To The director of Youth Protection

 

Dear System,

 Hello, it's been a while. Do you remember me? We first met when I was 9 years old. I was with my sister, she was 10. Remember? It's ok I’ve got big black holes in my memory too.

We met because I wasn't being cared for properly at home by my mother. She wasn't a mean or angry person; my mom just didn't know how to take care of us. Maybe you remember her? You met each other when she was 4 or so years old around 1951/52. She was with her little brother who was 2 and her big sister who was 6. Come on, you must remember the abuse they lived through? It scared them for life. No? Still can’t place me. Hmmmm…

See, I'm not a kid anymore and a lot of time has gone by. All these years later I find myself with questions for you that I seriously need answers to. Even though you don't remember me, I remember you. We called you the system, we were system kids.

We were in great hands I'm sure, even though it felt cold and empty. That's why I met you in the first place, you promised to take care of me and my sister. Everyone trusted you. You laid out a fool proof plan giving specific instructions on how to make a system raise healthy happy children. You really did it up good by promising the world that if a child needed to be removed from his/her home for whatever reason The Director of Youth Protection Act found fit, that child would receive everything necessary to that child's development, including a safe, secure, kind, and loving environment to grow up in. You said that child would be given everything necessary to their full development that the natural parents for whatever reasons could not provide. But of course, you know all that, after all it's you that said it. Really? You don’t remember that either? Well just to be sure let's have a look at your website.

There's a bunch of us system kids out there. It's so weird because we are getting connected again after all this time. You know what's so funny? When we started talking together again as grownups, we started realizing we still had lots in common. Like drug and alcohol addictions, broken relationships all our lives because the system taught us to trust nobody, not even ourselves. We noticed a pattern like a family tradition that ran through each of us that we were alone, that we were loser system kids. We even know now that when you spoke about the children who fell through the cracks you were speaking about us. We never knew we were in a crack until we started coming together.

Well look, I'm not insulted that you don't remember me, there were thousands of us losers. You had your hands full. I know nobody is perfect after all it was humans running your system and if those humans would have followed the rules and guidelines set by you, the system just might have worked well.

Oh, I get it, I'm not a complete idiot, even though I spent most of my life locked up in your system, then I graduated into the adult prison systems. I know a bit about how this world that you live in works. It is about money.

Even though I know you promised me, us, that we had the right to a proper public education, I imagine that would have been way too expensive to provide. Come on now, give every system kid a proper public education? Where's the money for that? I know you went to school because you deserved it. Who wants to sink all kinds of money into educating a bunch of idiots? Seriously.

Don't get me wrong, I know your system raised me to shut up, don’t complain, don't ask questions and for God sakes don't rat, and that’s something else we all have in common as old system kids. Writing to you today to ask you some questions about your system is extremely uncomfortable for me. I was always intimidated by you growing up, I was smaller than you, that's probably why I remember you always looking down your nose at me.

Wait! I think you'll remember me from my grandmother. A scared 7-year-old little girl? All alone when you met her, because she was the only one out of her 6 brothers and sisters to be given away to you. She didn’t understand, she tried to be good. But her family had to get her out of town because the rumors were getting louder about her father passing her around to the men at the tavern. I know that was a long time ago, in 1937-39 around there. But, can't you feel her tears? They're falling down my face now, that little girl's tears have always been falling down my face. It's too bad you don't remember her; she grew up hating all children. We felt her hatred every time we crossed paths, we called her Gam.

Oh well, who am I to ask you to remember me. You're busy I can tell, so I'll get to my questions.

How did my 11-year-old friend get a blowjob from one of your adult employees?

Can we please all have copies of our report cards? Most of us system kids didn't get to go to school, and it would be nice to see what grades we did complete. We’ve written to the Ministry of Education, but they don’t seem to have any records of us attending school.

You promised us that we’d get the counseling we needed as kids to help us develop into healthy adults. I was there for my own protection. One friend was there because he had lost both his parents to drugs, one of them died in his young 6-year-old arms. We would like copies of the counseling that your system provided us with. It's strange that none of us can remember ever meeting with a child therapist. I know a system kid Johnnie who might like to see any if you have them. We'd have to get permission to contact Johnnie because he’s in prison for life. The people closest to him say he was a shy, quiet kid. We all know the gross amount of bullying he endured by kids and your employees. Us system kids have tons of bullying Johnnie stories. It was severe. The quiet shy scared little boy grew up to be the ultimate bully. What happened to Johnnie? We want those counselling files.

We'd like to know who was in charge? Who was supervising? My sister was slapped hard in the face by an older girl right in front of everyone, your employee saw it all and even encouraged it and said nothing. If you could please provide us with your list of chain of command, we might be able to understand. The staff working directly with us were unsupervised and out of control themselves. I remember often being pinned down on the hard cold floor at 8 to10 years old by 3 or 4 staff, they’d sit on me until I passed out, I can still feel my sore throat from crying and screaming for my sister. They’d pull kids hair, punch kids in the mouth, bullying by kids and staff. It was crazy. We all needed supervision.

What's your success rate? I know 2% of us system kids made it to university. But what are the statistics for raising us into healthy, happy adults? I know you will surely keep records of your system's success rates. We want them.

How did we end up in the cracks? And who put us there? Why were we left there and forgotten about? What made you think after all the studies done on raising healthy children that an ice-cold system could produce anything but an ice-cold product?

Can you explain to us why that little 7-year-old Granby girl died? Your system knew she needed protection. Did one or more of your employees turn a blind eye? I was surprised to hear you announce on the news that you found 47 million dollars a couple of weeks later to put into the system. Grow the machine and buy lots of Band-Aids. It should die down, soon, right.

Most of that money will most likely go towards the renovations you have started doing on the old run-down centers that you hold the system kids in. I was very surprised to go see some of the old places that you put me in, all these years later, nothing had changed, the paint was the same color, everything looked the same, except I could see that renovations were starting in a lot of the places. I know you well, that’s what you do whenever the public is looking in your direction, you do renovations, until it dies down.

Can you explain what your system did to us? Why were we so scared? Why have we passed our lives watching others fall in love and raise their families? Why couldn't we be raised like that? We wanted that so badly, but we had no clue how to get it. We looked at it in pain and isolation.

Can you tell us what we did to get treated like scummy criminals? When most of us were in your system because we were being abused at home. Why did your system lock us up in maximum security places because we struggled with following your rules. Couldn’t you come up with a better more effective punishment? Why so ice cold?

I know it's hard to keep your employees working with us, because of lack of money, poor training, and we are stressful to work with. What do your employees get paid? After All they are taking on a huge responsibility by raising us, What’s that worth to you? What do you get paid?

Oh well, since you don't remember me and you don't have answers to my questions, I'm going to move along now, I can see you wiggling uncomfortably in your chair. Even though this is not easy for me to stand up to you, my heart aches for every scared, sad, lonely system kid and I'm asking questions on behalf of all of us.

I know I can't change my past; it played out the way it did. But I also know I can't sit around and do nothing knowing that as we speak your system is spitting out thousands of broken defective system kids every day. If I can save one system kid's life from being anything like mine has been, then it's been worth every mile.

 Thank You

Tammy-anne Deslongchamps

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

The System Kid

RIP little one, I won't let your story die with you.