http://www.thespec.com/news/crime/article/481892--impending-sentence-finally-brings-remorse
HOUSE OF HORRORS.
February 5, 2011
Now they know that locking the little boys in the basement was wrong.
Apparently they didn’t know that before. When they forced the tiny brothers to live in a small, pitch black makeshift basement room, putrid with feces and urine and with a great big wooden latch on the outside of the door.
It’s only now, as they await a judge’s sentence, that the mother, fiancé and grandmother of those sorely neglected children – aged 2 and 5 – realize the wrongness of their ways.
Only now that repentance and remorse could help them get a lighter sentence.
“I am very sorry for putting the latch on the door,” the mother wrote in a statement that her lawyer read at Friday’s sentencing hearing. “I never ever meant to hurt my children. I was trying to protect my son from hurting himself. But through all these court proceedings, I know and learned to never put anything on their doors ever again. If I could take it back, I would.”
Court heard from defence counsel that one of the boys had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. By locking him in the dungeon room, his mother claimed she was keeping him safe.
The boys lived in the shameful, squalid cellar where dead rats lay about, exposed wiring hung within reach and the smell of human waste was so overwhelming that police officers who discovered the boys – by chance – had to steel themselves from gagging.
The children were rescued when they tore a hole in the wall of their locked room and the youngest child wriggled out, got to a phone and managed to dial 911. Police came to the Stoney Creek house not knowing the source of the call.
Officer after officer testified during the trial that the upstairs of the house, where four other young children lived, was pristine. The upstairs children had neat and cheerful bedrooms.
But downstairs, the two youngest children were kept in unfathomable conditions.
“It’s essentially tantamount to torture,” argued assistant Crown attorney Todd Norman who is asking for a penitentiary sentence of two to three years. “We wouldn’t treat animals this way. We wouldn’t treat prisoners this way.”
Defence is asking for a conditional sentence. Justice Bernd Zabel has reserved his decision until Thursday.
All three of the offenders were found guilty earlier of two counts each of confinement, abandonment and failing to provide the necessaries of life. The grandmother is also charged with assault for allegedly yanking the toddler by his arm until he was airborne in front of a police officer.
None of the guilty took the witness stand during their trial. So yesterday marked the first time their words had been heard in the courtroom. Each of the three made an apology – of sorts. None can be named for fear of revealing the identities of the children.
The mother chose to write her statement and have her lawyer, Peter Boushy, read it aloud. Boushy commented that her writing abilities are extremely poor despite her Grade 12 education and her former career as a personal aid worker.
The 62-year-old grandmother, who has relied on an Italian interpreter throughout the trial, had help writing her thoughts down. Again Boushy read it aloud.
“I have been in this country 48 years, never have involvement with the law or court systems … I cannot believe this is happening to me.
“I tried to do the best I could,” she wrote, citing the six children in the house and the chores she was tasked with.
In an interview included in his pre-sentence report, the fiancé described the household as being like a “modern Brady Bunch.”
“Their lives were hectic but happy,” the interviewer noted.
He was the only one of the three who spoke directly to the judge.
“I didn’t mean for none of this to happen,” he said. “I understand what I did was wrong.”
All three claim ignorance. That they didn’t know what they were doing to those two baby brothers was wrong or at least, that they didn’t do it intentionally.
But they had to know. They absolutely had to know. Because upstairs, in the very same house, under the care of the very same people, were four children who were being treated so much better.
Susan Clairmont’s commentary appears regularly in The Spectator. Sclairmont@thespec.com
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