Jeffrey Baldwin
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Jeffrey Baldwin (January 20, 1997 – November 30, 2002) was a Canadian child whose death from septic shock after years of mistreatment by his grandparents led to significant changes in policy by children's aid societies in the granting of custody of children to relatives.
[edit] Life
Baldwin was born in Doctor's Hospital in Toronto, the son of Yvonne Kidman and Richard Baldwin. On April 28, 1998, he and his older sister were taken by the Catholic Children's Aid Society after allegations of abuse were levelled against their parents. They were given into the custody of their maternal grandparents, Elva Bottineau and Norman Kidman.
In 2000, a worker with the Catholic Children's Aid Society noticed a bruise under Baldwin's eye, but this was dismissed as an accident and no action was taken.
According to later court testimony, Baldwin and his sister were kept in a locked room at night with furnace vents shut, and when released were forced to eat with their hands from a mat on the floor. James Mills, the boyfriend of Baldwin's aunt who also lived in the house, declared that Baldwin's grandmother did not love him or his sister, and that they were purely a "dollars and cents" matter, as his grandparents received social assistance for their care.
On the evening of November 30, 2002, his grandmother called 911 to report that he was not breathing. Upon arrival, emergency workers noticed that his body was "covered in sores, bruises and abrasions". His weight at death was slightly less than his weight at his first birthday, almost five years earlier.
[edit] Court case
On March 19, 2003, his grandparents were arrested and charged with first-degree murder for their role in his death. The trial heard they had kept Jeffrey locked in a bedroom, where he lived in his own feces, and left him to drink from a toilet. The judge was told that the pair used the children as a source of income, collecting government support cheques while offering little in return. On April 7, 2006 they were convicted of second-degree murder by Justice David Watt in Ontario Superior Court. Sentencing was delivered on June 9, 2006. Bottineau was sentenced to 22 years in prison and Kidman 20 years, before they respectively become eligible for parole.
Shortly after the trial decision was announced, Ontario's chief coroner Barry McLellan announced an inquest to investigate in particular "the Toronto Catholic Children's Aid Society's involvement in Jeffrey's placement and the role that agency, and others, had in monitoring his well-being prior to his death".
