A family of nine in Aylmer has endured harm to their economic, emotional, social well-being since a dozen police officers and social workers descended on their home July 4, 2001. That’s when, in a much publicized tragedy, seven children struggled helplessly to avoid being forcefuly removed from their family home. Facing the resulting public outrage, the child-protection agency hid behind their secrecy rules, and claimed they had real justification for immediately removing the children without a warrant.

Twenty months later, the evidence is public and Ryan Kidd of the Family Aid Society says it doesn't add up in support of the Children's Aid Society (CAS). "As we assess the risk allegations raised by the CAS we find they were all insubstantial. The CAS should have admitted their mistake in the beginning, and ended their investigation. Instead the CAS has systematically shifted blame, and twisted the facts of the case to avoid responsibility for their shocking and unjustified intrusion into a good family." said Kidd.

The children were not physically abused. When the children were examined, there was absolutely no evidence of abuse of mind or body. The parents' use of objects, or a proverbial wooden spoon, in a reasonable, loving and controlled manner does not constitute child abuse, scientifically, legally or morally. Nor can abuse be blindly assumed because of the nature the implement which is applied to the child’s "seat of learning."

Employing a red herring argument, CAS has accused the family of medical neglect. A burn stustained by one of the boys in October 2000 was dealt with competently and was healing well, but CAS insisted that a government-certified doctor examine the burn (this was done and the doctor confirmed the burn was healing well). It is disturbing that CAS enforces their preference of state-monopoly health care, over proven home-based treatments.

Rather than a child-protection case, this has become a case of the child-protection industry trying to justify their indefensible actions. Justice Eleanor Schnall’s ruling which was released Feb 27, 2003 served to perpetrate the misinformation CAS lawyer Alfred Mamo had presented to the court. Now the public is receiving CAS’s twisted version of the facts.

To deal with the widespread public outcry, the CAS invented a version of events in which the brutal child apprehension was the responsibility of the family’s outspoken pastor, Henry Hildebrandt. According to the CAS, he’s the one who "orchestrated" the tense situation, so the CAS and police were forced to remove the children from their home.

However, far from being orchestrated, the confrontation was the inevitable outcome when a well-loved family in their close-knit community faces such hostile and unwarranted investigation. It is evident for all to see that pastor Hildebrandt became a scapegoat when the CAS couldn’t justify their hasty and ill-advised child-napping.

The widespread hostility toward families demonstrated by Ontario’s Child Protection industry has led to growing fear that more good families will be broken apart. "Under the Ontario law, families, and especially children, need protection from the risk of emotional and financial harm which occurs when the Children's Aid Society enters their lives without just cause," said Mr. Kidd. "It is time the CAS stopped treating children as property of the state, and respected their rights to be secure in the care of their loving parents."