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PETITION: PROTECTING CANADIAN CHILDREN. My children were illegally apprehended from their mother, exactly from the place I have left them to have a visitation for 3 hours with their father!
My name is Viorica Lungu from Vancouver, BC and I want to let
everybody know that my children have been legally kidnapped by the so
called "System" of Social workers in Canada. At that time, my children
were almost 4 and 7 years old.
Three years have elapsed ever since. I am forbidden to talk to my
daughters on the phone and my children are not allowed to call me
either. I am not allowed to even see my daughters but only twice a month
for two hours and only under strict supervision and strict monitoring
of the conversation. I am a mother and I don't know if my children are
healthy, if they are properly dressed for the winter, and everything
else any mother should know about her children. I am not allowed to go
to their school and find out, first hand, how they are doing.
One might think that I am some monstrous mother whose kids are in
danger when around me. The absurdity of the situation is that all these
are happening under the circumstances in which even the social workers
reported that “it is NOT a case of child protection”, that I am an
“excellent mother” and that both children and myself, as a mother, have a
normal love and tenderness towards each other. The same position had
even the Judge in the Supreme Court of BC.
Here is my story.
On March 24, 2009, I drove as usual far enough from my place where I
live to Maple Ridge, BC, for the father to have the usual visitation
with our children. I left them at the social worker's place thinking
they will be safe. After one hour, one of the social workers called to
inform me that my children had been removed from me as of that very
moment. This was happening without even a court order! The father lied
that I alienated my children against him. However, nobody seemed to care
that, each time my children came back from their father, they were
upset and crying, on several occasions, the father twisted my older
daughter's wrist, shook her vigorously in the parking lot, yelled at
them, etc. And this was something happening on regular basis. Instead of
looking seriously and unbiased into this situation for the best
interest of the children, the social workers simply decided to remove my
children from me and give them directly to their father in the middle
of our custody battle, without warning me or trying, at least, to make
it easier on the children – as if they were nothing else but some
lifeless objects!
At the time, I asked the social worker, Maria Miem Swart, on what
grounds that decision had been taken, why she or other representatives
from the Ministry did not come to my place at least once to investigate
and see how happy my children were with me, before removing them! She
said: "There was no need to go to your place, Viorica - we know you are
an excellent mother"! So why did you steal my children from me if I am
an excellent mother? She said: "Because you don't get along with the
father” and that is why the children are “emotionally harmed”.
That was the strangest thing I could have ever heard – well, but he
does not get along with me either! So the real problem was actually, who
cared about that? What was the difference between me and him as parents
who did not get along and reached a consensual divorce? Moreover,
before everything happened, the father knew about a removal possibility
one month before (February 25, 2009) my daughters have actually been
removed from me on March 24, 2009, while I had no idea about that -
nobody bothered to let me know what was going on. So, was he
manipulating the social workers behind my back?
The social workers said in their report that alienation is not part
of their removal Act, but, in this case, they were doing it anyway
because of the high conflict between the parents! Social worker Diane
Keegan in her cross examination at the Supreme Court testified that “if
the mother will be awarded with sole custody, we will keep her in
supervised access until the children will be 18, and if the father will
be awarded with sole custody, we will drop the case against the mother
at the Provincial court”, which they did on April 26, 2010. So, again,
was he manipulating the social workers behind my back? Why all this
turmoil and hysteria? Also, at the time, the social workers and Judge
Masuhara have refused to send my children to see a Psychologist at the
Children's Hospital. I asked for this because I believed and still
believe that they are the ones who have emotionally harmed my children -
with their unfair, inhuman and sudden action of separating my children
from me as their mother, without any solid ground. They refused to give
us the section 15 for a Psychologist to assess all of us including our
children.
I am of Romanian descent and my ex-husband is of Canadian one. All
the depositions submitted on behalf of Romanians who knew me very well,
including the priest’s have not been properly considered and have been
downplayed by Honourable Mr. Justice D. M. Masuhara. He stated that
“their observations are made in the context of church services and
events” fact that was not accurate, and also that they did not know all
the issues around me and my ex-husband. I do not think that a witness is
supposed to know it all about the person/s in question. The main issue
at that time was if I was a good mother to my children - bottom line
that was what counted and still counts, nothing else. This is not a case
of criminal activities, etc. – it is just a messy custody fight. Among
the witnesses, there were a number of friends and people who knew me for
long time and saw me outside the church and who did not talk at all
from church perspective either.
I have been accused of harming my children emotionally because,
speaking Romanian to my children meant, necessarily, discrediting their
father, according to the social workers’ assumptions. Moreover, the
Ministry’s employees refused to bring a Romanian translator for
themselves in order to understand exactly what I was talking to my
children– they preferred to act in base of assumptions and…it worked.
My children are kept away from everything that is called Romanian
under the pretext that all that is Romanian brings about “emotional
harm” to the children. The father complained so, and the Social Services
adopted an attitude accordingly.
In base of this experience, I and everybody else have to understand
that, in a mixed marriage between a Canadian and other ethnical party,
be it Asian, Sikh, Russian, Italian, etc., having the child exposed to
the other spouse ethnic culture and language means or causes emotional
harm ….Very strange! My children were and, presently, are still
prohibited to go to the Romanian Orthodox Church, and through this
decision, once again, the honour, values and standards of a whole decent
and hard-working community is trivialized and diminished. This is not
the first time that this kind of discrimination happened in Canada. In
the 60’s a similar attitude (this time against the French language)
pushed Quebec on the brink of secession, until bilingualism was adopted
Canada-wide. A more recent experience is that of the “Residential
Schools” for First Nations, which were closed only in 1996; in these
schools, students were severely punished if they spoke a language other
than English.
On the other hand, I believe that this is a means of psychological
pressure over my children used by their father and blind authorities to
have my daughters forget about me, about what is Romanian in themselves,
to despise that part in themselves and to suppress it. How would you
feel? How would you call this?
If I am to turn the tables and think like their father did and
social workers and judge Masuhara did, then WHO can tell me that I am
NOT demeaned, put down in front of children when I am not with my
children – meaning, actually, most of the time? In base of the precedent
created, I am entitled to think that what I was suspected of and
forbidden to in base of the social workers’ assumptions and hearsay, now
it is done onto me. Then, how is the father better than me and what did
the system encourage?
In other words we could also summarize the core of the situation
like this: “what I (father and those allowing this happening) am
allowed, you(that is myself) are not”
I am not an alcoholic, I am not a drug-addict, I have never been put
in prison or charged with any wrongdoing, I have never left my children
alone, I have never ever emotionally or physically harmed my children.
Then, what am I?
I am a woman, I am not of Canadian descent, I dared to disagree with
what was going on including the procedure of the system – so, here I
am, a piece of garbage who can be thrown, together with my children,
from one corner to another, from one “master” to another, together or
separated from my own children as others please.
I must be supervised like a criminal when talking to my children.
Everything I say or said had and has to be interpreted and trivialized
by some officials and/or their father who knows to manipulate the
system.
As a parent and person, I was humiliated, challenged, outraged,
tripped all over, and stripped out of any personality. One of the social
workers mentioned in her report that it was weird that I kept my
daughter on my lap during my two-hours visit. Even that was strange! In a
tentative to discourage me, another one, Mrs. Maria Miem Swart, dared
asking me how did I pay my lawyer, “did you sell yourself?”…When I draw
the attention in Court about this she apologized saying that that was
her odd way of “joking” and Judge Masuhara quickly accepted it
accordingly and that was it. It is unacceptable for a Government
official to use such expressions to insult me and get away with it!
What should I do next?
Regards,
Viorica Lungu
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