Motherisk: Key events in a decades-long scandal that tore apart families in Canada

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/04/2021 (2006 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The recent Ontario Court of Appeal decision in the wrongful conviction case of Joyce Hayman is the latest development in the Star’s ongoing investigation into the problems at the Hospital for Sick Children’s former Motherisk lab. The scandal that tore apart families across Canada was decades in the making.

1985: Dr. Gideon Koren, a clinical pharmacologist and toxicologist, creates the Motherisk Program at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. Within five years, Motherisk becomes a leading resource for pregnant and lactating women and their doctors about the effects of medication, alcohol and street drugs, and opens a research lab.

1999: The focus of the lab evolves from studying drugs in hair to selling its hair-testing services. Motherisk begins marketing the tests to child welfare agencies as a means of quantifying drug use and exposure. The lab would rake in millions of dollars performing hair tests on more than 25,000 individuals across Canada.

2000: Koren is fined and suspended by the former presidents of Sick Kids and the University of Toronto for “repeatedly lying” and showing a “reckless dereliction of duty” during a high-profile dispute with whistleblower colleague Dr. Nancy Olivieri, conduct that was “sufficient ground for dismissal.”

2008: The Goudge Inquiry into the mistakes of Sick Kids forensic pathologist Charles Smith that tainted more than a dozen criminal cases exposes the dangers of performing forensic services without proper training. No other departments are audited.

Oct. 14, 2014: The Ontario Court of Appeal overturns the cocaine-related convictions of Toronto mom Tamara Broomfield after expert evidence questions the reliability of Motherisk’s hair tests. Broomfield was convicted in 2009 of feeding her toddler cocaine based in part on Motherisk’s tests of the boy’s hair.

Nov. 2014: The Star publishes stories raising questions about Motherisk’s testing, which is now routinely relied on in child protection cases across the country. For weeks, Sick Kids and the government defend the reliability of the hair tests.

Nov. 26, 2014: The Ontario government appoints retired judge Susan Lang to lead an independent review into the “adequacy and reliability” of hair drug tests performed by Motherisk from 2005 to 2010.

March 5, 2015: Sick Kids suspends “all non-research operations” at Motherisk after learning it had been misled about Motherisk’s proficiency testing. The next month, the lab is shut for good.

April 22, 2015: Lang’s mandate is expanded to cover Motherisk’s hair testing between 2005 to 2015. The province directs Ontario’s children’s aid societies to stop relying on hair testing in child protection cases.

Oct. 15, 2015: Sick Kids CEO Michael Apkon issues a public apology for “unacceptable” practices at Motherisk.

Dec. 17, 2015: Lang’s scathing report on Motherisk finds the lab’s hair tests were “inadequate and unreliable” for use in child protection and criminal proceedings. She concludes that Sick Kids did not provide adequate oversight of Motherisk and failed to learn from the lessons of the scandal involving Charles Smith.

Jan. 15, 2016: Ontario launches an independent review to determine the role Motherisk’s flawed hair tests played in decisions to remove children from their families. Retired judge Judith Beaman is appointed to lead the $10-million Motherisk Commission, which is given a two-year mandate to probe 25 years of individual child protection cases, and provide counseling and legal support to affected families. Ontario’s attorney general identifies and reviews affected criminal cases.

May 30, 2017: Ontario launches a review of the oversight and accountability of the province’s forensic labs to explore setting mandatory accreditation standards, as well as improving forensic training and increasing transparency.

Feb. 26, 2018: The Motherisk Commission’s final report recommends sweeping changes to Ontario’s child protection system. After reviewing nearly 1,300 cases involving Motherisk’s evidence, the commission concludes that 56 families were “broken apart” by the lab’s flawed hair tests.

Sept. 2018: The Star finds an old news story about the case of Toronto mother Joyce Hayman, who was convicted of feeding her son cocaine in 1998 based on Motherisk’s hair tests. Despite previous efforts by the Ontario government to find affected criminal cases, Hayman’s conviction was missed. The Star tracks down Hayman, who was unaware of the problems at Motherisk. Veteran wrongful conviction lawyer James Lockyer vows to help Hayman clear her name.

Dec. 2018: Sick Kids announces a wholesale review of the vast body of published work by Koren amid a Star investigation that identified what appear to be problems in more than 400 of Koren’s papers. The move came after the Star presented the hospital with the results of the newspaper’s review that found these papers had been inadequately peer-reviewed, fail to declare, perhaps even obscure, conflicts of interest and, in a handful of cases, contain lies about the methodology used to test hair for drugs.

Feb. 2019: Koren, who retired from Sick Kids in 2015, agrees to surrender his Ontario medical licence and never reapply in the face of an investigation by the province’s medical watchdog into into whether he committed “professional misconduct or was incompetent” while he was in charge of Motherisk.

April 12, 2021: The Ontario Court of Appeal quashes Hayman’s conviction for feeding her son cocaine and enters an acquittal. The court found Hayman “suffered an egregious miscarriage of justice” and that her conviction was “rooted in the now discredited work” of the former Motherisk lab. The Crown lawyer said Hayman “should not have been convicted.”

Rachel Mendleson is a Toronto-based investigative reporter for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rachelmendleson