Lawsuit:Ottawa woman part of proposed class-action on foster home abuse

“At five years old, Carole Chretien-Rankin was taken from her family in Lowertown — she’s never known why, she says — and simply vanished.

Soon after she was taken to the Orléans home with a brood of biological and foster kids, her foster mother threw out her favourite dress, cropped her long, dark hair and gave her a different name.

Then, she alleges, she was pushed, slapped, punched and spat on, strapped until she couldn’t sit down and molested by a foster brother, lured with the promise of pizza – an unheard-of treat.

Told she was so worthless even her own parents didn’t want her, she was forced to cook and clean instead of playing like other kids, Chretien-Rankin charges.

“I was a slave in that home,” she said.

At 53, she doesn’t even know how she looked as a little girl.

“I have no pictures of myself when I was young – they never took them,” she said. “I have no memories – it’s devastating. … It’s like I never existed.”

But now Chretien-Rankin wants to be seen and and heard.

She is one of 350 people who’ve come forward to join a proposed $110-million class action lawsuit alleging that Ontario systematically failed to protect the legal rights of children who became Crown wards starting in 1966.

People who were abused and neglected – before and after being taken into care – could have applied for compensation from a fund for victims of crime or through a civil suit.

But they got nothing because the province was supposed to act as their parent didn’t make claims on their behalf, collect evidence or even tell them they could seek the money, argued lawyer Garth Myers of Koskie Minsky LLP, who suspects the class action could include 40,000 or more people.

“Their lives would have changed dramatically,” he said.

“They would have been able to get therapy to deal with the abuse. A lot of these people are suffering to this day as a result of the abuse they sustained then.

“With early intervention, they could have commenced the healing process at an early stage.”

Myers, part of the $67-million settlement for harm suffered by residents of three regional centres for people with developmental disabilities, calls it “just another example of the province failing our most vulnerable people.”

None of the allegations have been proven in court and a judge has yet to certify a class action – the first step.

The province has filed notice it intends to defend itself but a spokesman for the Ministry of the Attorney General declined to comment.

Chretien-Rankin, who says she was threatened with more beatings if she told anyone about the abuse, escaped her foster home at 16, reclaimed her real name and became a mother of two sons and licensed hairstylist.

She loved her job but says it became too much as struggled with depression, anxiety and memory problems.

She wants the province to be accountable for the suffering of children who were abused and urges others like her to come forward and tell their stories, too.

“It’s time for me to release the pain,” she said. “It’s time for me to heal. It’s destroyed me long enough. I went without way too much in my life because of fear.””

 

Ottawa woman part of proposed class-action on foster home abuse[Ottawa Sun 5/24/14 by Megan Gillis]

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