Manitoba parents found guilty of severely abusing their twins
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Monthly Digital Subscription
$1 per week for 24 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Billed as $4.00 plus GST every four weeks. After 24 weeks, price increases to the regular rate of $19.00 plus GST every four weeks. Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
Monthly Digital Subscription
$4.75/week*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Billed as $19 plus GST every four weeks. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
*Your next subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $16.99 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $23.99 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/01/2022 (1360 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
A rural Manitoba couple has been convicted of child abuse and neglect after their young twins were apprehended with dozens of broken bones and other injures medical authorities described as “medically devastating.”
Both offenders were convicted of two counts each of failing to provide the necessaries of life and criminal negligence causing bodily harm following a virtual hearing Friday before Queen’s Bench Justice Sandra Zinchuk. The mother was convicted of two additional counts of aggravated assault.
The parents cannot be named in order to protect the identity of their children.
In July 2019, child welfare authorities seized the one-year-old children after social workers visited the couple’s farm and found the children bruised and malnourished. They were in clear medical distress.
One child was life-flighted to Winnipeg and underwent emergency surgery for a subdural hematoma. Both children suffered 20 or more bone fractures, and were “significantly delayed” in their development, court heard.
The female offender’s older children testified at trial their mother would often strike the twins in the face or arm and would routinely pick them up roughly by one arm or leg. Court heard testimony the woman would leave the children outside for hours at a time while she slept or watched television. On other occasions, she stuffed socks into the children’s mouths to keep them from crying.
“By all accounts, (she) treated the twins differently than her other children… in fact she verbally expressed that she hated the twins, that they were the worst babies ever and she wished she never had them,” Zinchuk said.
When extended family members expressed concern about the children’s malnourished appearance, the female offender explained it away as a result of them being born prematurely and claimed they had been seen by a nurse practitioner who gave them a clean bill of health. Concerns about the children’s swollen arms or legs were dismissed with a claim they had been bitten by a bee.
“That was a fabrication,” Zinchuk said. The woman did not take the children to see a doctor because “the full extent of their injuries would become known,” Zinchuk said.
Court heard the two offenders had a volatile relationship blighted by drug and alcohol abuse.
Court heard no credible evidence the male offender physically abused the children and was in fact affectionate with them, Zinchuk said.
While there was evidence the man encouraged the woman to take the children to hospital, he did nothing to protect them from injury or seek treatment for them himself, Zinchuk said.
The man’s lawyer argued the man spent most of his time in the field and relied on the woman to raise the children. The man was “psychologically controlled” by his partner and believed her claims the children were healthy.
“I reject entirely the suggestion the fact (he) was a man in a farming community who relied on his spouse to look after the children has any relevance,” Zinchuk said. “Division of labour in a relationship is no excuse to abdicate one’s legal duty to one’s children. He was fully capable and willing to seek assistance when he needed it.
“One need only look at the photographs taken by RCMP (the day the children were seized)… It is inconceivable that anyone could see those children and believe they were healthy and OK,” Zinchuk said.
The offenders will be sentenced at a later date.
Zinchuk ordered that the female offender be taken into custody, while the male offender remains free on bail pending sentencing.
dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca

Dean Pritchard is courts reporter for the Free Press. He has covered the justice system since 1999, working for the Brandon Sun and Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in 2019. Read more about Dean.
Every piece of reporting Dean produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.