Death of Jeffrey Baldwin

Jeffrey Baldwin (20 January 1997 – 30 November 2002) was a Canadian child whose death from septic shock after years of mistreatment by his grandparents, Elva Bottineau and Norman Kidman, led to significant changes in policy by children's aid societies in the granting of custody of children to relatives.

Life

Jeffrey was born in the Doctor's Hospital, now part of the Toronto Western Hospital, in Toronto, the son of Yvonne Kidman and Richard Baldwin. On 28 April 1998, he and his older sister were taken by the Catholic Children's Aid Society after allegations of abuse were leveled 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 Jeffrey's eye, but this was dismissed as an accident and no action was taken.

According to later court testimony, Jeffrey 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 Jeffrey's aunt who also lived in the house, declared that Jeffrey'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 30 November 2002, the grandparents called 911 to report that Jeffrey was no longer 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.

Court case

On 19 March 2003, the grandparents were arrested and charged with second-degree murder for their role in his death. The court declared 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 checks while offering little in return. On 7 April 2006, they were convicted of second-degree murder by Justice David Watt in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. Sentencing was delivered on 9 June 2006. Bottineau was sentenced to 22 years imprisonment (until 2023) and Kidman 20 years (until 2021), before they respectively become eligible for parole.

Statue

On 22 November 2013, Todd Boyce, a fellow Canadian unrelated to Jeffrey Baldwin, started a $25,000 crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo over two months to erect a bronze statue in Greenwood Park, Toronto depicting Jeffrey dressed as Superman, a superhero he loved. $36,015 was raised.^[1] In July 2014, DC Comics denied permission to use the "S" in the Superman logo on the statue. However, the decision was later reversed and the use of the logo was allowed.^[2] The statue was unveiled in the park on 18 October 2014.^[3]

See also

• Murder of Nubia Barahona

References