Mother found not guilty in child abandonment case

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A Winnipeg woman who left her six-year-old child alone in a locked home for 90 minutes has been found not guilty of child abandonment.

The mother, who isn’t being named to protect the identity of the boy, learned her fate on Friday afternoon.

Provincial court Judge Margaret Wiebe said the woman clearly made a poor choice, but that doesn’t automatically make it criminal.

“It was an unacceptable reason to leave a child alone. It was poor judgment,” said Wiebe. But the judge said the mother clearly had “no fear” of her son being at risk, which is a key issue needed to prove the charge.

“This was an active, bright young child left in a well-kept home with no evident or immediate danger,” said Wiebe.

The facts of the case were not in dispute. The boy was home alone on a summer afternoon, surrounded by food, water and a television to keep him company. He suffered no harm. Police found the boy in the home, eating pudding and doing a puzzle while watching television. He appeared happy, court was told.

Police had been called when the boy’s father – who had recently ended the marriage with his wife – saw her driving alone. He called the house, where his son answered. The mother told police she had been “stressed” because she needed to pick up medication and see a couple of clients while working as a health-care aide. She had no family in Winnipeg and decided to leave her son for a short period of time to run a few errands.

Under the Criminal Code, the charge is met when a child under the age of 10 is left alone and has his or her “life or health endangered.” And that’s where the lines blur, with Crown and defence lawyers having different views of whether that subjective legal test has been met.

“Even in a home environment, that child was endangered,” prosecutor Nancy Fazenda argued last month. “There doesn’t necessarily have to be a negative consequence.”

She presented a long list of potential tragic scenarios, including turning on a stove element, choking on food, falling down stairs, tumbling out a window, accidentally being electrocuted, burning the house down or falling victim to a burglar.

She also submitted a list of other Canadian cases in which children did get harmed while they were at home alone, showing the risk is real.

“Just because nothing bad happened, that’s not the test,” said Fazenda.

“This is enough to satisfy the test.”

Defence lawyer Michael Law disagreed, saying there must at least be some evidence of potential harm. He noted cases that have attracted convictions in which children were left in cold vehicles, hot vehicles or in the company of items such as weapons, candles and matches.

None of those factors was involved in this case.

“It must be more than purely speculative,” said Law.

Although people may question the judgment his client made in leaving her young son alone for a period of time, moral condemnation is not the same as criminal culpability, he argued.

“If you were to convict in this case, you would be bringing the law into a new realm. It would be unprecedented,” Law told the judge.

The mother has lost care of her child, who is being raised by his father. The parents are separated, court was told.

Child and Family Services is also involved in the case, and she hasn’t seen the boy since her arrest more than 18 months ago.

Fazenda argued another element of the charge has been satisfied by the fact the mother chose to leave the boy alone, rather than responding to an emergency that altered her plans.

“There’s no question it was a deliberate act, that she meant to leave the child,” said Fazenda.

In one case in Canada, a mother was acquitted when she left her child alone in a home but the child was later found wandering down a street. He was not physically harmed.

In that situation, the woman had a medical emergency, said Fazenda.

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