Category: FASD In The News

There is little doubt a 33-year-old man’s inability to successfully deal with his violent behaviour is related to his FASD diagnosis.

But while a Regina Court of Queen’s Bench judge recognized the struggles faced by Dallas Dwayne Whitebird, he determined the safety of the public meant nothing but an indeterminate prison sentence could mitigate the risk.

Whitebird’s dangerous offender (DO) hearing wrapped up earlier this week with a decision from Justice Fred Kovach, declaring the man a DO and handing down the sentence.

But the judge didn’t do so lightly.

“I acknowledge and understand that he is a violent individual, but I am also mindful that but for his criminal behaviour, this individual would likely be residing in an adult group home,” Kovach said. “He would be unable to manage day-to-day life without support and guidance. He does not have the capacity to care for himself within the framework of our society, and society has failed him throughout his life.”

Whitebird was convicted back in September 2012 of aggravated assault, but was not sentenced until this week. The offence, committed in the summer of 2011, involved an intoxicated Whitebird punching his older half-sister. She hit a door hard enough to smash her jaw — an injury that caused a serious break from which she never fully recovered before her death a few years ago.

Whitebird was far from a stranger to violence, having spent the largest part of his life in custody since age 14. Court heard his record contains close to 15 entries for violence and firearms offences.

Kovach said Whitebird was in custody for his sister’s assault when he earned a seven-year sentence for slashing the throat of a fellow inmate.

That history left no question in the judge’s mind Whitebird has demonstrated the pattern of repetitive violent behaviour required for a DO designation.

The product of what Kovach described as a “chaotic” childhood, Whitebird was exposed to substance abuse and violence from an early age. His mother a residential school survivor, she developed a drinking problem and struggled as a parent.

Whitebird spent time in various foster homes and eventually, at age 12, started drinking and using marijuana.

Since diagnosed with FASD, Whitebird is considered “cognitively low-functioning” and lacks impulse control. His resulting difficulty with programming intended to curb his violent behaviour was chief among reasons Kovach decided an indeterminate sentence was necessary. Two forensic psychologists who assessed Whitebird found it unlikely he would be able to grasp and retain the material he’d need to in order to change.

One of the psychologists believed the use of the Regional Psychiatric Centre as a home institution for Whitebird could help — a finding with which Kovach agreed. The judge made a recommendation to Correctional Service Canada (CSC) that Whitebird be placed in that institution on a permanent basis — or at least until he is able to make use of lessons learned in programming so as to safely release him.

“The CSC has a responsibility to protect the public from offenders, but it cannot be blind to the need for rehabilitation and support for offenders,” Kovach said. “Whitebird represents a failure by CSC to accommodate the needs of an individual with severe cognitive impairments.”

Even if he is eventually released, Kovach noted Whitebird’s cognitive issues mean he will require community assistance for the rest of his life.

Retrieved from https://leaderpost.com/news/crime/no-option-but-indeterminate-sentence-for-dangerous-offender-with-fasd

hpolischuk@postmedia.com

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BY CHRISTEN SHEPHERD

It was a scorching day so I’d taken my children to a splash pad. I was watching my daughters dancing in the water, when out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of my nine-year-old son, Allan, dart into the parking lot. He ran right in front of a moving car, which had to swerve not to hit him. I bolted over and grabbed him by the arm.

“Why would you do that? You could have been killed!”

This came as a surprise to Allan. He’d spotted a bee at the splash pad and run from it, not thinking for a moment that hurtling through the parking lot held far greater dangers.

Allan drifted through his days, coming downstairs in the morning wearing yesterday’s dirty clothes, never closing cupboard doors or drawers, forgetting to zip his schoolbag as he headed out the door with his hair unbrushed. Every interaction was tinged with frustration, and I felt I was failing as a parent. None of the tricks that I’d learned parenting my two eldest sons worked. Almost immediately after Allan came into our family, it was clear to me something was very wrong.

Nine years ago, when my husband, Trevor, and I set out to adopt, we had two stipulations: The child must be able to live independently one day and must not have been exposed to alcohol prenatally. From what we’d heard in our adoption classes, alcohol exposure created a muddle of impossible behaviours, far beyond what we could handle.

In the end we didn’t end up adopting a child—we adopted four children. The siblings we fell in love with from the moment we were handed their profile were aged 3, 5, 7 and 9. In the kids’ profile photo they had optimistic smiles, and when we got to meet them in person, we discovered they had endearing personalities to match.

On visits, they loved spending time on our farm—running around gleefully in the barn and fields, gently hugging our cats and chickens and patiently feeding grass to our goats and ponies. I knew it would be an adjustment to go from a family of four to a family of eight, but aside from having to cook twice as much, I expected things would carry on the same in our home—just with double the life and love. I couldn’t wait.

People say: “If you adopt older children, rather than babies, you know what you’re getting.” Well it turns out we didn’t. The anticipated mess and noise of our four new kids was compounded by giant tantrums and all kinds of surprising behaviours. Each child added unique elements to the hurricane: one punched holes through walls, another ran away during thunderstorms, another screamed at an ear-piercing pitch for hours at a time.

Allan was the biggest puzzle. He raged over small things: One time I told him dinner was still a few minutes away, so he leaped toward a pot of water boiling on the stove and almost burned himself. A trip to Niagara Falls left him sitting on the curb feeling sick and sticking his fingers in his ears, to block out the chatter of the crowds. And even though his classmates had long since twigged about Santa, Allan still wrote him earnest letters.

Allan spoke as articulately as other boys his age, so we initially pitched our expectations for him far beyond what he could manage. It was hard not to compare him to my eldest sons, and as we grappled with more and more behaviours that we couldn’t understand, I began to worry that he didn’t want to mature or try at anything in life.

Night after night of homework battles made us push for psych-educational testing at the school. It took a year to materialize, but finally Allan was diagnosed with intellectual delays. While the Children’s Aid Society told us this likely stemmed from a turbulent ride through the foster-care system, we were convinced there was more to it. Every aspect of life was such a struggle. After I presented our social worker with a list of Allan’s deficits, she finally referred us to a doctor trained in diagnosing fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).

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By Chad Klassen

Sellene McBride is like any 8-year-old girl – full of energy and always wanting to play. In particular, Sellene loves to climb and is fearless in doing so.

“It’s fun and I’m making new friends,” she said while playing at Riverside Park.

But what you can’t notice on the surface is Sellene’s FASD, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which affects her life in so many ways.

“Sellene requires a significant amount of support,” said Sellene’s adopted mother Bonnie McBride, who’s adopted three other children, including Sellene’s two biological brothers. “Her FASD has come with six other diagnoses in total, which is very common. Sellene has ADHD and she has difficulty regulating her environment, she has sensory disregulation, she has epilepsy, all of those types of things.”

Bonnie’s with Sellene every step of her journey, which is not easy and may only get more challenging. She adopted Sellene officially at 10 months old, but was there during her birth and never looked back.

“We started fostering her, very quickly fell deeply in love with her,” said Bonnie. “When it came time to make a decision about what the long-term plan was going to for Sellene with her birth family, we couldn’t imagine anybody else doing this for her.”

Sellene is fully aware of her FASD, knowing her biological mother drank during her pregnancy. It has a great impact on her daily living.

“It’s hard to sleep and hard to hear because our brain is thinking of other stuff, which is ignoring what people are saying,” noted Sellene, trying to explain her symptoms.

Now in Grade 4, she’s home-schooled, pulled out of public school midway through Grade 3 last year. Bonnie said there were distractions that hampered her ability to learn.

Home-schooling has helped Sellene thrived with a calmer, less sensory environment. What makes sellene’s situation more challenging for Bonnie, though, is the family doesn’t receive support from the government.

“There is a lot of programming that’s both provincially-funded and by non-profits that we can’t access,” said Bonnie, who added that Sellene is not including because she’s not diagnosed with autism or another such disability. “So we feel as an FASD family that we’ve really been left behind and it’s up to us to give her as many opportunities as we can.”

Bonnie, which runs the SPCA Thrift Store on Victoria and the non-profit Four Paws Food Bank, hasn’t been able to work full-time since sellene came into their care, and she doesn’t envision that changing.

She’s urging the government to step forward and help people and families struggling with FASD.

“Now that we know there’s so much of this occurring, I think it’s time for the government to really step up,” she said. “For the most part we’ve focused on prevention, which is great and we need to do that. But now we need to recognize that these kids are growing up and are super high-risk of repeating this process, going to jail and living on the street and having poor health outcomes.”