Blunders in Alberta paved way for child abuse in P.E.I.

Many unanswered questions about failure to rescue children in 1995

The Edmonton Journal/October 28, 2002
By Paula Simons

On Friday, Lucille Poulin , 78, the former nun and self-styled prophet of God, was found guilty of five counts of assault for her beatings of children at the Four Winds commune on Prince Edward Island.

But that verdict shouldn't close the book on the case of Poulin's extremist sect. There are more questions that need to be asked, more people to hold accountable.

Poulin and her followers were well known to child welfare officials, both in P.E.I. and in Alberta, where the commune got its start on a Westlock dairy farm.

In 1995, child welfare workers in Westlock started an investigation into the commune, after a teenage girl ran away from the sect and told them about the extreme physical and emotional abuse that she, her 10 brothers and sisters and the other children of the commune had been regularly put through. Social workers paid several visits to the farm and grew concerned enough by what they saw to apply to the court for a temporary guardianship order of the children.

That would have allowed social workers to apprehend the children immediately.

Unfortunately, the judge refused to grant that request. Instead, in June 1995, the court issued a supervision order, which gave social workers the right to visit and observe the farm. When social workers finally arrived at the farm, they found that the 18 sect members, nine adults and nine children, had left in the middle of the night. Poulin later denied the departure had anything to do with the court order; she claimed one of her disciples had received a vision from Jesus, telling them to move to Prince Edward Island.

Divine vision or not, P.E.I. was an inspired choice for Poulin. Child welfare laws in Alberta and Prince Edward Island are quite different in philosophy. The law here gives courts and social workers the power to apprehend children who are being emotionally or mentally abused, even if there's no physical abuse or neglect. P.E.I. law has no such provision. By contrast, Prince Edward Island gives social workers the power to apprehend a child whose parents aren't providing enough "discipline," "supervision" or "control."

Nonetheless, the Alberta court order followed the sect to Prince Edward Island. And social workers here reportedly contacted their eastern colleagues, repeatedly, to tell them about Poulin. Several older children, who'd left the sect and remained in Alberta, say they, too, called social workers in P.E.I. and begged them to investigate.

However, while P.E.I. social workers made several initial visits to the commune, there was no official followup until the late fall of 1999, when a 12-year-old boy on the commune became very ill, with what doctors diagnosed as a blood-clotting disorder called immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP).

Poulin, who spent more than 30 years working as a hospital nurse, refused to let the boy have blood transfusions, telling his family that blood transfusions would fill the boy with other people's evil spirits. Finally, the child was taken into protective custody by the province and given transfusions. Tragically, on Dec. 21, 1999, the child died in a Halifax hospital.

The other Four Winds children, however, continued to live on the commune, without any further actions by social workers.

Finally, in 2001, a brother of the boy who died was able to get a secret message to his older siblings in Alberta. They travelled to P.E.I. and helped some of the younger children escape. Only then did RCMP and social workers get involved in the case, take all the children into protective custody and lay assault charges against Poulin.

Alberta authorities blundered on this file first. If the court here had allowed social workers to rescue these kids back in 1995, if social workers and the RCMP hadn't let Poulin and her disciples slip through their fingers, one child might still be alive and eight others might have been spared six years of brutality.

Authorities here made errors in judgment. But what excuse do authorities in P.E.I. have? Even given the archaic limitations of their child welfare legislation, island social workers knew about the Alberta court order. Yet they did not remove the children from the commune, even after one of them died. And the P.E.I. government continues to refuse repeated calls to hold an inquiry into that child's death.

So much unnecessary suffering. So many unanswered questions. Lucille Poulin was allowed to abuse children, when the state had the power to stop her. Don't we owe it, both to those who survived and to the boy who died, to find out why?