Walker's SCATHING INDICTMENT - Part 1 of 6 - Strickland and Tymkow

JUSTICE WALKER'S OVERVIEW OF THE CASE, LEADING TO HIS SCATHING 2015 RULING AGAINST THE MINISTRY OF CHILDREN

My synopsized version of Justice Walker's 140-page judgement presents the substance of his overview of evidence that necessitated his ruling against the Ministry of Children's Child Protection. I present it in a prose style, in several segments. No stated opinion or fact appears here that was not in Justice Walker's ruling all of which has been made public.

Justice Paul Walker heard and ruled upon two cases between JP and BG. The plaintiffs in both cases were JP and her four children.  JP is the mother whose four children were sexually abused by BG, their father, her estranged husband. In the first case JP sought custody of her children as well as confirmation that BG was an abuser who should no longer have access to the children, and further that the Ministry was dead wrong in its assessment of both mother and father and had made a outrageous error in judging JP to be mentally unstable and placed children in BG's care. 

This second court case, J.P.'s lawsuit against the Ministry, began April 8, 2013 and ended July 3, 2015 with the published ruling by Judge Paul Walker on July 14, 2015.

Walker's SCATHING INDICTMENT - Part 1 of 6 - Strickland and Tymkow

The Director of Child Protection (CP) acted egregiously to the children's reports that their father sexually abused them.  The Director and her agents failed to assess and to investigate the children's claims and then imprudently apprehended the children and also granted the father unsupervised access to the children. The Director held an inflexible but unproven belief that JP had mental health issues and was unfit to parent and that BG was the most capable parent.  

B.G. was arrested and removed from the family home in October 2009 for assaulting both JP and her eldest daughter K.G. (then 5 years old), and on a charge of the uttering death threats against J.P. She immediately sought divorce and sole guardianship and custody. A restraining order was issued that prohibited B.G. from having direct or indirect contact with any of the plaintiffs. Investigative social worker Jeff Tymkow reported to the Director that K.G. had not been assaulted by B.G. Further, B.G. told Tymkow that P.J. suffered from mental health problems that Tymkow determined were not then a protection concern to the children.

Mr. William Strickland was investigative team leader responsible for assessing potential harm to children. He and Mr. Tymkow signed a letter at B.G.'s request that purported to clear B.G. of physical abuse of K.G. B.G. then used this against J.P. in court. J.P. confronted Mr. Strickland, accusing him of acting inappropriately and she also voiced her concern that B.G. may have sexually assaulted the youngest child, who was one year old at that time. Strickland apologized and assured her that he would send a written retraction and that the Director of MCFD would conduct an investigation into J.P.'s concerns about potential abuse of her children.  However, Strickland discouraged Vancouver Police Department (VPD) from taking J.P.'s claims seriously, suggesting to police that she was unstable and selfishly motivated.  Mr. Strickland's conduct adversely affected the police investigation.