Mom ‘devastated’ over boy’s death

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This article was published 04/02/2015 (4113 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Draze Dennis Leon Brandon-Catcheway spent his two short years of life in the child-welfare system.

His death Saturday opened a Pandora’s box of recriminations with an extended family furious with the system and officials unable to respond without breaking confidentiality laws.

No criminal charges were filed Tuesday. RCMP are investigating, and a forensic unit was seen combing through the three-bedroom family home at Waywayseecappo First Nation.

At Waywayseecappo, about 350 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, a spokesman for the Brandon-Catcheway family said he’s been told Draze fell off a bed while roughhousing with his twin sister Friday. Darrell Brandon, Draze’s great-uncle, said the boy’s mother was doing dishes when the toddler fell.

“She heard a bang; that’s when she went and checked him. He was up and around. He had a bruise on the side of the forehead, but he was running around. He was OK,” Brandon said.

About 3 a.m., the mother woke to the sound of Draze moaning.

“You know how scared somebody gets?” Brandon paused.

“She was panicking, not thinking properly. Her battery on her cellphone kept dying. She finally got a hold of the kids’ dad, and that’s who phoned the ambulance.

“She tried to phone the social workers, and she couldn’t get hold of them,” Brandon said.

Emergency personnel arranged for the toddler to be flown to Winnipeg. Police and social workers arrived and seized the rest of the children.

“She’s devastated. She’s worried about her son, her kids. She’s not worried about being charged,” Brandon said.

The story told by Brandon was all about bruises, both physical and emotional. There were the physical ones Draze and his twin sister displayed after stays at their foster home and at their mother’s home, according to allegations traded back and forth from the two houses to the twins’ social workers. By early January, the twins were at home in Waywayseecappo five days a week, as plans moved forward to bring them home permanently.

The emotional bruises were suffered by an extended family traumatized by repeated involvement with the child-welfare system.

“Foster parents have more rights than parents,” said a frustrated Brandon during a phone interview.

A spokesman with the Southern Authority, which oversees First Nations child-welfare agencies in southern Manitoba, said officials could not respond to the family’s comments because of child-welfare laws.

Draze and his twin sister were in the care of West Region Child and Family Services. Brandon said Draze, like his sister, was a special-needs child who required extra attention and was hard to control.

Brandon said the twins’ 31-year-old mother — his niece — had five other children at home, ranging in age from 17 to a nursing four-month-old baby, with no help at home.

Her husband was barred from the family home because of his drinking.

“The young fellow that died, he was a happy, go-lucky guy, jumping around. His mother, she’d say ‘Get off there, you could fall,’ ” Brandon said.

Draze’s older siblings — a stepsister and two stepbrothers in their teens — were at school at the time. A four-year-old brother also lived in the home.

In the year or so since Draze’s mother discovered she was pregnant with her seventh child, she’d stopped drinking, took treatment for alcohol addiction and kept five children at home, weathering a separation from her partner, Brandon said.

Gradually, she took on more responsibility for the twins, still in care.

Brandon said Draze’s mother photographed bruises on both twins when they returned home from foster care and reported them to child-welfare authorities. Reports say the foster mother in Oakburn, 30 kilometres southeast, made the same complaints about the birth mother.

“The recommendations that came out from the Phoenix (Sinclair) inquiry, they’re supposed to provide better service, to have somebody there to help, since the husband wasn’t there any more,” Brandon said. “They never did appoint anyone to come and help her.”

The funeral is set for Friday.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca