A young Ottawa father who was branded a “bad parent” by the courts this month is now the subject of a police investigation into the 2010 death of his two-year-old stepchild, the Citizen has learned.
In 2010, the young father was living with his wife when the child died in his care in their Gatineau home. The child’s death, which has gone unreported in the press until now, prompted the coroner’s office to launch an investigation. While the coroner’s probe couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause of death, it recently concluded that the child’s death was “non-accidental.”
The coroner’s office forwarded its report to the Gatineau Police Department, which is now investigating the suspicious death.
The police department has not issued a media release on its investigation and is not giving out any details about their case, saying it is too sensitive because the father has access — including unsupervised visits — to his one-year-old daughter in Ottawa, and because police don’t want to jeopardize this fresh investigation. The police department won’t even say if the dead child was a boy or girl.
The father, whose identity is shielded by strict laws to protect the name of his child, has denied any wrongdoing in the death of the stepchild and so has the mother, according to documents filed in court.
Sometime after the child’s death, the parents separated. And the Citizen has learned that the father now under police investigation has had previous issues around childcare; the child-welfare agency learned in July that the young father left his one-year-old girl home alone while he went to the store.
Court documents, including evidence from Ottawa’s Children’s Aid Society, show that on Sept. 11, an Ottawa judge ruled in favour of the child-welfare agency’s motion to start supervising the father’s access to his one-year-old girl. The court’s decision to limit his access affords the father the chance to be alone with his daughter for four hours at a time. Other than that, his visits must be supervised by his grandfather, according to documents.
“There is no dispute among the parties that one of the reasons this case has been so sensitive and has progressed so incrementally is because an older sibling (stepchild) died while in the care … and specifically in the physical care of (the stepfather),” ruled Superior Court Justice Maria Linhares de Sousa.
The father recently completed a young parenting course in Ottawa and was praised by the court for doing so.
The father, who doesn’t know he’s under police investigation, now lives with his mother and has told child-welfare investigators that he now realizes that leaving his daughter home alone was wrong.
The Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa has not yet seen a copy of the coroner’s report that concluded the child’s death was “undetermined and non-accidental.”
The Gatineau Police Department’s major crime unit’s investigation is just starting, and the father has not been charged with any crime.
