And another down day at the Weave Shed. There’s nothing on today (26 April). That’s right: no witnesses; no testimony.
And yesterday essentially wrapped up minutes after the lunch break. .
Unbelievable!
We’re really moving right along 🙂
Anyway, a recap on the latest shenanigans:
(1) Once again as the inquiry hobbles through what is supposed to be Phase I of the inquiry the Glaude team is putting the cart before the horse to dabble around in Phase II business.
Yesterday saw the calling of yet another “expert” witnesses to, as justice Glaude said when the inquiry first got under way, “frame” the inquiry.
I have said it before and I’ll say I again, the inquiry is being well and truly framed.
Yesterday’s expert was Robert Fulton, a former worker with the Catholic and Metropolitan Children’s Aid Societies in Toronto who now works with demographics, took the stand.
No offence to Mr. Fulton, but the irrelevance of his testimony to discovering who did what to who and with whom, why, when and where in Cornwall is mind-boggling. His testimony is even irrelevant to discovering the institutional response to allegations of sexual abuse.
BUT it might take on some relevance if we look downstream to Phase II and think in terms of an economically depressed community reaching out to help troubled youth and finding ways and means to identify and assist children who may be at risk for becoming troubled.
What Fulton does is take statistics and then analyzes the data to come up with demographic profiles based on his opinion on the inference of that material and his notion of the “outcomes” of a given community, “bad outcomes” being “social problems.
The problem of course is that this is terribly subjective – one person can look at a set of statistics and draw one conclusion and then go to work speculating how to fit fact to theory, another can take the same material and draw a diametrically opposed conclusion and speculate on that. Accordingly Fulton’s testimony was frought with I think’s and maybe’s and he was actually challenged on at least two occasions by Justice Glaude who questioned his conclusions to a set of statistical data.
No matter. According to Fulton, his work is determining
what are the factors that contribute to children becoming disturbed or children developing developmental handicaps, what are the factors that produce family breakdown and produce harm to children within families and what are the factors that contribute to children being able to be successful in school and successful in life?
This may be good, but it is irrelevant for Phase I. And, as interesting as it may be it is just as irrelevant to hear that the rate of accidental deaths for children is two to three times the provincial average, and the number of babies born to 15-19-year-olds is double the provincial average, and the suicide rate in Stormont is highter than the provincial average, and infant mortality rates are low.
What does this have to do with determining how the Cornwall Police Service, or the diocese, or the Children’s Aid did or did not responded to allegations of sexual abuse? Nothing.
I’ll leave it at that with one exception. I want to give you a quote from Mr. Fulton to meditate upon.
This is dealing with something Fulton called “Paternal psychopathy” which is presumably one “bad” outcome of a low socio-economic status (SES). According to Fulton
the low SES has been found in longitudinal studies to double the prevalence of men who are habitual liars engaged in crime, engaged in community violence, in domestic assault, in promiscuity and problems like that, which are generally described as the qualities of psychopathy.
I can’t help but wonder where this might fit in in framing the inquiry?
(2) Another motion in the offing: Some sort of agreement was reached by the Diocese and the Victims Group regarding the redaction of some names which appear on the Victims Group affidavits which are posted on the Cornwall Inquiry website. It seems that David Sheriff-Scott (lawyer for the diocese) sent a letter to Justice Glaude on 21 April ’06 outlining the terms of the agreement and both parties seemed to take it as a given that since they agreed it would be done. However, some other parties apparently have some degree of misgiving about agreement, therefore Justice Glaude has advised that the matter must be addressed in the proper manner which is to file a motion and allow other interested parties to speak to it.
(3) Glaude Press Release 25 April 2006:
Justice G. Normand Glaude, Commissioner of the Cornwall Public Inquiry, has requested a full accounting of documents that have been provided – and not yet provided – from all parties who have been granted standing at the Inquiry. The deadline for reconciling all
outstanding document disclosure issues is May 1, 2006.
As well, the Commissioner will hold a hearing on May 4 at 2 p.m. for all parties to ensure that disclosure is complete and for those who have not fully completed the disclosure of their documents, to explain why.
Strange? Seems to me the issue of disclosing documents will be up in the air until five days from now when Justice Glaude rules (1) if the diocese is or is not beyond the scope of the mandate and (2) whether or not victims can or can not testify.
Why not wait five more days? It really is strange.
And that’s enough for now,
Sylvia
As I try to imagine the relevance of this expert testimony to the inquiry I could expect the conclusion to be that all the sexual abuse in Cornwall is just the predictable outcome from poverty in the community. The cure would be more government programs to alleviate the poverty. The taxation necessary to pay for the programs will create more poverty than it alleviates. This will not deter the people who draw this conclusion because it fits with their mindset. The conclusion has more to do with their mindset than the evidence to be found in the community. This is a mindset which discounts the importance of the moral choices people make and exaggerates the importance of wealth – the (SES) Socio Economic Status of the community and people. I do not expect this inquiry to rise above the mindset of the people making the inquiry. How much sexual abuse would it take to break through in the awareness of these people as the source of the evil to be punished and rooted out?
(A posting from PRIMA FACIE sent via email with a request to post as a comment):
Sylvia,
I see the news reports today are emphasizing the “expert witness” statements and statistics suurounding Cornwall and Area. The news reports state how “startling and bleak” the findings are.
You are correct, incredible, that the
Phase I time and money is being dispensed on “potential” Phase II submissions.
What I see as “startling and bleak” is that the local news media and “Leaders” of the community see the expert witness testimony as “startling and bleak.” I see the reactions of the news media as being further evidence to support allegations of “cover-up” and how many “responsible Leaders of the Community,
including the news media, closed their eyes and blindly followed “the Powers” of the Community. The expert witness simply compiled statistics and other evidence already available in the public domian for the world, or any responsible person, to scrutinize and act on. In addition, the expert then offered his opinion relating to his research.
Believe me, his testimony is nothing new. I believe many social services providers, healthcare providers and others, who relocated to Cornwall or citizens who offerred more informed and proactive approaches, ntervention strategies or solutions, desperately tried
to challenge “locals” into confronting what was widely known to be, serious social, health and other related problems existed. Ynfortunately, unless you were a selected person, recruited through a corrupt and nepotistic web of hiring and placing, you were ostracized and silenced.
Incredibly, while stories like “Boys of St. Vincent,” “Alfred” and other national and international stories saturated newsrooms, at the time, Cornwall and Area managed to mismanage similar cries or send the “alleged” victims off to the infamous, “third-South”-psychiatric ward, of the local General
Hospital.
Do not act “startled” about the “bleak” picture being depicted. I believe many,
many laymen and professionals in Cornwall have always known. What is startling is that the responsible authorities, including the press, are claiming they are startled about what they deliberately created, protected and lied about.
Prima Faciae