PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The Current, a national news and current affairs show broadcast on CBC Radio One hosted by Anna Maria Tremonti represents the best of CBC investigative journalism. Its hard-hitting episodes are deep, probing and informative. The CBC played an important role over the years in the reporting of former doctor Charles Smith - the namesake of this Blog - particularly a 2008 "Fifth Estate" television exposé called 'Diagnosis Murder.' Investigative journalist and documentarian John Chipman is an ideal choice for the Current story. He is the author of "Death in the family" - a moving portrayal of several of Charles Smith's victims - and by extension, victims of The Hospital for Sick Children, which helped cover up his Smith's, failed to learn from the experience, and therefore enabled the tainted Motherisk lab to flourish within its walls.
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.
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STORY: Motherisk investigation reveals concerns over 'unreliable tests long before lab shut down,"with Anna Maria Tremonti, broadcast on 'The Current' on October 20, 2017. Listen Live
The Current
Full Episode for October 20, 2017 - The Current
00:00
01:08:42
Prologue
[Music: Theme]
SOUNDCLIP
[Sound: door knock]
[Sound: door knock]
JOHN CHIPMAN: Hi my name is John Chipman, I’m a journalist with CBC.
VOICE 1: Yes.
JOHN CHIPMAN: We’re working on a story about Motherisk.
VOICE 1: Sorry, I’ve got no comment.
SUSAN ORMISTON:
No comment from a former lab manager of the Motherisk Lab. Motherisk
operated out of Toronto's prestigious Hospital for Sick Children. And it
had an important job to do, analyze hair samples to help child
protection workers know whether parents had been abusing alcohol and
drugs. It was a powerful tool but not in the end a reliable one. Its
tests were determined by a judge to be inadequate but not before some
mothers and fathers had their children permanently taken away.
SOUNDCLIP
VOICE 1: I was now tagged I'm a cocaine addict. [chuckles] I'm on drugs. I'm a big druggie and I'm a liar and you can't shake that. There was no other test that I could take that would make anyone listen.
VOICE 1: I was now tagged I'm a cocaine addict. [chuckles] I'm on drugs. I'm a big druggie and I'm a liar and you can't shake that. There was no other test that I could take that would make anyone listen.
SO: The
painful human toll of unreliable Motherisk Lab results. A special
investigation tainted tests broken families in a moment. And then, it's
now the law of the land in Quebec, Bill 62 bans facial coverings for
anyone giving or receiving public services in the province. How do
Quebec’s Muslim women feel about that?
SOUNDCLIP
WOMAN 1: Why is it that every few days they raise this issue? Either it’s the hijab or it’s the niqab or it’s the burkini or the burqa.
WOMAN 1: Why is it that every few days they raise this issue? Either it’s the hijab or it’s the niqab or it’s the burkini or the burqa.
SO: We’ll
convene a panel of Muslim women from Quebec to discuss the new law. And
some of what they have to say may surprise you. That's in an hour. I'm
Susan Ormiston and this is the Friday edition of The Current.
[Music: Theme]Back To Top »
Motherisk investigation reveals concerns over 'unreliable' tests long before lab shut down
Guest: John Chipman
The Current
Motherisk investigation reveals concerns over 'unreliable' tests long before lab shut down
00:00
38:26
SUSAN ORMISTON:
When we think of wrongful convictions, we tend to measure the injustice
in terms of the number of years lost behind bars. Romeo Fillion, 31
years. David Milgaard, 22 years. Tammy Markert, 12 years.
JOHN CHIPMAN: It’s right there in the name wrongful conviction. Incarceration equals injustice. You need a conviction for it to be wrongful.
SO: That's The Current’s producer John Chipman. Hi.
JOHN CHIPMAN: Hi Susan.
SO: So you've been investigating an entirely different kind of injustice that doesn't involve jail time or even a conviction?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
That's right, but for the people involved it can be just as devastating.
And I should say that this has been a joint investigation involving CBC TV’s The Fifth Estate and the Toronto Star that we're calling tainted tests, broken families. We've been looking at child protection cases.
SO: Now those are governed by family courts not criminal courts.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
That's right. Our team was looking specifically at drug tests used in
child protection cases done by one specific lab. It was called Motherisk
and it was located at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children. Now it
turned out that Motherisk’s hair strand drug testing wasn't up to the
legal standards it was supposed to be.
SOUNDCLIP
VOICE 1: They need to be right. They don't need to be right just in criminal law, they need to be right in family law. And a lot of people did not see family law as forensic work. They just oh well if it's probably so then fair enough. Well that isn't good enough. Losing your child is the capital punishment of child protection law. You need to have these test results done right.
VOICE 1: They need to be right. They don't need to be right just in criminal law, they need to be right in family law. And a lot of people did not see family law as forensic work. They just oh well if it's probably so then fair enough. Well that isn't good enough. Losing your child is the capital punishment of child protection law. You need to have these test results done right.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
That was retired Justice Susan Lang. In 2014, the Ontario government
asked her to do an independent review of Motherisk and she found a raft
of problems with how it was conducting its hair testing.
SOUNDCLIP
SUSAN LANG:
They were totally inadequate and unreliable. They were used for purposes
that they were never designed to be used. And there is no question that
parents lost their children and children lost their parents.
SO: Children were taken from their parents because of faulty drug tests?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Yes, but there are often other factors the court would consider. And
that's not to say that drugs hadn't been a part of parents lives. Often
they were. But one important question is whether parents stopped using
them. Take Heather, that's not her real name. The courts prohibit naming
anyone involved in a child protection hearing. In 2006, Heather was a
single mother in a small Ontario town. She was working multiple jobs to
raise two sons. She was in a volatile sometimes violent relationship but
she was getting by. That is until she got hurt at work.
SOUNDCLIP
HEATHER: It
was a bad relationship and financially I was kind of in a bad spot. I
was falling behind on my bills and stuff. I was on workmen's
compensation, I was injured at work, and they cut my payments back so I
was broke. [chuckles] I was broke. And I couldn't get social assistance.
I was asking for help and there was really, I had nowhere to turn at
that point.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
That’s September in 2006, Heather she fainted while driving her
boyfriend to work one morning and was rushed to hospital. Tests there
revealed two things. First, she was pregnant. And the second, a blood
test came back positive for what's called a cocaine metabolite, a
byproduct of the drug that showed she had been taking it recently.
SO: So does that mean that she was doing cocaine when she was pregnant?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Yes it does. Now she didn't know she was pregnant but she had done
cocaine four days earlier. It was at a party, she hadn’t been looking
after her other children at the time. And Heather says as soon as she
found out she was pregnant she immediately quit doing drugs. She didn't
drink, she didn't smoke, she didn't do anything.
SOUNDCLIP
HEATHER: I
was not using cocaine. People are going to say well you've used drugs
before, and I have. Yes, I've done a lot of things. I've lived a full
life. Was I doing those things with my kids? No absolutely not.
SO: OK. But that is sometimes hard to prove. So would she have admitted it if she had continued to use?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
You're right, it is very hard to prove. Many parents probably wouldn't
admit to something like that. And that's where the drug testing comes
in. Phyllis Lovell is a supervisor with the Children's Aid Society in
Ontario, not from the region where Heather lives, she never worked on
her case. But Lovell says drug testing and specifically hair testing by
Motherisk was a very useful tool for child protection workers.
SOUNDCLIP
PHYLLIS LOVELL:
Looking at adult behaviours, looking at impact on children is a
subjective assessment at best. The opportunity through a clinic like
Motherisk to have science help us had tremendous appeal. The idea of
matching science with human judgment with professional assessment had
enormous appeal.
SO: It must be
a tough job to really know when kids are in need of protection. So what
kind of drug tests were child protection workers relying on?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Sometimes they were blood, sometimes they were hair, sometimes urine. In
Heather's case, she did regular random urine tests throughout her
pregnancy which all came back clean. But when her daughter Holly, which
is also not her real name, when she was born in early 2007 she was still
seized at the hospital.
SO: And why was that if Heather's urine tests were coming up clean?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Well, court documents state that the child was apprehended because
Heather wouldn't sign a temporary care agreement. Her caseworker wanted
the baby in foster care so Heather could go into drug treatment. Heather
wouldn't sign the agreement so CAS seized the child.
SO: So why would her caseworker want her to go for drug treatment?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
I'm not sure, the Children's Aid Society or CAS that handled Heather's
case wouldn't answer our questions citing privacy concerns. Now Heather
was living in a women's shelter when she gave birth. Her two sons were
living with other family members. So officials they wanted to make sure
that she could secure a proper housing. But her purported drug use was
also a concern.
SO: And why weren't the urine tests enough?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Well urine tests are not irrefutable. Cocaine only remains in urine for
three to four days after use. These were random tests but CAS was likely
worried that Heather could be hiding drugs if she continued to use. So
her caseworker turned to hair strand drug test, which is how Motherisk
got involved.
SO: Testing for drugs in her hair.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
That was Motherisk’s drug testing specialty. The lab was founded by a
toxicologist named Dr. Gideon Koren in 1985. At that time it was a
research lab and resource centre for doctors and mothers interested in
drug safety during pregnancy. But by the early 1990s the lab had also
moved into hair testing. Now Motherisk argued that hair tests were more
reliable than urine or blood screens because drugs stay in your hair
much longer, which makes the test harder to manipulate. In Heather's
case, Motherisk tested Holly's hair at birth as well as her stool. Both
came back clean.
SO: So Motherisk’s results were supporting Heather's claims that she had stopped using.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Yes but those results weren't the end of Heather's hair testing. And
every single subsequent hair test she did came back positive for
cocaine.
SOUNDCLIP
HEATHER: I
was now tagged I'm a cocaine addict. [chuckles] I'm on drugs. I'm a big
druggie and I'm a liar, a liar and a drug addict. And you can't shake
that.
SO: So what did she do?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Heather was at a loss. I mean, she strenuously maintained that she
wasn't using anymore. She continued doing urine screens and they
continued to come back negative. But those results were now being
trumped by these positive hair drug tests. And after the third one CAS
amended its protection application for Holley. The agency was now
seeking crown wardship so she could be adopted.
SOUNDCLIP
HEATHER:
You're fighting a losing battle and there's nothing you can do. Now I’m
going to cry. Sorry. [sniffling] It would have been easier if I were an
actual drug addict and then I could have quit. But when you've got a
false test there was nothing I could do. There was no other test that I
could take that would make anyone listen.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
And the stakes kept rising. In the spring of 2008, Heather gave birth to
another baby girl who we’ll call Grace. She too was apprehended at the
hospital. Heather was given a single day with her newborn before they
took her away.
SOUNDCLIP
HEATHER: One
day and then she went to NICKU, [crying] because children, newborns that
are taken away from their mothers don't do well. She had to stay in the
hospital a little bit longer because she wasn't doing well. They need
their moms when they're that little, especially when it's affecting
their health. You remove a newborn from their mother at birth and you
are placing that child at risk.
SO: That's tough, tough to listen to. And again, was the reason her purported drug use?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Yes drug tests had continued throughout this pregnancy as well for
Heather. Joey Gareri, Motherisk's lab manager at the time, testified as
an expert witness, explaining the results in court. Heather she said she
couldn't believe what she was hearing.
SOUNDCLIP
HEATHER: His
theories were outlandish. At one point he had accused me of using
cocaine to get through labour and childbirth. I had been in the hospital
for a few days. I had a complicated pregnancy. I had extensive medical
treatment. So where does that come from? I'm using cocaine to get
through delivery? Did the nurse serve it up for me or what? Like, his
theories were way off the wall. Absolutely off the wall. But yeah they
took everything he said. And as far as they were concerned it was fact.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Heather couldn't figure out why the tests kept coming back positive. She
was so upset by it that she had an emotional breakdown at one point and
cut back on her visits with the girls.
SO: So she stopped seeing the girls?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
For a couple weeks. When she tried to start the visits up again, it was
CAS that put her access on hold. Heather said her caseworker suggested
they just wait for the judge's final ruling on whether she would get
them back.
SO: So what did the judge decide in the end?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
So in April 2009 Holly had just turned two-years-old and Grace was
almost one. The judge made her final ruling. Both girls were made crown
wards with no access to their mother. They would be adopted off to
separate families.
SO: Hm. What were the judge's reasons?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
The main reason was the hair tests. But the judge also cited Heather's
breakdown and her recent lack of contact with Holly and Grace. It was a
sign, she said, that Heather was placing her own emotional needs over
theirs. She did praise Heather for other things, she had ended her
abusive relationship with the girl's father. And the judge had no doubt
that she could provide appropriate housing for them. But in the end, the
judge said that she couldn't return them to Heather because of her
continued drug use. She said the hair tests showed Heather was either
using cocaine, accidentally ingesting cocaine, or regularly in an
environment where large amounts of cocaine were being produced. It was
time to get the girls permanent homes.
SOUNDCLIP
HEATHER: It
changed my life. I mean, two other families that wanted kids got them.
Cost me mine. [crying] Something that people don't realize or the courts
don't realize, it didn’t just change my life it changed all the people
around my life. I don't talk to family members in the same way as, you
know, we used to. You don't go to friends events anymore because I don't
fit in anymore. My kids are gone and they still have theirs. It's a
different life. It's not the same one as what it was.
SO: Well it's obviously devastating for Heather, but in the end how do we know for sure John that these tests were wrong?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
We don't know and we can't know, which is another thing that infuriates
Heather. Justice Susan Lang, who reviewed Motherisk for the Ontario
government, she didn't review individual cases and she could only say
that the labs results in their totality were unreliable and inadequate.
She didn't say they were wrong because she couldn't.
SOUNDCLIP
SUSAN LANG:
You can't go to the individual files and find out whether or not it was
properly done, because there were a number of problems with the way they
were doing it. But the very very basic one is that The Hospital for
Sick Children in this particular lab it did not have standard operating
procedures. There was nowhere written down how they did the test. And
unless you can follow how the test was done step by step you can't tell
whether that particular test result was reliable, even retrospectively.
SO: If Justice
Lang wasn't able to look at individual test results, then how did she
come to the conclusion that these hair tests were unreliable?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Justice Lang looked at the big picture and she found a raft of problems
with how Motherisk was doing its tests. I mean her report is 366 pages
long, but she raised two fundamental issues. Her report looked at the
lab's procedures between 2005 and 2015. And before 2010, Motherisk was
only using a single preliminary screening test to determine all its
results, it only rarely did a second more rigorous confirmation test.
Justice Lang said Motherisk was the only lab in the world that was using
a preliminary screening test in the way that it was.
SO: The only lab in the world?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
The only lab in the world, that's what she said. So this was the big
problem number one. The second was that the lab was not accredited. Its
results should have never been accepted in criminal or family court and
none of its staff was certified to conduct or interpret drug tests that
would be used in court.
SO: So what does that mean?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
It means the lab needed forensic accreditation which it didn't have, nor
did any of Motherisk leadership have any training or certification in
forensic toxicology, which is what they needed to be conducting the hair
tests and interpreting them in court. The potential for contamination
was also a concern, along with chain of custody issues. Those problems
along with many others is what made all of Motherisk’s hair tests
unreliable and inadequate according to Justice Lang.
SO: So is there even such a thing as a reliable hair test?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Well it depends on who you ask. But there are definitely forensic
toxicologists in Canada who believe so. But the tests they have to be
done properly with all the necessary controls in place by properly
trained specialists, none of which was happening at Motherisk according
to Lang.
SO: So if this
testing started in 1991, John, a long time ago, and the report from
Justice Lang came out in 2015 was there really no one raising alarm
bells earlier?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Well, parents like Heather did over and over and over again, but no one
took them seriously because the hair tests made them look like they were
liars and drug addicts or alcoholics. But there was someone else. As a
part of our joint CBC Toronto Star investigation, we found a
capital murder trial in Colorado that involved Motherisk. In that case,
it’s evidence was thrown out over concerns about the lab's reliability.
SO: Hm. So when was that?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
This was in 1993. 22 years before Justice Lang's final report. Julia
Klein, Motherisk’s defacto lab manager at the time, testified at an
admissibility hearing in this Colorado death penalty case. So the
defense wanted to introduce a hair test that Motherisk had done on the
accused but the judge wouldn't allow it. And in his decision he laid out
many of the same deficiencies at the lab that Justice Lang uncovered
more than two decades later. Eva Wilson was the special prosecutor on
the case.
SOUNDCLIP
EVA WILSON:
The judge denied the admissibility of the evidence. He found that it was
not reliable. I really appreciated his analogy. This reminded him of
someone shooting at a target with a bow and arrow. And that Ms. Klein
shot the arrow, the arrow landed, and she then drew the bull's eye
around the arrow. A big round circle to show it met its mark.
SO: OK we have to take a break for the news, but you're going to stick around to tell us more about this early case.
JOHN CHIPMAN: I
will. And we'll meet another family affected by these tests, this time
in Nova Scotia. Fred and Julie fought to keep custody of their children
despite the results of drug tests from Motherisk. Julie remembers the
last time she saw her son.
SOUNDCLIP
[Music: Nazareth]
JULIE: We
were in the office at the Department of Community Services. I had him in
my arms and I remember he had his arms wrapped around my neck and he
pulled in and he gave me a kiss. And before that he would never give me a
kiss. His siblings would come to the visits and I’d say to him
sometimes give so-and-so a kiss and he would go and he’d listen and he’d
go give them a kiss. And I’d say give daddy a kiss and he'd give daddy.
And I’d say give mommy a kiss and he’d go mm, because I think I drove
him crazy I kissed him so much all the time. [laughs] And it was almost
like he knew or something because he pulled in and gave me a kiss that
day all on his own. Just melted my heart. There was a song I used to
sing to him all the time. By Nazareth, Sunshine, I sang him that song.
I’ll always remember it.
SO: John Chipman is a producer on The Current. The CBC News
is next. And then we'll hear more from John's investigation. Tainted
tests, broken families. I'm Susan Ormiston And you're listening to the
Friday edition of The Current.
SO: Hello, I'm Susan Ormiston and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.
[Music: Theme]
SO: Still to
come, what do Muslim women in Quebec make of Bill 62? The new law
barring anyone with a face covering from giving or receiving public
services. Well, they don't all agree. I'll speak with three Muslim women
from Quebec about the law, their experiences, and opinions in half an
hour. But first, back to tainted tests, broken families.
[Music: Theme]
SO: Well
before the news we were discussing hair tests done at the Motherisk Lab
at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children. And the impact that lab has had
on child protection cases in some provinces. These tests supposedly
measured drug and alcohol consumption, but they're now being described
as inadequate and unreliable. However they were used as evidence when
children were taken away from parents. If you want to go back and listen
to part one of that story visit our website at cbc.ca/thecurrent. John
Chipman is a producer on the program and he's been looking into the
controversy as part of a joint investigation with The Fifth Estate and the Toronto Star. He's still with me in our Toronto studio. Hello.
JOHN CHIPMAN: Hi Susan.
SO: So just
before the break you were telling us about early warning signs about
problems at the Motherisk lab that were raised at a murder trial in the
United States. So tell us about that trial in Colorado.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
That's right. So this was way back at the very beginning of Motherisk’s
hair testing in 1993. The third or fourth adult hair test the lab ever
did was on Allen Thomas Jr. who was on trial for murder in Colorado.
Now, one of his defense team’s strategy was arguing that if Thomas was
found guilty he was so high on cocaine at the time that he was incapable
of committing premeditated murder, which is a requirement for the death
penalty in Colorado. But the defense needed to prove that he was taking
cocaine at the time so they hired Motherisk, which found that Thomas
took 55 grams of cocaine per month around the time of the murder.
SO: Oh that sounds like a very specific finding.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Well that is exactly what the prosecutor thought. Her name is Eva
Wilson. Now, she was skeptical of hair testing in general but especially
of what Motherisk claimed its tests could say.
SOUNDCLIP
EVA WILSON:
My initial reaction was it was concocted. [chuckles] But, you know, not
to say that it was impossible for hair to show that type of evidence,
but in the manner in which they wanted to admit it which was to show a
timeframe and to show the amount that had been used? That right away
that felt like junk science.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
So Wilson challenged the hair testing and a special hearing was called
so the judge could decide if the evidence should be admitted. Looking
back now, it's eerie how closely the issues raised in 1993 mirror the
concerns that Justice Susan Lang would raise more than two decades
later. She was a retired judge hired by the Ontario government to
investigate Motherisk in 2015. So one of the core issues that she
identified was that Motherisk was only using a preliminary screening
test. The prosecutor in Colorado hammered away at that point repeatedly.
Justice Lang said Motherisk didn't have the proper forensic
accreditation to do tests relied upon in court. The Colorado prosecutor
raised the exact same concern. The list, Susan, it just goes on and on.
SO: So did someone from Motherisk testify in Colorado?
JOHN CHIPMAN: Yes, so her name was Julia Klein, and she was managing the lab at the time.
SO: So what happened?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
So the judge threw out Motherisk’s evidence, found it to be quote, “not
competent evidence,” end quote. He also said it was outside generally
accepted scientific practices of the time.
SO: Then what did Motherisk do with the judge's decision?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
So I spoke with the defense lawyer who hired Klein to testify at the
upcoming trial, and he said that he would have assumed the lab would
have addressed the judge's concerns if it wanted to continue doing drug
tests to be used in court.
SO: But Motherisk didn't?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Well, we don't know what if any tweaks Motherisk may have made its
testing protocols but the judge's main concerns, that the lab was using a
single preliminary screening test, that wasn't dealt with fully until
2010, 17 years later, when Motherisk finally introduced full scale
secondary confirmation testing. Now, and that's not the end of the
questions that this case in Colorado raises. It appears that Julia
Klein's boss, Motherisk’s founding director Dr. Gideon Koren may have
misled a Canadian court about what happened in Colorado.
SO: How so?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
So I’m going to fast forward to another criminal trial in Toronto in
2009. And during a hearing to establish his credentials at that trial,
Dr. Koren mentioned a case in Colorado. But he said Motherisk’s evidence
was not only accepted but had an impact on the judgment.
SO: But I
thought the evidence in the Colorado case that you've been talking about
was not accepted, so was there another one where it was?
JOHN CHIPMAN: CBC and the Toronto Star
did an exhaustive search through legal databases. We contacted a number
of prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers throughout Colorado, but
were unable to find another case in which Motherisk’s evidence was
accepted at trial.
SO: Is there any explanation from Dr. Koren then?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Well we asked for one, he didn't respond. We asked Julia Klein, she was
the lab manager who testified in Colorado, and she didn't respond.
Daniel Brown was an appeal lawyer for the accused in that 2009 criminal
trial in which Dr. Koren testified. We showed him the transcripts of Dr.
Koren's testimony and the hearing in Colorado in 1993. And he said if
Dr. Koren was speaking about the same Colorado case in which Motherisk’s
evidence was thrown out, well police should investigate him.
SOUNDCLIP
DANIEL BROWN:
I was completely shocked. Dr. Koren wasn't the doctor who testified in
Colorado. But you would have thought that he would have been keenly
aware of what had happened in the Colorado case. And it certainly
warrants a perjury investigation.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Dr. Koren is already facing serious legal issues. There is at least 11
lawsuits, including a proposed class action. And in his statement of
defense in the proposed class action, Dr. Koren denied the claims. He
said that Motherisk’s hair tests were quote, “accurate and reliable for
their intended purpose,” end quote. He also told Justice Lang's review
that the term forensic was not mentioned by any judge, child protection
lawyer, defense lawyer or Crown lawyer according to her report.
SO: John, how many tests was Motherisk actually doing?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Well it's impossible to know for sure because the lab didn't keep great
records. But based on numbers released by The Hospital for Sick
Children, a conservative estimate would be at least 35,000.
SO: 35,000 tests.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
35,000 tests. And this would have been since 1991 when Motherisk began.
The lab charged its clients for these tests. We know that between
January 2007 and March 2015, the lab's revenues topped 11 million
dollars. So Motherisk was definitely a revenue earner for the hospital.
SO: And where were all of these hair samples coming from?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
The lab was doing tests on people from all over the country. From
Ontario, BC, Quebec, PEI, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, which is where
Fred and Julie live. This is the next family that I want to introduce
you to. Again, we're not using their real names but they too were
affected by Motherisk. They met in 2003.
SOUNDCLIP
FRED: And I was out painting the house one day and they walked by and whistled.
JULIE: I fell
in love with him right away. That was a part about him that reminded me
of my grandfather. My grandfather was a nurturer. He liked to cook.
He’d like to do things around the house. He had some of those
characteristics.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
But their relationship it darkened as time went on. Julie drank a lot,
they both dabbled in cocaine, tempers sometimes flared. They hurt each
other emotionally and at times physically. They broke up they got back
together, then they had a daughter together. Concerned about her
well-being, CAS, which is the Children's Aid Society, that was
monitoring the family. They seized the child, first temporarily then
permanently.
SO: Mm. How did that affect them?
JOHN CHIPMAN: That last drove Julie into an even darker place.
SOUNDCLIP
JULIE: I
turned to the bottle pretty hard. I tried my hardest to stay sober but I
just couldn't do it. I was severely anguished and the bottle was my
only way that I knew how to cope. It just numbed the pain. I didn't have
to think about it. So yeah, I went totally downhill after that.
SO: Mm. So she admits to going downhill and what did that mean for their relationship?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Well it continued but it was still troubled. They had another daughter
in 2010, we'll call her Jessie. She was apprehended at birth. Julie and
Fred they worked to clean up their lives in hopes of getting her back
and they began to make some progress.
SO: How do we know that?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Court documents show that they were attending anger management and
counseling, they were making access visits on time. They kept a clean
and stable home. The court found them to be loving, nurturing, and kind
parents. But substance abuse remained a real concern. Julie continued to
drink heavily. Fred was still using cocaine occasionally. He remembers
when it finally really hit him that if he didn't clean up his act
completely he was going to lose Jessie forever as well.
SOUNDCLIP
FRED: We had a
visit and at the end of the visit when we were walking out my daughter
came up and grabbed me by the hand and said Daddy can I come home? And I
broke down in tears and I said that was enough for me.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Now at this point his daughter Jessie was three but they’d also had
another child, a baby boy we’re calling Jonathan. He was a year and a
half at this point and he was also in temporary care.
SO: So at this point if I understand, Fred is vowing to change. So what did he do?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Well he decided to do whatever it took to get the two children back. He
would give up his friends, become a hermit if he had to. And if Julie
couldn't get her life in order with him he would do it on his own.
SOUNDCLIP
FRED: I had
nothing to do with nobody. And I changed my whole life, my whole being, I
had nobody around. I'm staying home, I'm not going nowhere. I'm going
to do what I have to do to make sure these children are not put into
care.
SO: John, Fred says he's changing. What about Julie?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Well Fred and Julie say their relationship shifted at this point. The
romance ended, they weren't a couple anymore but they remained close. If
Jessie and Jonathan were returned, Fred would be their primary
caregiver. Julie would be involved, but legally they would be his alone.
Still, Children's Aid wanted both of them to do hair strand drug tests
to track their sobriety.
SOUNDCLIP
FRED: And that was fine with me, I wasn't doing nothing so why should I be concerned?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Well the results however showed otherwise. Motherisk did nine drug tests
on Fred's hair. Some showed exposure to cocaine, some showed
consumption, some nothing at all. And this is all while Fred maintained
he was absolutely clean. Joey Gareri, the same Motherisk official who
testified in Heather's case in Ontario testified in Fred's case in Nova
Scotia too.
SOUNDCLIP
FRED: He used to say things that were just astonishing. I'm thinking to myself this guy here there's something definitely wrong.
JULIE: I felt
like he was always inconsistent. Sometimes it was traces, sometimes it
was large amounts, sometimes it was this, sometimes it was that.
FRED: And the
arrogance. Like it’s nothing, like he was ordering an ice cream, right?
Or what I want on my pizza, like it just ridiculous.
JULIE: I figured we were going to lose them because of him. And that’s exactly what happened.
SO: They lost both their children?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
No, no not at this point. Fred and Julie's younger son Jonathan was
moving through the courts first. He was a toddler as his final hearing
approached in May 2014. So he would either be returned to Fred or he
would be made a ward of the state ready for adoption. Fred's last hair
test had come back clean but the judge said not enough. She also felt
Julie's continued involvement in Fred's life posed a protection issue.
The judge ordered Jonathan into the permanent care of the ministry for
eventual adoption.
SO: And what about their daughter Jessie I think it was. What happened to her?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Well her case was still before the courts, so Fred really wanted to try
to refute Motherisk’s findings. He had found a facility in Ohio called
Omega Laboratories. It had forensic accreditation to do the same hair
strand drug testing. And so a hair sample was sent.
SOUNDCLIP
FRED: I had
enough. I'm tired of being humiliated. I'm not going down looking like
something I'm not. Everybody was worried that oh it might come back, and
I said I’m not worried. I know what's coming back. Clean of everything.
And lo and behold that's what happened. That was the changing point.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Now as Jessie’s custody hearing in Nova Scotia was unfolding, questions
began to surface about Motherisk in Ontario. Justice Susan Lang had just
been appointed to investigate Motherisk, and a month before the judge's
decision The Hospital for Sick Children, they shut down Motherisk’s
hair testing program altogether. So on May 12th, 2015, the judge, this
is the same one who made Jonathan a ward of the state a year earlier,
returned Jessie to Fred. He would have sole custody with Julie getting
supervised access.
SO: So did the controversy that was brewing up in Ontario have anything to do with that court decision?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
In her ruling the judge said she was not influenced by the concerns
being raised about Motherisk. Instead she said she felt Fred had cleaned
up his life. Julie had entered rehab, and I should mention that
actually she's been clean since she entered rehab, this was a little
over three years ago, and because of that she was no longer protection
concern. And while Motherisk’s hair tests showed Fred continued to use
or be exposed to cocaine, the judge felt the levels were so low she
ruled he was effectively clean.
SO: So he got his daughter back.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
It was a victory. But to Fred it only felt like half of one. Jonathan
their other child was still gone. And Fred wanted to get him back too.
SOUNDCLIP
FRED: When I
got custody of my daughter, and during the trial of my daughter, I said
would you just please make sure that you do not do nothing with my son
until you find out the outcome of this trial here with my daughter,
because I don't want to see them split up.
JOHN CHIPMAN: But five weeks after Fred brought Jessie back home he lost his son Jonathan forever when his adoption was finalized.
SOUNDCLIP
FRED: That's
my son and that's my daughter. They're not together when they should be
together. Every day I think about that, every day I think about what my
daughter is going through. It's torn me apart.
JULIE: It’s
very heartbreaking. I worry about my daughter. I know she misses him
every day. During the nights when she says her prayers, she’ll ask God
to hurry up and let him come back home. She doesn't understand, the only
way that she can describe it, I overheard her tell her friends one day
that they were both kidnapped and she got away but he didn't.
SO: John Chipman is with me in the studio, he's a producer on The Current. And his story is called tainted tests, broken families and it's a joint investigation with The Fifth Estate and the Toronto Star. John is there nothing they can do?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Well adoption laws in Nova Scotia are similar to legislation all across
Canada. The basic rule is the same. Once an adoption is finalized it's
virtually impossible to reopen. All decisions are made in the best
interests of the child and the feeling is that taking a child out of a
safe and nurturing adoptive family would be traumatic and upsetting for
the child regardless of the reason. We asked the Nova Scotia government
about Jonathan's adoption but officials wouldn't comment. Nova Scotia
has announced that it will be doing an internal review of cases
involving Motherisk, although the details are still being worked out.
And what are other provinces doing? BC, PEI, and New Brunswick are doing
similar internal reviews. Quebec won't say what it's doing if anything,
and Ontario established the independent Motherisk Commission, which is
selectively reviewing some of the cases in that province.
SO: How many cases were there in Ontario?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Justice Lang said there were roughly 16,000 individuals who were tested
in Ontario between 2005 and 2015. Earlier than that, it's really hard to
say since Motherisk did not keep good records. The commission is
focusing on the most serious cases, the crown wardship no access
decisions. It hasn't finished its review yet, it's due in January, but
all told it will review somewhere between 1,150 and 1,200 cases.
SO: So 1,200 out of what 16,000?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
16,000 yeah. It’s focusing on the most serious decisions and it's
reviewed 1,037 files to date. Of those it's determined that Motherisk
played a significant factor in 50 decisions.
SO: 50 families.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
50 families, yeah. Lorne Glass is the commission's lead counsel and he
says that doesn't mean that Motherisk wasn't a problem in the rest of
them as well.
SOUNDCLIP
LORNE GLASS:
Even in cases where there was not a substantial impact, those parents
and those children and the extended families were affected. They were
affected by the fact of having to go through the testing in the first
place. Many people have told us about the loss of respect in the
community, a loss of self-respect. All this testing of people's hair was
not a good thing.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
In cases where Motherisk was found to be a significant factor, the
commission will help parents find a lawyer through legal aid. It's also
offering counseling and alternative dispute resolution, that's basically
mediation between birthparents and adoptive parents.
SOUNDCLIP
LORNE GLASS:
We have six cases where we have families that are basically have been
reunited. Some of them where parents are now at least getting some
information about kids or getting to see kids. In some cases parents are
getting access to children where the court order has been changed to
provide for access. That's a good thing.
SO: It's only six cases though. So how do the parents involved in all the other ones feel?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Yeah, we start at 16,000 and we're down to six. So there are a lot of
people who aren't all that happy right? I mean, take Heather who we
spoke about earlier, she lost her two daughters. It's been almost a
decade now.
SOUNDCLIP
HEATHER: It
was determined that yes Motherisk was a key factor in my trial, but
they've done nothing since then. There's been nothing, absolutely
nothing.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
The commission hasn't been able to do anything in her case to help her
because the adoptive parents of her two daughters have not agreed to any
contact or even information sharing. And the commission can't force
them too, it's a voluntary process. Now, Heather is considering going
back to court but that's a pretty daunting task too. I mean, there's
little legal precedence for opening up contested adoptions, so it would
likely be a long painful legal fight.
SO: Mhm, it would. What ever happened to the people who were in charge at Motherisk?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Julia Klein, she was the lab's first manager, she's the person that
testified in Colorado, she left the hospital in 2005. According to
Justice Lang's report the hospital fired her for cause after an
investigation on an unrelated matter. She declined repeated requests for
an interview, citing her failing health and ongoing litigation in which
she's been named. So that's the first one. Joey Gareri, who succeeded
Klein and testified in both the cases that we discussed today, he left
the hospital last year. Now before leaving he told Justice Lang that he
felt he shouldn't have been hired as Motherisk’s lab manager in 2005. It
took him years to figure it out.
SO: He admitted that?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
That's what he told Justice Lang, yes. Fred and Julie are suing the
hospital, Dr. Koren and Joey Gareri. In a statement of defense, Sick
Kids and Gareri argue that any losses or harm the couple may have
suffered were caused entirely by their own actions. And Dr. Koren has
denied all the claims against him in the various lawsuits in which he's
been named. So we asked Joey Gareri several times for an interview as
well, but he too declined citing the ongoing lawsuits. But we felt it
was worth another effort so I went to his home in an east Toronto
neighborhood. It was Wednesday afternoon.
SOUNDCLIP
[Sound: door knocking]
[Sound: door knocking]
JOHN CHIPMAN:
I remember walking up to the door, the television was really loud
inside I could hear it right through the closed side door before he
opened it.
JOEY GARERI: Hi.
JOHN CHIPMAN: Hi, my name is John Chapman I'm a journalist with CBC.
JOEY GARERI: Yes.
JOHN CHIPMAN: We’re working on a story about Motherisk.
JOEY GARERI: Sorry, I’ve got no comment.
JOHN CHIPMAN: You know, we've been talking with families some of the cases in which you testified.
JOEY GARERI:
This is currently in litigation and my lawyers have returned your
producer's request. I really don't appreciate you coming to my home.
JOHN CHIPMAN: But people just, they just want answers.
JOEY GARERI: I’m sorry it’s got to go through the legal system. I don't have any comment.
[Sound: door closing]
SO: So you didn't get much on the doorstep there from Joey Gareri.
JOHN CHIPMAN:
No. No we didn't. And as for Motherisk’s founding director, his boss Dr.
Gideon Koren, he quietly retired in 2015. In fact he left the country,
he moved back to Israel. But Dr. Koren has continued to work in the
field of maternal and prenatal health. He still speaks at international
symposiums, Mark Kelly, one of the hosts at The Fifth Estate
found him at a conference in the United Kingdom earlier this month. But
he really didn't have any more to say than Joey Gareri did.
SO: And what about the families. How are they doing?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Heather is frustrated. She knows it's been years and she knows it's
really realistically too late to get her daughters back. But she would
still like to know how they're doing.
SOUNDCLIP
HEATHER: What
I thought was going to happen that I would be told that they were safe,
that I’d maybe not be able to be in their lives because I mean, they
have gone through an adoption. [voice breaking] But at least our family
would know that they're safe somewhere. Just let us know they're OK.
SO: Tough. What about Fred and Julie?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
Well they actually, they do remain hopeful that they someday will be
able to reunite their children. Julie knows what she will tell her son
if given the opportunity.
SOUNDCLIP
JULIE: I'd
like to say I’m your mom. And I love you. And I want you to be with me.
I'm sorry for everything that happened. He was cherished. I want him to
know that we love him very much. That's probably what I would tell him.
SO: Hm. That's hard huh?
JOHN CHIPMAN:
It is very very hard for the people who have had to go through this
definitely. Now I should mention too that, you know, I only featured two
families this morning. But during our investigation we spoke to several
others. We talked to a mother in British Columbia who lost her children
years ago in another Motherisk case. And she had no idea about the
issues at the lab. She cried after we told her, because she finally had
an explanation or a possible explanation for these confounding test
results. And we spoke to two daughters as well, like hearing from the
perspective of children who've gone through this. We talked to two
daughters who had been taken away from their mother. So if you'd like to
hear more from those cases, listeners should check out the Toronto Star and The Fifth Estate. The Fifth Estate is airing tonight on CBC TV at 9:00.
SO: Well that's a long and important story. Thank you John.
JOHN CHIPMAN: Thanks Susan.
SO: John Chipman is a producer on The Current.
[Music: Extro]The entire transcript can be found at the link below:
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-october-20-2017-1.4362532/friday-october-20-2017-full-episode-transcript-1.4365124#segment0
