CRIMINAL | The State is in Your Home: Courts punish poor parenting.

• Date: 01 March 2021
• Author: Izadi, Melody

Reading Time: 4 minutes

In the middle of a pandemic, are our children really safe?

Two Ontario courts recently punished poor parenting: the Ontario Superior Court in R v CO et al and the Ontario Court of Appeal in R v Lis. Both of these decisions were released during the pandemic and after the Crown had appealed the prior rulings of the initial jurist.

R v CO et al

In R v CO et al, police executed a search warrant on the accused's residence and found their 4-year-old daughter in bedroom on a mattress that smelled like urine. The child was extremely dirty and wearing soiled pyjamas. The child was in a bedroom with a rope tied to the bedroom door to prevent it from opening. The apartment was filled with rotting food, insects, garbage and mould. The accused showed some signs of mental health issues--poor socialization and weak adaptive functioning. Child welfare services removed the child from the home. Police then jointly charged both parents with failing to provide the necessities of life and with forcible confinement. At trial, the judge found the accused not guilty. The judge found the Crown led no evidence of the harm caused by exposure to the unsanitary conditions of the apartment. The judge accepted the parents' evidence that the child...