Sherry Charlie's life

Michael Smyth

Vancouver Province

Sherry Charlie didn't have the best start in life, but her terrible fate was sealed after efforts to give her a fresh beginning were fatally bungled.

By the time she reached 19 months of age, Sherry Charlie still could not walk or talk. But the disabled little girl could cry - and she cried a lot. On Sept. 4, 2002, Sherry's frequent, high-pitched wailing became all too much for her foster father, 32-year-old Ryan George. "I just lost it," he was heard to say later on a police surveillance tape. George, himself a survivor of physical and sexual abuse as a child, kicked the little girl. Then he slammed her head to the floor - once, twice, three times. He picked up Sherry's lifeless body and placed it at the bottom of a staircase. Then he phoned the police - and told them Sherry's three-year-old brother, Jamie, had pushed her down the stairs.

The RCMP, suspicious from the start, later captured his confession with a hidden microphone.

Ryan George is now serving 10 years in jail for manslaughter.

Last summer, the B.C. government released a sketchy, sixpage summary of an internal investigation into the tragedy.

It provided the first hints of how the case was fatally bungled by the Ministry of Children and Families and by Usma, the child-protection agency of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council.

It revealed that caseworkers had failed to check George's long and violent criminal record - including convictions for spousal abuse, numerous assaults, violent robbery and arson - before he received custody of Sherry and Jamie.

Incredibly, the government allowed Jamie to remain with George for another five months after Sherry died, forcing the little boy to live with the lie that he had killed his own baby sister.

The fate of these two children has touched off a political firestorm in British Columbia.

This is their story:

From the beginning, Jamie and Sherry Charlie were exposed to problems that ruin too many lives in aboriginal communities: alcohol, violence and neglect.

The kids' young parents - Trevor Charlie and Juliana Frank - were from the remote Vancouver Island village of Ahousat. Court records indicate the parents were coping well with Jamie. But when Sherry was born developmentally delayed, problems began.

"Reports include concern regarding substance misuse by this couple, leading to neglect of the children and domestic violence," says one ministry document filed with B.C. Provincial Court.

"Reporters are also concerned about inappropriate parenting of the children (hitting children in the head, swearing at them and pushing the children to the ground when children approach their mother)," it says.

"In May 2002, an investigation revealed that the children were left home alone while the parents were out drinking."

Sherry and Jamie's extended family became concerned. According to court documents, family members urged the children's aunt, Claudette Lucas, to seek custody of Jamie and Sherry under a government-sanctioned "kith-and-kin" program.

The program aims to place First Nations foster children in aboriginal homes, often with relatives, so the children grow up in their own culture and close to their own families.

The placement of Sherry and Jamie with Claudette Lucas and her common-law husband, Ryan George, was approved in August 2002.

Juliana Frank, the children's mother, says all of this was done over her objections. "I said, 'No, I don't want my kids there, especially my daughter,'" Frank told the Victoria Times Colonist.

"My son is old enough to tell me when somebody is hurting him, but my daughter is not. I already knew that [George] had an anger problem."

But Frank eventually agreed to the placement. "I felt outnumbered by my family," she said. The kith-andkin contract was recommended to the government by Usma, the aboriginal agency which means "precious ones" in Nuu-chah-nulth.

Claudette Lucas was an employee of Usma. Usma has refused all comment on the case, including whether the agency had any conflict-of-interest rules against their own employees entering into contracts with the government.

Claudette Lucas and Ryan George were to be paid $900 a month by the government to care for the children. But the background checks on the new foster parents were botched.

According to the kith-and-kin program's "draft guidelines," which were faxed to aboriginal child-welfare agencies just a few days before Sherry and Jamie went to live with Lucas and George, Usma was responsible for doingcriminal-record checks on the foster parents.

The checks were not completed. But that does not mean officials at Usma were unaware of George's violent past. At George's 2004 manslaughter hearing, court heard that his criminal record was wellknown in the small community when he and his wife were given custody of the children. At the time they received custody, George was on probation for spousal assault.

The government also dropped the ball. Under the draft guidelines, the ministry was responsible for checking its own records on the Lucas-George home. This was not done.

It was revealed later that ministry social workers had extensive contacts with the home where Lucas and George lived with their own three children.

Sherry Charlie died just 22 days after she went to live there. The blended family spent the fateful day shopping for a new car, court heard. Later, while his wife was out of the house, George savagely kicked and beat Sherry to death.

Police suspected foul play, especially after a pathologist found extensive trauma to Sherry's head, ribs and abdomen. Some of the injuries were one to three weeks old. None was consistent with a fall.

As the investigation proceeded, the government had to decide what to do with Jamie.

The ministry did a twomonth-long safety review of the home that concluded Jamie should stay with George and Lucas. Incredibly, this ruling was made even after the government had access to George's complete criminal record, the ministry's own lengthy record of prior contacts with the home and the pathologist's alarming findings about Sherry's injuries.

On Nov. 8, 2002 - the very same day the ministry ruled the Lucas-George home to be safe - an Usma social worker persuaded a judge to name Lucas and George as "restricted foster parents" in charge of Jamie.

This meant they would be paid more money to care for him than under a kith-and-kin contract ($650 a month, as opposed to $450 a month for each child under the program.)

Meanwhile, police were closing in on Ryan George. Investigators persuaded Claudette Lucas to wear a wire and record her husband's conversations. In an emotional discussion in their car, George confessed.

"She wouldn't stop crying," he said. "I kicked her first. I grabbed her head and smashed it on the floor. I just lost it. I couldn't stop." George, originally charged with seconddegree murder, pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter. A charge of criminal negligence causing death was dropped.

Since this story has become public, both the provincial government and Usma have been under intense pressure to account for their actions.

But critics allege there has been an attempted cover-up of the facts.

On Nov. 6, 2002, the government changed the terms of reference of its internal review of the case to delete an examination of the ministry's role. The six-page summary of the review released last July 21 placed most of the blame on Usma.

Usma and Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, meanwhile, have urged the media to stop publishing Sherry's photo and speaking her name, out of respect for aboriginal customs.

In September, the Nuuchah-nulth Tribal Council invited Children and Families Minister Stan Hagen and NDP Leader Carole James to meet with "Sherry's family" in a Port Alberni longhouse.

Hagen and James emerged promising to stop mentioning Sherry by name. It has not been heard in the B.C. legislature since. This has angered Sherry's parents, who say they were not invited to the longhouse meeting. Juliana Frank said she doesn't want her daughter's name swept under the rug.

"If it's going to keep other children [from the same fate], that's fine with me," she said of the use of her daughter's name and picture.

Sherry's grandfather, Harvey Charlie, agrees. He, too, was not invited to the longhouse to meet with the politicians. "Everyone is trying to avoid us," he said. "Everyone is trying to protect themselves."

Jamie is now living with another relative as a blizzard of lawsuits, reviews and inquiries proceeds. They include a coroner's inquest and a government-appointed panel to review the province's child-welfare system.

The government has refused calls for a full public inquiry, as well as calls to restore British Columbia's independent children's commission, which the Liberals abolished in a budget-cutting move in May 2002.

The case is expected to dominate debate in the B.C. legislature when it resumes tomorrow. But the actual name of Sherry Charlie, an innocent little girl who died a sad and violent death, will go unspoken.