How Could You? Hall of Shame-Canada-Ashley Smith case-Child Death

When Coralee Smith visited Ashley at the youth centre, Ashley would reach across the table and hold her mother’s hand, and give her a big hug, her mother testified.

Not so when Coralee went to the Saskatoon centre in February 2007 to visit her daughter.

“Here (at the psychiatric centre) she was kind of reserved, stiff and withdrawn, not as touchy-feely,” Coralee told the Toronto inquest before Dr. John Carlisle.

“She talked about how it was kind of scary in there. She didn’t give me a lot of detailed information. She was skirting around the edges,” Coralee said.

Marg Creal, counsel for the coroner’s inquest asked Coralee whether she was simply reluctant at the time to ask her daughter too many questions about conditions there.

“Yes. It was self preservation. Maybe psychologically I didn’t want to know,” Coralee replied.

She described how she doted over her daughter, and how she would jump if Ashley even cried as a child and youth.

“She had me under her wing every moment. I loved pampering this girl.”

A psychiatrist who assessed Ashley as a young teenager noted her only problem was acne. Given the professional opinion, Coralee felt “I could rest assured things weren’t so bad,” she told the inquest.

But her daughter got deeper and deeper into trouble with the law. Subsequent evaluations offered terms like borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality, and self-mutilating gestures.

Sometime before Ashley’s April 2007 transfer from the forensic centre in Saskatoon, she complained to her mom that someone there stepped on her head, that she’d been held down and punched with a closed fist, and that someone hit her hand with a flashlight when she put her hand through a door slot.

“She’s up there getting beaten up,” Coralee said.

“I was beside myself. I had no one to talk to, no one in a position of authority to speak to,” Ashley’s mother testified.

“You’re whole world is twirling, (and) there’s no place to go. You’re paralyzed,” she added.

Regarding the allegation Ashley was struck in the head, John Tarala, a security supervisor at the Saskatoon facility, was charged after Smith died.

The allegations arose over an incident where Ashley was restrained because of concerns she might harm herself. A nurse on duty testified she saw Tarala strike Ashley, but a judge later acquitted the man, ruling the nurse’s evidence was not credible.

No charges were laid in the allegations pertaining to the flashlight or getting stepped on.

On Wednesday the inquest also saw new pictures of Ashley as a child and teenager, including one where she has pigtails and is snuggling a Cabbage Patch doll.

The inquest also heard Wednesday that Ashley was adopted by Coralee and her then husband at three days old.

Coralee said that often, including the lengthy period Ashley was in trouble with the law, her daughter persistently asked about the identity of her biological parents.

Coralee told Ashley “when you’re a bit older we’ll go to a registry in P.E.I. and we’ll find out stuff for you.”

Coralee will be returning to testify at the inquest Thursday morning.”

Ashley Smith’s mother speaks to inquest: ‘Most of her life, she was smiling and happy’  [The Globe and Mail 2/20/13 by Colin Perkel] says ”

Coroner’s counsel Marg Creal asked what Ashley liked as a child:

“Oh my goodness, what did Ashley like? Quiet time and doing her own thing. She loved her doll,” Smith answered, her hands twisting a piece of paper.

“Ashley was very independent.”

Beyond some report card comments that Ashley talked too much or could be disruptive in class, there were no issues at school until about Grade 8, Smith testified.

“I had no calls, no reports before that,” she said.

In Grade 9, however, Ashley was expelled for disruptive behaviour, effectively ending her formal education and setting off a family quest to find help for her.

At one point, Ashley saw a psychiatrist who decided Ashley was “just a normal teenager,” Smith said.

“I’m too fat and I have acne,” was Ashley’s take on the session, her mom said.

“Coming out of that, I’m feeling rest assured that things aren’t so bad.”

But the acting out would increase, and Ashley found herself in trouble with the law.

She would go to a residential facility for an assessment that was supposed to last 34 days but it ended after just 21 days because of her disruptive behaviour.

“She graduated early,” Smith said ruefully.

A psychiatric report from the stay concluded: “She has a huge personality issue in emotional borderline tendencies,”

Ashley was sent home with a prescription for the drug Zoloft.

Smith said she didn’t like giving her daughter drugs, and said she never saw the worst of her daughter’s behaviour.

“At home, Ashley was a mom’s girl.””

“Her daughter always wanted to know about her adoptive father, but Smith said she didn’t have much information to give her.

“He never even sent a birthday card or a Christmas card,” she said of her ex.“I can see how that would play on a little girl.”

Smith also said she had held off telling Ashley about her biological parents because she felt the girl was just too young to deal with the information.

Smith, the first witness who is not connected to prison or medical systems, described visiting her daughter both in youth detention and later in adult prisons.

She had little idea about Ashley’s life behind bars, the inquest heard.

“I didn’t press her for anything,” Smith said. “I guess it was self-preservation.”

At a psychiatric prison facility in Saskatoon, Ashley confided in her mother that guards had assaulted her.

“She was held down and punched with closed fist,” Smith said she was told.

“I’m beside myself. You have no one to go to. Your whole world is just twirling.”

At the start of her evidence, presiding coroner Dr. John Carlisle expressed“heartfelt and sincere condolences” for her daughter’s death.

Smith said she had watched the inquest for the first two weeks via webcast.

“The family took the computer away from me. They didn’t think I should be watching.”

Ashley Smith was 19 when she strangled herself in her cell at the Grand Valley Institution in Kitchener, Ont., as guards, ordered not to intervene, watched. She had spent most of her last three years in segregation cells.”

Ashley Smith inquest begins: ‘the best memorial we can give,’ coroner says [The Globe and Mail 2/14/13 by  Colin Perkel] says “In an agreed statement of facts, court heard the teen died after tying ligatures around her neck while guards – ordered not to enter her cell if she was breathing – watched and videotaped.

“Those immediate circumstances of Ashley Smith’s death are shocking,” said Jocelyn Speyer, coroner’s counsel.

Jurors will view the “most disturbing” video of her death because “it provides an accurate account of what happened,” Ms. Speyer told them.

The official cause of death was ligature strangulation and positional asphyxia.

About 8,000 pages of information will be presented to the jury, and it will take “stamina and perseverance” to tell and listen to Ms. Smith’s story, Ms. Speyer said.

An earlier attempt to hold an inquest went off the rails amid acrimonious legal squabbling, and was scrapped after the first coroner retired.

Julian Falconer, lawyer for the Smith family, said outside the court the hope is that the inquest will shed light on why a mentally ill young woman was subjected to what he called “absolute torturous” circumstances.

“This has been a very long time coming for a family that has literally fought blood, sweat and tears to get a process in which the truth would come out,” Mr. Falconer said. “We’d like answers to those questions, but invariably my experience has been [that] this ends up being turned on the family, so this is going to be a tough process.”

About 100 witnesses are expected to testify at the webcast inquest, which could last as long as a year. Jurors heard that Ms. Smith spent much of her last year in segregation, shunted across the country from prison to prison as her mental health deteriorated. Dr. Carlisle has made it clear he wants to explore how the prison system deals with the mentally ill.”

“In her three years in youth custody in New Brunswick, she racked up several hundred recorded incidents, ranging from refusal to hand over a hair brush to self-harm and suicide attempts.

Her string of in-custody offences over the years – such as spitting at guards or assaulting inmates – each added new criminal convictions and more time behind bars.

By the time she died, a 45-day sentence had grown to a staggering total of 2,239 days – more than six years.

Monday’s witness, a program manager from Correctional Service Canada, said she didn’t know if there were any oversight mechanisms to flag the ballooning sentence.

On Monday afternoon, jurors were given to read a 2008 report written by the New Brunswick child advocate — a sad account of Ms. Smith’s time in youth custody.

Ms. Speyer told court Ms. Smith’s prolonged segregation “may have a bearing on the circumstances of her death.”

In Ottawa Monday, about 30 protesters observed 13 minutes of silence outside the Correctional Services Canada offices — the time it took for prison guards to respond after they found Smith choked to death in her cell.

Protesters blasted what they said was the government’s penchant for secrecy.

“The public needs to know what goes on behind the walls of our institutions,” said Jennifer Kilty, assistant professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa.

Demonstrators also voiced concerns about the prison policies of the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

“Mass incarceration, mandatory minimum sentences, extended situations of punishment — they don’t rehabilitate, they don’t make us safer,”Kilty said.”
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