lera-92-07 diary

nedjelja, 13.09.2009.

I was suspicious that this woman who killed her two kids was abused

I was suspicious that this woman who killed her two kids was abused... turns out it's very likely she was, and what's worse, seems she was hospitalized for depression into the bargain. What a sad sad story.http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061011.wxbarrie12/BNStory/National/homeRole of CAS questioned after Barrie slayingsANTHONY REINHART AND CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD From Thursday's Globe and MailThe mother accused of first-degree murder in the deaths of her two little girls last week was admitted to a psychiatric ward of a local hospital as a suicidal patient just five months earlier.Frances Elaine Campione, The Globe and Mail has confirmed, was admitted to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie, Ont., for an emergency assessment.The 31-year-old's history in an active file at the Children's Aid Society of Simcoe County raises alarming questions about why the agency returned her two vulnerable youngsters Serena, 3, and Sophia, who was just a year old to her care and what workers and supervisors were doing to monitor her.Ms. Campione was admitted to hospital early last June after taking an overdose of medication and leaving a suicide note. She was discharged June 30, and within a week or so, The Globe has learned, had managed to regain custody of the little girls and had them back living with her.Sophia and Serena Campione returned to their mother days after she left a psychiatric ward. Ms. Campione was discharged the same day that another mother who was on the ward at the same time walked out of the Royal Vic but with a battery of support services in place.This woman, who has asked to remain anonymous, was suffering from postpartum depression after the recent birth of a second daughter.When released, she was involved with various community agencies, on medication and feeling much better.But, she told The Globe in a lengthy interview, Ms. Campione was still acting very erratic, right to the last day. I have no idea how she got out at the same time.Indeed, on their last day in hospital, the woman said, Ms. Campione, who had fought with other patients and was considered very difficult to get along with, improbably presented them with fancy pens from the hospital gift shop as well as thank you cards.Even on the ward, where the woman said people were all there for different reasons and extremely supportive of one another, Ms. Campione kept her distance.According to this woman, it seemed Ms. Campione felt the whole world was against her. . . . It seemed like she would just kind of blame everything on everything that was going around her. It was her in-laws' fault that she doesn't have the kids; it was the CAS's problem; her husband destroyed her life, you know.Ms. Campione and her husband, Leo, whom she had accused of assault and threatening, were going through a bitter custody battle. As a result of those unproven charges, Mr. Campione was under a restraining order that prohibited him from being alone with his children.When Ms. Campione was hospitalized, Serena and Sophia moved in with their paternal grandparents, which meant that Mr. Campione, who was living with his folks, had to move out.But the suicide attempt and hospitalization were not the only warning signs that the young mother may have been in trouble.At least one of Ms. Campione's relatives, a member of the Goodine family, and one professional had expressed concern to authorities about the safety of the little girls in the months before their slayings.As well as the criminal investigation of the children's deaths, the Office of the Ontario Coroner is conducting a separate review of any community agency involvement with the Campione family.It is this Ontario government office that drove, through various coroner's inquests into the deaths of children who were either in the care of, or ostensibly being monitored by, children's aid societies, the most significant recent legislative change in child welfare: the requirement in law that it is the child's best interest, not the family's or a parent's, that must be paramount.There have been a raft of notorious cases in the past 15 years where youngsters, purportedly being watched over by one children's aid society or another, were revealed after their deaths to have been the victims of battering, abuse and even starvation.Inquests have shown that time and time again, child-care workers identify too closely with the mother's needs to the detriment of the vulnerable children involved.Indeed, a sweeping review of the death of a 13-month-old Newfoundland boy named Zachary Turner, released last week, found that despite the massive publicity in the deaths of other youngsters across the country, the social workers in Zachary's case made the same mistake.http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=b08df704-7817-4a00-83ac-3e1630af6d06&k=99226Slain girls' father was on verge of more accessCampione vs. Campione. Court files allege mother suffered years of abuse Allison Hanes, National PostPublished: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 BARRIE - After more than a year of barely seeing his two young daughters, Leonardo Campione appeared to have been on the verge of more regular visits with Serena, 3, and Sophia, 1, when they were found dead in his estranged wife's low-rent apartment.The 35-year-old construction worker was still facing criminal charges for allegedly beating his wife and slapping Serena -- charges he denies. But documents show Mr. Campione was headed to family court on Oct. 6, bolstered by a report from the Children's Aid Society endorsing unsupervised access to his girls for the first time since his wife filed for divorce in June, 2005.Court papers also suggest Mr. Campione, who is accused by his former wife of subjecting her to years of trauma, planned to alert the court to "clinical issues" he felt might be impairing his wife's abilities as a mother.Instead, the two blonde toddlers were found dead of unspecified causes the day before the hearing. On the date he would have made his pitch for joint custody, 31-year-old Frances Elaine Campione stood before a judge to be formally charged with the girls' first-degree murder.After the Campione vs. Campione court file was finally made public yesterday, it showed the tide may have been turning in the father's favour in the divorce and custody battle.After more than a year of being cut off completely from seeing his children because of his bail conditions and a restraining order, Mr. Campione enjoyed a series of closely supervised visits with his daughters last summer at a provincial custody access centre.He brought them homemade pasta, took photographs, brought gifts, played games and held the girls on his lap while they drew pictures during encounters that staff members reported were tender and loving.Along with the positive CAS report saying he posed no risk to the girls despite nine criminal charges including assault and causing bodily harm, Mr. Campione also had a letter from an anger-management counsellor saying he was making good progress.All this could have complicated Mrs. Campione's attempts to win sole custody of Serena and Sophia so she could return to her native New Brunswick and start a new life.After burying his two daughters last week, Mr. Campione decided not to oppose a bid by several media to scrutinize more than 250 pages documenting the disintegration of his marriage, despite the ugly portrait it painted of him."As difficult as it may be for me to publicly refrain from rebutting, through specific evidence or testimony, any defamatory claims made public against me, I cannot compromise the integrity of my upcoming trial," Mr. Campione explained yesterday in a written statement released by his lawyer."Furthermore, I do not want to compromise the investigation into the murder of my children."Mrs. Campione, meanwhile, failed to give her family lawyer any instructions from behind bars on whether to ask for the legal file to be sealed.Through affidavits, letters, reports, financial statements, judicial orders, medical records and social services reports, the court file tells a he said/she said tale of two parents playing tug of war over their kids.According to Mrs. Campione's version of events, she endured years of physical and emotional trauma by an alcoholic, controlling husband, only deciding to walk away from the marriage when he turned on their child.None of the allegations have been proven in court.Originally from New Brunswick, Mrs. Campione met her future husband when she came to Ontario to work as a nanny.The couple had been in a relationship for four years and already lived together by the time they married on Aug. 24, 2003.They officially split on June 3, 2005, when Mrs. Campione fled their Bradford home for a woman's shelter, was examined in hospital, and pressed charges against her husband.In an affidavit she filed asking for a restraining order 10 days after walking out, Mrs. Campione claimed the abuse began six months into her first pregnancy and escalated until her departure."In February, 2005, the Respondent father assaulted me so badly that she that at the time of the assault, I believed that I was going to die," she said in the sworn statement. "I still remember every moment of the assault and my eldest daughter was present for the entire assault screaming an crying as she watched the Respondent father smash my head off the bathroom sink and floor. He then kicked and hit me repeatedly while I was down, yelling at me that it was all my fault."The last straw, according to Mrs. Campione's affidavit, was in June, 2005, when she alleged her husband approached Serena in her "high chair and stuck her in the face causing her lip to bleed and swell."At this point I knew that my children were now unsafe living under the same roof as the Respondent father," she said.The family court file contains a medical report detailing Mrs. Campione's injuries on June 5, 2005, two days after walking away from her marriage.With diagrams and photographs, it documented bruises on the side of Mrs. Campione's face, eye, thighs, lower legs and knee. The file also reveals the separated single mother benefitted from numerous social services.She was given a cellphone programmed to call 911 by a group that helps "high risk victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking" and was receiving counselling and support services from Women's Resources of Simcoe County as well as "outpatient supportive counselling" from Royal Victoria Hospital of Barrie "on a regular and ongoing basis since June 22, 2006."Just as Mrs. Campione painted an unflattering portrait of her husband as a violent man, Mr. Campione described his wife in court documents as unstable and erratic."The Applicant unfortunately has suffered emotionally throughout the marriage," he said in an affidavit dated Sept. 25, 2006. "After the separation, the Applicant has been hospitalized on more than one occasion as a result of mental breakdown... I verily believe that there are clinical issues with respect to the Applicant which ought to be made known to this honourable court."Although there is no CAS report on his wife's fitness as a mother in the family court file, Mr. Campione's sworn statement said the agency temporarily placed the children in the custody of his parents while she was hospitalized in May, 2006."The children remained in our care until July 9, 2006, when Elaine's doctor stated that she was no longer a risk to the children," Mr. Campione's father, Diego Campione, claimed in his own affidavit.This wasn't the first time he and his wife stepped in to care for their grandchildren, his statement also revealed."On Oct. 1, 2005, Elaine Campione showed up at my home with the children unannounced... Elaine and the children looked malnourished and distraught. My granddaughter Sophia had a severe diaper rash," Diego Campione said."Elaine's behaviour was strange and disturbing because she made no sense as she spoke. She was incoherent in her speech. She stated that she wanted us to take care of the children and to not let them forget their mother; that they needed their father. She stated that someone wanted to kill her."Diego Campione took his daughter-in-law to the hospital, where she remained in the psychiatric ward for seven days."I was told by the attending doctor and I verily believe that Elaine was unable to answer basic questions such as the day or month or where she was," his affidavit recalled of the experience. "I was told by the attending nurse and I verily believe that Elaine was in very bad shape mentally and at a stage where she might have harmed herself and the children."OFFICIAL STATEMENTSMrs. Campione said in an affidavit filed in Ontario Superior Court of Justice dated Oct. 2, 2006:"His physical abuse caused me to sustain black eyes and bruising. I was not allowed to go outside, not allowed to go to the doctor or communicate freely with my family... When a fight was over, he would get drunk. He was always sober when he inflicted the abuse which makes it all the more frightening... Our life was a rollercoaster with the Respondent's parents cajoling me to return to the Respondent when I tried to leave. I was so intimidated I would stay."Mr. Campione said in a statement released yesterday by his divorce lawyer:"I am well aware of the contents of the file and the allegations therein. I am innocent of these allegations and I have maintained my innocence from the beginning. As difficult as it may be for me to publicly refrain from rebutting, through specific evidence or testimony, any defamatory claims made public against me, I cannot compromise the integrity of my upcoming trial or the judicial process. I look forward to my trial date when I will have an opportunity to discuss these matters. Furthermore, I do not want to compromise the investigation into the murder of my children."

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