PASSAGE OF THE DAY: Court heard that some members of the team at the Strathroy hospital that first treated Nathaniel found her behaviour “abnormal” and “bizarre.” Van De Wiele said that at times she was kneeling and praying for her son to live. “I just couldn’t understand that medical science could not save him,” Van De Wiele testified. Snow said he hopes to finish his cross-examination by lunch on Tuesday. The Crown will then call Kent McLellan, Nathaniel’s father (Rose-Anne’s husband).
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STORY: "‘I wanted to know what happened,’ mother of dead toddler Nathaniel McLellan testifies,"by Chief Investigative Reporter Kevin Donovan, published by The Toronto Star, on January 5, 2026. (Kevin Donovan is the Toronto Star’s Chief Investigative Reporter. His focus is on journalism that exposes wrongdoing and effects change. Over more than three decades he has reported on the activities of charities, government, police, business among other institutions. Donovan also reported from the battlefields in the Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan following 9/11. He has won three National Newspaper Awards, two Governor General’s Michener Awards, the Canadian Journalism Foundation award and three Canadian Association of Journalists Awards. As the Star’s editor of investigations for many years, Donovan led many award-winning projects for the paper. He is the author of several books, including “Secret Life: The Jian Ghomeshi Investigation” and the “Dead Times” (a fiction novel)."
SUB-HEADING: "Rose-Anne Van De Wiele spars with defence in court over recordings of doctors and how she acted in hospital as her son was dying."
GIST: "A grieving mother and a defence lawyer sparred in court Monday over her alleged “bizarre” behaviour, and whether she was investigating her son’s death or just gathering information when she secretly recorded several doctors involved in the case.
“I wanted to know what happened,” Rose-Anne Van De Wiele told court hearing the manslaughter case against her son Nathaniel’s former babysitter, Meggin Van Hoof.
Van De Wiele said that is why she recorded a series of meetings with doctors who treated her son after he was rushed to the hospital with an unexplained head injury.
“Doctors had never given us the diagnosis. What did he have? What caused all of this?” Van De Wiele testified.
Van De Wiele had finished nine days of cross-examination last year but was called back to the stand Monday to be questioned by defence lawyer Geoff Snow related to recordings she only recently turned over.
It’s Snow’s contention that Van De Wiele had “animus” towards his client and was “trying to direct the police.”
As the Star has previously reported, police initially focused on Van De Wiele and her husband as suspects and only belatedly charged babysitter Van Hoof, who was with Nathaniel when he collapsed.
Van Hoof (who ran an unlicensed daycare in Strathroy, Ont.) is on trial for manslaughter in the Oct. 31, 2015, death of 15-month-old Nathaniel. Court has heard that Van Hoof was caring for the boy at her home. He became unwell, and she telephoned Van De Wiele, who picked him up and rushed him to hospital. The cause of death was blunt-force trauma.
At the start of Monday’s proceedings, Judge Michael Carnegie dismissed an application by the defence to stay the charges against Van Hoof.
The defence had made several allegations against the Crown, the two most prominent being that prosecutors did not obtain and hand over to the defence in a timely fashion the doctor recordings Van De Wiele had made, and that the Crown changed its theory of the case at the start of the trial.
During Monday’s cross-examination of Van De Wiele, Snow took her through transcripts that have been made of the iPhone recordings of several doctors.
Van De Wiele told the court she recorded the meetings because so much information and so many unfamiliar medical terms were coming at her in the days and months following Nathaniel’s death.
Van De Wiele said that for a full year after Nathaniel’s death, they were completely in the dark on his injury.
“The doctors had never given us the diagnosis; they only gave us the prognosis that he was going to die,” Van De Wiele told the court. She said a doctor eventually told her one year after the death that Nathaniel had died of “non-accidental traumatic brain injury.”
She said that until then, she had assumed that Nathaniel had died of an accident. She said it was upsetting that this information was not shared with her earlier.
Snow also questioned why Van De Wiele did not ask more questions of a doctor who had treated her son just before he died.
Van De Wiele, in an emotional response, said at that moment in the London hospital, she had only one thought on her mind.
“His breaths were now numbered, and I didn’t want to be in the room with (the doctor). I wanted to be with (Nathaniel) for every breath that he was going to take on this earth. That’s what I wanted it to be, so no, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter then, because he was dying. It didn’t matter anymore.”
Court heard that some members of the team at the Strathroy hospital that first treated Nathaniel found her behaviour “abnormal” and “bizarre.” Van De Wiele said that at times she was kneeling and praying for her son to live.
“I just couldn’t understand that medical science could not save him,” Van De Wiele testified.
Snow said he hopes to finish his cross-examination by lunch on Tuesday. The Crown will then call Kent McLellan, Nathaniel’s father (Rose-Anne’s husband).
Kevin Donovan is the Star’s chief investigative reporter based in Toronto."
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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