Jeffrey Baldwin family’s social worker could hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil

Margarita Quintana, former social worker with the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto

It isn’t in evidence, but Margarita Quintana must have had above her desk a copy of the Japanese three wise monkeys legend: Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.

God knows, it was how the former social worker with the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto went about her job.

Ms. Quintana, who was the key worker involved in the dreadful case of Jeffrey Baldwin, retired from the CCAS in 2011.

Heaven forbid the death of one of her vulnerable charges — the five-year-old starved to death in 2002 while in the care of the grandmother with whom Ms. Quintana was clearly besotted and whom she had merrily endorsed as a loving caregiver for Jeffrey and three siblings — should have precluded her having a full career.

That grandmother, Elva Bottineau, and her common-law husband, Norman Kidman, were convicted of second-degree murder in Jeffrey’s death and of forcible confinement (for their regular locking up of the little boy and one of his sisters in a cesspool of their own waste) in 2006.

Given life sentences, they remain in prison, though Bottineau, to merciful little result thus far, has announced her interest in appearing, either as a witness or as a party with standing, at the Ontario coroner’s inquest probing Jeffrey’s death.

Though Tuesday was the third day Ms. Quintana was on the witness stand at the inquest, it was her first in cross-examination.

Her conduct as it emerged under the careful grilling of Freya Kristjanson, lawyer for the little boy’s surviving siblings, was disgraceful.  (more...)

Jeffrey Baldwin family’s social worker could hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil