[homeles_ot-l] (no subject)

[Reuel Amdur]

Canadian Charger


February 21, 2017


Ombudsman in need of an Ombudsman


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Reuel S. Amdur


 <http://www.thecanadiancharger.com/page.php?cid=5&id=5> More by this
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Ontario Ombudsman Paul Dubé issued a hard-hitting report on his
organization's investigation of short-comings of the Ministry of Community
and Social Services in its handling of the situations of the mentally
deficient. He found "a baffling lack of flexibility from officials at the
top." Well, the ancient Romans had a word for it. "De te fabula narrantur."
That's your story. Let me explain.

Cecil was sexually abused as a child.  When asked about school, he replied
that he did not do well and was always in special classes.  Recently he
applied for benefits from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board (CICB)
for what had happened to him.  “It ruined my life,” he said.  The CICB
refused to hear his case because he was himself guilty of such behavior and,
as the CICB observed, not all abused persons become abusers.  The next step
was to go to the Ombudsman.

The submission to the Ombudsman included references to the literature on
sexual abuse by victims of abuse, especially those of low intelligence who
as children had also suffered physical abuse.  (Cecil’s father, he said,
used to hit him in the face and on the head.)

While the CICB is correct in saying that abuse victims do not necessarily
become abusers, that is only part of the story.  When the case was outlined
to Dr. Irvin Waller, a criminologist of world renown, he commented, “It’s
kind of obvious.  Child abuse, physical or sexual, is well established as a
risk factor for persistent offending in teenage and adult years.” 

In his Smarter Crime Control (Lantham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), he
says, “. . . childhood maltreatment approximately doubles the likelihood
that an individual will engage in crime; the outcomes are even more
exacerbated in cases of sexual abuse.”  (Emphasis in original.)     

The World Health Organization’s 2014 Global Report on Violence
Preventionstates as follows: “Maltreatment can cause changes in the brain
that increase the risk of behavioural, physical and mental health problems
in adulthood.  Being a victim of child maltreatment can increase the risk
that a person will become a victim and/or perpetrator of other forms of
violence in adolescence and adulthood.” 

A similar finding was made by R. Karl Hanson and Andrew Harris, in their
report Dynamic Predictors of Sexual Recidivism (1998) for the Department of
the Solicitor General.  The factors cited in the report are childhood
environments and low intelligence.

Our submission to the Ombudsman also noted the Freudian understanding of
sexual interference during the latency phase of development.  It would be,
from that perspective, mental illness, substance abuse, or anti-social or
character disorder of one sort or another.  While, as the CICB argued, not
all such childhood victims repeat the behavior, that is a matter of their
innate ego strengths. 

The Ombudsman’s office chose not to consider this argumentation, restricting
itself to finding that the CICB acted within its jurisdiction in refusing to
hear the case.  Similarly, the Ombudsman refused.

According to the Ombudsman’s Act, the Ombudsman may speak to a decision that
“was unreasonable, unjust, oppressive, or improperly discriminatory, or was
in accordance with a rule of law or as provision of any Act or a practice
that is or may be unreasonable, unjust, oppressive, or improperly
discriminatory.” 

The Ombudsman did not even entertain the concerns presented.  It handled the
matter in a dismissive and bureaucratic fashion.  Indeed, Mr. Dubé, “De te
fabula narrantur.”

It appears that they had been coopted and neutered.   

 

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