LONDON, Ont. — The London area’s child-welfare agency has been hit with record court costs of $1.4 million for failing to protect three boys caught in a marathon trial the judge says was marked by a manipulative mother and a father falsely cast as an abusive monster.
In a written decision, the judge also ordered the mother — who he said “manipulated the court by misrepresenting the facts in order to gain an advantage” — to pay 604,478.36, or 30% of the more than $2 million court costs.
The 154-day trial, over three years, was known in court halls as “the trial that never ends.” It helped build a huge backlog in London family court cases last fall that forced officials to prioritize child-protection cases over divorce trials.
In a scathing indictment of the London-Middlesex Children’s Aid Society, Justice John Harper wrote the CAS “did not live up to (its) statutory duty to investigate thoroughly and objectively” in the child-protection case, and instead accepted the mother’s warped version as the truth. (more...)
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