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Winnipeg Free Press - ONLINE EDITION
Sinclair inquiry hears CFS involved as soon as Phoenix born
A baby photograph of Phoenix Sinclair filed as an exhibit at the inquiry into her death. (INQURIRY PHOTO)
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The morning after Phoenix Sinclair was born, social workers set in motion the events that would take her out of her mother's care.
On the second day of the inquiry into the child's death, two social workers offered testimony on the red flags that surrounded Phoenix's birth in April 2000.
The inquiry aims to understand the events that led to Phoenix being murdered by her mother and stepfather in 2005, after horrific abuse.
The first witness on Thursday, whose identity remains under a publication ban, worked for Health Sciences Centre and met Phoenix's mother Samantha Kematch in the hospital after a nurse alerted the hospital's social services office.
What Kematch told the worker raised alarms: the new mother, then only 18, had a two-year-old son who was a permanent ward of another child welfare agency.
She had done nothing to prepare for Phoenix's birth, and had no pre-natal care. She appeared ambivalent about parenting, and confessed having no plan for what to do about the child.
The hospital worker alerted Winnipeg Child and Family Services, which dispatched an after-hours team to the hospital to investigate further.
They forwarded what they learned to an intake worker, Marnie Saunderson, who helped complete the intake investigation that would place Phoenix in foster care.
Although Kematch and her then-boyfriend, Steve Sinclair, voluntarily offered to place Phoenix in care, CFS would have apprehended the child regardless, documents showed.
At the inquiry, Saunderson testified to how she had requested documents from the Cree Nation Child and Family care agency that would shed light on why Kematch's son had become a permanent ward of the state.
Instead, the agency incorrectly forwarded her documents about Kematch's own history in care.
Those documents traced the path of a family shattered beyond recognition: Kematch herself was a permanent ward of CFS, seized from an abusive and alcoholic mother.
Her father, an alcoholic, had died after a drunken fall; one sibling had committed suicide. In her teens, Kematch exploded with rage, vanishing from her foster home and later institutional placements.
She stole cars, partied with gang members and brimmed with anger towards adults.
When her son was born, she told the hospital worker, CFS apprehended the infant because "they thought I would hurt him."
The inquiry continues this afternoon with further testimony from Saunderson into the intake process that brought Phoenix into care.
History
Updated on Thursday, September 6, 2012 at 2:05 PM CDT: Adds photo.
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