{"id":1270,"date":"2008-06-20T23:35:41","date_gmt":"2008-06-21T03:35:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=1270"},"modified":"2008-06-20T23:35:41","modified_gmt":"2008-06-21T03:35:41","slug":"canadas-most-ridiculous-news-story-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/20\/canadas-most-ridiculous-news-story-this-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada’s Most Ridiculous News Story This Week…"},"content":{"rendered":"

…is here<\/a><\/p>\n

The frightened mother rushed back to the campus and was stunned by what she heard – the principal, vice-principal and her daughter’s teacher were all waiting for her in the office, telling her they’d received allegations that Victoria had been the victim of sexual abuse – and that the CAS had been notified.<\/p>\n

How did they come by such startling knowledge? Leduc was incredulous as they poured out their story.<\/p>\n

“The teacher looked and me and said: ‘We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of “V.” And she said ‘yes, I do.’ And she said, ‘well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m parent. There are few things that trigger stronger reactions in me than sexual abuse of children. I want there to be a robust system of reporting and regulation to protect children from this as much as possible.<\/p>\n

That being said, even on my most protective day, I’m pretty sure that “second hand reports from a psychic about an unspecified child” doesn’t meet the laugh test, much less qualify as “reasonable grounds”.<\/p>\n

But under the Child and Family Services Act, anyone who works with children and has reasonable grounds to suspect a youngster is being harmed, must report it immediately – and the CAS has an obligation to follow up. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s where we see the old institutional CYA effect in practice–no one is willing to deviate from policy and say “well, this is patently ridiculous, and it would be a waste of time and effort, and an insult to this woman, to do our normal investigation here”, so the whole process has to roll on, based on a second-hand report from a psychic.<\/p>\n

This is just embarrassing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…is here The frightened mother rushed back to the campus and was stunned by what she heard – the principal, vice-principal and her daughter’s teacher were all waiting for her in the office, telling her they’d received allegations that Victoria had been the victim of sexual abuse – and that the CAS had been notified. How did they come by… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[61,178],"class_list":["post-1270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-one-and-done","tag-canada","tag-incompetence","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-ku","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}