villineuve would have been spared his son being questioned until he finally said that his mother hit him. And if the lifeguards/social workers did not have the address, they could have just called the police. A properly trained and experienced police officer would have been able to differentiate between a skin condition and physical abuse, And if the officer wasn’t sure, then he or she could have contacted Children’s Aid to investigate. Either way the family would have been spared the poolside interrogation by amateurs who must have felt really good when they got the child to say that his mother hit him.
Mr. Villeneuve deserves an apology but he will never get one from the sanctimonious snots who are proud of the way things were handled. As long as they can justify that they did what they did “for the children”, Villeneuve’s rights and feelings don’t matter.
