What about the Children?

I have been looking for information about children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) in Saskatchewan and what is being done about it. I can not find anyone doing anything about FASD with the exception of John Lucas and his wife, the Honourable Judge Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond and a Saskatoon Police officer, Sergeant Briant. Judge Turpel-Lafond is speaking out in and out of her court room. John Lucas has been speaking out by picketing and posting thousands of posters in downtown Saskatoon. Sergeant Briant is seeking funds to open a Neighbourhood Activity Home in Pleasant Hill. Judge Turpel-Lafond is speaking out about the five to 10 children who are diagnosed with FASD for the first time in her court room every day. John Lucas has been speaking out for over 10 years about three children aged 9 and 8 with FASD and what happened to these three children in Saskatchewan. Sergeant Briant sees the result of trauma, residential schools, absent of parenting skills, alcoholism, drug abuse and racism every day. He has decided to do something about it.

Parents with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder are having children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. It is understandable why there are more Aboriginal children then White children with FASD. Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families and placed in residential schools across Canada. The Aboriginal children were removed from their culture, religion and a family life unknown to the white people who saw the Aboriginal people as being possessed by the devil. The Aboriginal family structure that placed the welfare of children above all else, ended. One can still see what it was like in the past when an Aboriginal child of to-day goes missing in a city for a few days. It takes a few days before panic sets in. There would have been no panic within the Aboriginal community in the past. The children were protected by a family structure and culture far superior to anything known by the new White settlers.

The White settlers were looking for a land free of oppression, with freedom of speech and religion, the land and resources they found was owned by Aboriginals. The new settlers destroyed the Aboriginal culture, they destroyed what they themselves were not only searching for, they were praying for it in their churches. The new settlers dragged along 10 commandments with them. The Aboriginal culture was nurtured over thousands of years. The Aboriginals could have taught the White setters, if they had bothered to ask, you only need one commandment, and, we have the same GOD.

The White settlers obtained higher status by their wealth, the Aboriginals obtained higher status by giving their wealth away, at a potlatch. The White North American culture sexually molested their children. This would not have been tolerated in Aboriginal culture. This was the talk in Europe at the time of the first world war, children were being sexually molested in North American. There is a problem with North American culture, no one will talk about it.

Judge Turpel-Lafond was speaking at the Canadian Association for the Practical Study of Law in Education. She said: “It is heartbreaking to sit in a courtroom and see a disabled child, who has been left in a chaotic alcoholic family and has led a life of neglect, doesn’t have a home, and has been the victim of violence and sexual abuse, at 12 years old come before the court.”

John Lucas was picketing to let the citizens of Saskatoon know that two twin 8 year old girls with FASD were being raped and tortured and that the authorities were doing nothing about it. The three children were White. If they had been Aboriginal they would have been given condoms, birth control pills and told to go play on the streets of Saskatoon.

The White children were placed into a foster home run by delusional people with expertise in dealing with children possessed by the devil. All of the people in charge of their care were no different then the people who were in charge of the Residential Schools and the Aboriginal parents of the children with FASD in Judge Turpel-Lafond court. Children of parents with FASD are more disabled then their parents. Children of parents who crammed the 10 commandments down their throats 7 days a week, are also disabled. These children grow up in fear of the devil, sex is considered to be a sin and sexual thinking the work of the devil. These people should not be placed in a position of having power over a child. They molest and rape children.

Aboriginal children of FASD parents have been abandoned on the streets of Saskatoon, you can see them unsupervised at midnight wearing only diapers playing in the playground beside the bingo halls. When they get to be around 11 or 12 years old they end up in Judge Turpel-Lafond court and their life of jails begins. Judge Turpel-Lafond and Sergeant Briant are asking the wrong people for help. The reason that Aboriginal children are left on the streets to be raped and molested is the same reason that Aboriginals are taken in the middle of winter to the edge of Saskatoon and left without their coat and shoes to freeze to death. We all know what it is, no one will talk about it. The Aboriginal community has abandoned their children. The children are being raped and assaulted, they need to stop asking the very people responsible, they will not help, they do not give a fishes tit about Aboriginal children. How can the Aboriginal community talk about self government when their hopes and future leaders are standing in Judge Turpel-Lafond’s courtroom when they are 12 years old suffering from FASD.

John Lucas and his wife had no other reason for picketing then to help the children. Mr Lucas was charged again with defamatory libel after picketing in front of the Saskatoon Court of Queen’s Bench. His jury trial is set for October 2005. He and his wife have been jailed for protecting children, he continues to tell the story of what happened to three FASD children in Saskatoon. He puts the names of the people responsible, and the names of people involved in the cover-up of the 43 month rape of two 8 year old girls with FASD on his picket signs. Why does he continue, is it because he was wrongfully convicted, because his wife was wrongfully convicted, because his wife was jailed again the last time he picketed, because three people in charge of the children found guilty of malicious prosecution and not held responsible for their actions. Not for one minute do I believe any of the above, he continues for the same reason he first picketed, help the children and hold the people responsibly for doing nothing to help 8 year old children in their care who were being raped.

This is what a Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench said about two 8 year old girls with FASD who were left to be raped for 43 months: “-- family was dysfunctional and likely sexually perverted”. Judge Turpel-Lafond needs to have a long educational talk with this judge and he needs to go for a ride-along with Sergeant Briant. The resources are in place to help the children, there are lotteries for sports, lotteries for the disabled, lotteries for the SPCA and animals. How about a lottery for the children, and then get the children and their parents the help they need and get the children off the streets.