I have already written a post today CONCENTRATE ON IMPROVING THE OUTCOMES /
and
the first respondent motivated me to write further. This is the
result.
I watched an ABC 20/20 documentary on
the Peace Corps, one of the most touted international service
agencies. Started by President John F. Kennedy, its very name
embodies the best ideals of service: to help people. It has
established a virtually untarnished reputation for what will soon be
50 years. But how has that untarnished image been maintained and is
it truthful? A newly appointed director is crisscrossing the USA in
celebration of this anniversary. He and every other official of the
Peace Corp denied requests to speak about the incidents that 20/20
investigated. If the reputation is untarnished, at what expense or at
whose expense was the damage controlled? The documentary began around
the account of an horrific murder of a wonderful young woman, Kate
Puzey two years ago in the African country of Benin. The village
people among whom she worked loved her. She found herself with a
teaching colleague whom she knew was sexually assaulting some of his
young students. She could not ignore this. She wrote an articulate,
sensitive email letter to Peace Corp headquarters explaining this
situation and asking for confidentiality because she was concerned
for her safety. The teaching colleague was fired, but his brother
worked in that country's Peace Corps office and passed Kate's letter
on. One night as she slept, her throat was slit. The Peace Corp in
these two years has not told her parents any details of her death.
Her belongings were not returned by a Peace Corp representative with
sincere regret for Kate's death but rather were dropped off in a
cardboard box on her parents' driveway by a delivery person. What
20/20 managed to uncover were many, many Peace Corps workers who had
experienced sexual assaults and other criminal acts and yet the Peace
Corp had ignored their pleas and never provided victims' advocate
assistance but counselled these victim's to be silent. The Peace Corp
has never apologized to any of these people for failing them. That
was a murder. In addition, more than 900 Peace Corps volunteers have
been sexually assaulted during the last decade. Several of them spoke
on camera. The Peace Corps cannot now ignore that, or can it? It gets
$400,000,000 federal funding monies annually.
Is that what we are going to have to do
here in British Columbia? That is, are we going to have to invite
brave people to step forward out of anonymity into a high publicity
event to describe for the publicand the media all that they have experienced at
the hands of social workers within the Ministry of Children and
Family Development. There is no admission by MCFD of improper
casework, discourtesy, unnecessarily hurtful casework. But countless
parents and children have been damaged for many years now. Many have
written their stories on blog sites and many have anonymously
revealed small bits of their stories on this blog site. Child
Protection which should safeguard vulnerable children has become an
international disgrace and we here in B.C. continue to ignore the
failings of our own interpretation of this social service. That must
not be permitted to continue without emphatic apology and
comprehensive correction. MCFD itself must recognize this or all that they do that is good will continue to be overlooked because of glaring errors in judgement at the front lines and in the offices that monitor them.
20/20 Video preview:20/20 Story preview:
This Blog has been advocating the return of three children to their biological parents, Paul and Zabeth Bayne, for which a ruling is expected from Judge Crabtree within the next five days. Stay posted.
