QUOTE OF THE DAY: "My father got justice for his daughter, but in the process he found out about all these other people that had suffered a similar fate with doctor Smith, and he was having none of it. He was a lion seeking justice not only for his family, but for everybody that was wronged. Lianne believes that without her parents love and support, she would likely have ended, "where the the police and the Crown wanted me to be." And that's a sobering thought, indeed.
Lianne Thibeault:
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INTRODUCTION: Maurice Gagnon wasn't just a whistleblower...It was more like he was playing an ear-shattering horn in his battle to expose the evil machinations of Charles Smith (and his backers in the Chief Coroner's office in Toronto) who turned the tragic accidental death of his beloved 11-month-old grandson Nicholas into murder, saying his daughter Lianne, Nicholas's mother, was responsible for her son's death and, even though the police had closed their investigation for want of any evidence, Smith did his best to have Lianne's newborn baby seized from her and handed over to the child protection authorities. (Yes, 'evil' machinations. I use the word advisedly, because Smith declared war on this wonderful family, which had suffered a terrible loss, and deserved sympathy rather than the threat of being subjected to a murder prosecution and the seizure of a newborn baby. He put them through hell. That, in my books, is 'evil'.) Maurice persisted, in the face of obfuscations and duplicitous acts, hounding the authorities with brilliantly researched, meticulously worded complaints, which invariably became public (as did the no-comment, evasive, or equivocal responses, or passing the bucks, until Smith and his powerful backers were exposed, the public became outraged, a public inquiry was ordered, and the powerful backers the former Chief Coroner (James Young) and his former deputy chief coroner (Jim Cairns) allowed their medical licenses to lapse with the result that they could no longer be subjected to professional discipline hearings. All this because of one man - a man who would not rest until the police and prosecutors backed off their outrageous, utterly unfounded murder investigation, until his new grand-daughter was removed from the grasp of the children's aid authorities, until those responsible for the attack on his family had been brought to account, and until all the other people who had been wronged by Charles Smith had achieved justice. And that's just the start.
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CONCISE CHRONOLOGY: (I have used information from a story by Sudbury Star reporter Carol Mulligan published on June 11, 2005, in compiling this concise chronology. I have placed a link to the entire story in the 'Reading Materials' section below.)
November 30, 1995): 11-month-old Nicholas dies. (A local coroner classifies his death as sudden and unexplainable after the infant crawled under a sewing table, bumped his head and stopped breathing. Nicholas' mother, Lianne, a single mom at the time, and Nicholas, were living with his grandparents, Maurice and Angela.)
May, 1997: Almost 18 months after Nicholas had died and two days before her bridal shower — the police visit Lianne and tell her that her son’s death was being treated as a homicide and she was a suspect. She is subjected to brutal interrogation and a variety of intrusive investigative techniques aimed at extracting a confession. Lianne never was charged criminally, but it would take almost 18 months, $120,000 of her parents’ retirement savings, the exhumation of Nicholas’s tiny body and a battle in family court to end her ordeal.)...In his report on the public inquiry, Justice Stephen Goudge notes that during the course of the child protection proceedings, "The Gagnon family retained a respected euro-pathologist , Dr,. William Halliday, to provide an opinion on the case. Like S.M's (pseudonym) family (another Smith case), Ms. Gagnon's parents drained their savings to mount a defence for their daughter."
1998: Lianne had married Pierre in 1997. In 1998 Lianne gives birth to daughter Nicole, now 7. Smith who had learned of Lianne's pregnancy tells Children's Aid officials, in Lianne's words, “that I killed one child and chances are I would do it again.” As a result, Nicole had to be given up into the custody of Gagnon and his wife after her birth and Lianne could only visit her during CAS-supervised visits. Nicole was eight weeks when Thibeault got a date in family court. She was allowed to live with her daughter at her parent's house, but wasn’t to be left alone with the baby. By that time, Gagnon had backed the chief coroner’s office into a corner and it had called for a second opinion on Smith’s findings in Nicholas’ death. A child abuse authority from the United States concluded there was no indication of foul play in Nicholas’s death and called Smith irresponsible, say Gagnon and his daughter.
1999: March 25: Children's Aid Society withdraws the protection application;
2005: Per reporter Carol Mulligan: June 11, 2005: "Maurice Gagnon is calling for a public inquiry into the system that accused his daughter of murdering her baby, based on no evidence — only the opinion of a Toronto pathologist whose work is now in question. (Maurice Gagnon's relentless battle on behalf of his daughter is believed to have played a significant role in the decision of James Young's successor, Dr. Barry McLellan, to order a review of 40 autopsies performed by Smith, at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, since 1991 in what were thought to be child homicide cases or criminally suspicious deaths of children and to the Ontario government's decision to order a public inquiry into Smith's cases.)
2008: September 30: Justice Stephen Goudge releases his report.
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MAURICE GAGNON'S NEMESIS: DISGRACED PATHOLOGIST CHARLES SMITH:
Smith's despicable role is well described by Sudbury Star reporter in his story headed: "The face of the innocent: A father's extraordinary love and fierce protection of his daughter," published on Feb. 1. 2008.
"In the hours following the tragedy, Lianne was interviewed by a Sudbury Regional Police officer and provided a detailed statement of what had happened," this portion of the story begins.
"On Dec. 1, the day following Nicholas's death, an autopsy was performed by Sudbury pathologist Dr. T.C. Chen," it continues.
Chen concluded the cause of death was consistent with Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Later, upon further review by Chen and Sudbury coroner Dr. James Deacon, the official cause of death was revised to Sudden Unexplained Death.
Neither the autopsy results nor the police intervention provided any cause to suspect Nicholas's death was anything but an accidental, unexplained tragedy. In fact, the city's chief of police - a Gagnon family friend - offered his support following the death and attended the boy's funeral.
At that point, the Gagnons would have rightly assumed they would be left to their grief and the daunting prospect of rebuilding their lives. That is precisely what occurred until mid-1997, when the family was visited by a nightmare more shocking and disturbing than the tragic loss of Nicholas.
More than 18 months after Nicholas's death, the Gagnon family would become victims of the catastrophically flawed work of Dr. Charles Smith, an ill-trained, error-prone pathologist who undeservedly attained status as a pre-eminent specialist in the field of forensic pediatric pathology.
It was Smith's would-be expertise and disastrous conclusions that would result in the murder accusation against Lianne Gagnon and inflict new horrors on a family that struggled so long to cope with the loss of a child.
The full weight of state resources would be brought to bear against Lianne, as authorities attempted - often with dubious methods - to prove ultimately scurrilous allegations.
In addition to the murder accusation, the Gagnon family would endure the disinterment of their beloved Nicholas, the seizure from the casket of a mother's goodbye letter to her child, a wiretap sting operation and a decision to apprehend Lianne's second child at birth.
It would be the type of grievous, unrelenting investigation that would be inflicted on parents and caregivers in many child-death cases during Charles Smith's notorious reign as top dog of forensic pediatric pathology in Ontario.
Several of those cases resulted in wrongful convictions, imprisonment of parents or caregivers, as well as children being apprehended - sometimes permanently - from their parents.
One might well have expected Lianne Gagnon to suffer a similar fate, given the magnitude of the case built against her and the zealousness with which it was prosecuted by authorities.
Instead, Lianne ultimately was vindicated in what would later be revealed as a story of a father's extraordinary love and fierce protection of his daughter; and his subsequent crusade to bring down a powerful authority figure who inflicted tremendous misery on so many."
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SELFLESS WARRIOR (1): (A very potent weapon): One of this 'Selfless Warrior's most potent weapons was the knowledge he acquired while serving as a senior official in the Ontario government. Lianne explained to me in an interview that years of government service had taught her dad how to access channels that otherwise would be unavailable to most people. Maurice also knew that rather than approaching the government in a state of rage (which would get him nowhere), it would be more productive to cast his complaints in a manner that required the official, be it the provincial Ombudsman, the Coroner's Council, or the province's solicitor general, for example, to respond - or face a lot of tough questions, which Maurice was very capable of drafting. While I was at the Toronto Star, scarcely a day went by when I didn't open up an envelope form Maurice with the latest complaint, and the documents which would be attached. They often became the subject of a front page story the very next day. Justice Stephen Goudge, who conducted the public inquiry, was also impressed. In his report, Justice Goudge reports that during and after the child protection proceedings, "Ms. Gagnon's father, Maurice Gagnon, tried to alert the OCCO (Ontario Chief Coroner's Office) and others of his concerns about the conduct of Dr. Smith and Dr. Cairns. He filed complaint after complaint, with many institutions." (Justice Goudge then lists many of these complaints including one to the governing body of the medical profession in Ontario which slams Smith for bringing his young son to the disinterment of Nicholas's remains which had been ordered by the government, and concludes: "Mr. Gagnon was consistent. His letters were well researched and well reasoned. Given what is now known, many of his concerns about Dr. Smith, Dr. Cairns and the OCCO were legitimate. Unfortunately, those in the senior positions at the OCCO did not listen."
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SELFLESS WARRIOR ( 2): A grateful daughter's perspective: In an interview, Lianne Thibeault said the definition of a 'Selfless Warrior,' developed by the Blog, fit Maurice Gagnon "to a 'T." "That's exactly what happened," she commented. "He was ripped out of his ordinary life, and it turned both of my parents' lives upside down." The financial burden was heavy - supporting her through crisis, hiring an expert, retiring early so the Children's Aid officials would allow his newborn grand-daughter to live with him and Lianne's mother Angie, pending the family court's ultimate decision. (The officials expected Maurice and Angie to be home 24/7 to look after the baby). Lianne would occasionally get a glimpse of the financial pressure on Maurice when he would quip that the lawyers would charge $100.00 just to pick up the phone. However, Maurice kept costs down by doing voluminous research (the legwork) himself - the research which eventually led to the dropping of the police investigation, the defeat of the Children's Aid Society, and the establishment of the public inquiry, which was applauded by Justice Goudge and led to his extraordinary victory over the police, prosecutors and Children's Aid officials. It also led to Maurice's determination to keep going - even after his own nightmarish entanglements with the state were resolved - to help out other parents and caregivers who had been put through hell by Smith and his backers. Per Lianne: "My father got justice for his daughter but in the process he found out about all these other people that had suffered a similar fate with doctor Smith and he was having none of it. He was a 'lion' seeking justice not only for his family, but for everybody that was wronged." Lianne believes that without her parents' love and support, she would likely have ended up "where the the police and the Crown wanted me to be." And that's a sobering thought, indeed.
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COMMENTARY: During the course of our interview, Lianne stresses the 'stoic' role that her mother Angela played during the course of the family's awful experience - managing to be 'stoic', a mountain of strength and support, through all the grief and emotional distress. Lianne considers both of her parents as 'Selfless Warriors'. I couldn't agree more. And, by the way, message to Maurice: I really miss all your phone calls and the almost daily deliveries in the newsroom. Bravo!
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.
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READING MATERIALS:
Death in the family: John Chipman: (Penguin);
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/228817/death-in-the-family-by-john-chipman/9780385680844
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Jane O'Hara: McLeans Magazine: "Dead Wrong."
https://archive.macleans.ca/article/2001/5/14/dead-wrong
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The Current: (Transcript):
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Denis St. Pierre article:
https://www.fixcas.com/cgi-bin/go.py?2008a.Gagnon
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Carol Mulligan story:
http://www.ottawamenscentre.com/news/20040611_sudbury.htm
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Thanks as always to Kyra Jolliet, my sharp-eyed daughter/editor, for her much appreciated assistance on this Blog. HL.
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