Pubdate: Mon, 08 Dec 2014
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2014 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: Rachel Mendleson
Page: A1
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)

MOTHERISK 'WRECKED MY LIFE'

She Provided 70 Clean Urine Samples, Yet Her Girls Were Taken From 
Her at Birth Because of Controversial Hair Test

The last time Christine Rupert saw her daughters was in a dingy 
church basement in Kitchener, surrounded by awkward and emotional 
reunions between other parents and their kids.

It was September 2008. Molly, an 18month-old with fine brown hair and 
wide eyes, sat as if glued to her mom's lap. Emily, 6 months, mainly 
snoozed in her car seat.

Both girls, whose names have been changed to protect their 
identities, were removed at birth because of their mom's suspected 
cocaine use, though both newborns tested negative for drugs. They 
remained in foster care based, primarily, on hair tests that showed 
Rupert was a heavy cocaine user - a finding she fiercely denied and 
was going to great lengths to disprove.

Rupert acknowledged she had previously done cocaine recreationally, 
at parties, a few times a year. However, she was adamant she had not 
taken the drug since fall 2006 and had always been a good mom to her 
kids, including two older sons and a brother she took in as her own.

The two-hour visits were supervised by the Children's Aid Society, 
and always unfolded the same way. Molly might loosen her grip enough 
to play with a toy or eat a snack, but when it was time to say 
goodbye again, she would start wailing.

Rupert waited until the girls were out of sight before she let her 
own tears flow. It always felt as if she was losing them for the 
first time. By the time the case was decided, Rupert had produced 
nearly 70 clean urine tests, cut ties with an abusive ex and had 
ample money and space to care for the girls. But in April 2009, a 
judge made both Molly and Emily wards of the province. They were 
adopted by separate families, without access to their mom.

The main reason the judge gave for his decision: Positive cocaine 
hair test results from the Motherisk laboratory at the Hospital for 
Sick Children.

*

Child protection cases are inherently messy. Using their best 
judgment, children's aid workers make life-changing decisions for 
families based on real and perceived risks to kids in circumstances 
that often fall short of typical, middle-class expectations.

Until recently, Motherisk's hair drug and alcohol tests have been 
accepted without challenge as evidence of parental substance abuse in 
Ontario courts, where they are seen as a rare, quantifiable measure 
in a sea of intangibles, which family lawyers say can easily tip the scales.

In November, amid an ongoing Star investigation into the reliability 
of Motherisk's analysis, the province appointed retired Court of 
Appeal Justice Susan Lang to probe five years' worth of hair drug 
tests performed by the lab. The independent review is a first step 
that could lead to a much larger inquiry into individual cases.

Lang is specifically investigating hair drug tests from 2005 to 2010, 
before Motherisk started analyzing samples using a technique widely 
regarded as the gold standard, to determine whether the results were 
used appropriately in child protection and criminal proceedings.

During this period, an unknown number of parents lost their kids 
based, in some part, on Motherisk's hair drug tests.

Christine Rupert is one of them.

*

Strict privacy rules, intended to protect the kids involved, prevent 
children's aid societies from discussing specific cases and anyone 
except the parties involved from accessing related court files.

But the copies of court documents Rupert provided for this story - 
including affidavits from children's aid workers, drug test results 
and the final judgment - state that the battle over her daughters 
began in September 2006, when she was in the early stages of her 
pregnancy with Molly, her first girl. The hospital in Kitchener 
alerted Family and Children's Services of the Waterloo Region after 
Rupert was brought in for treatment upon "passing out in a car," 
according to the 2009 judgment. She tested positive for cocaine.

Rupert, who disputes many of the claims children's aid and the court 
outlined in the documents, says she fainted during a heated fight 
with Molly's father, John.

She says the last time she did cocaine was at a party, before she 
realized she was pregnant - a fact she says she shared with 
children's aid. But she says John, whose name has been changed, was a 
heavy user. She believes her exposure to him may have played a role 
in the positive test.

Their relationship, which was on-and-off by that point, was her first 
real exposure to hard drugs, she says. He had violent mood swings, 
and physically overpowered her on several occasions. It was a rare 
rough patch for Rupert, 44, who had spent the bulk of her adult years 
as a hardworking single mom, juggling multiple jobs to provide for 
her two boys and younger brother.

But as soon as she found out she was pregnant with Molly "she was 
straight as a judge," says her brother, Mike Ouimet. She gave up 
drinking and smoking, Ouimet says, but remained concerned about the 
effects of the cocaine she used before she knew about the baby. "She 
was pretty torn up about that," he says. According to a letter to 
Rupert's lawyer from a drug-testing consultant who testified at 
court, she started submitting to urine drug screening in December 
2006, and tested negative for drugs throughout the pregnancy. (The 
negative urine screens during this period are also noted in the 2009 judgment.)

Motherisk's first documented involvement in the case was when Molly 
was born in the spring of 2007. The lab tested the baby's hair and 
first stool for drugs. Both tests came back clean. However, Molly was 
apprehended at birth, according to the judgment, "when the mother 
would not sign a temporary care agreement" so she could "attend for 
drug treatment and secure housing."

Rupert says she did not need drug treatment because she was not using 
drugs. She had the means to rent a place but had moved into Anselma 
House, a crisis centre for abused women, where she says children's 
aid told her she had to stay "or they would take the baby."

The discrepancy, she says, is an example of how the Children's Aid 
Society refused to consider evidence that did not support their suspicions.

"They nailed me to the flipping wall," she says. "I had nowhere to go."

She says she rented an apartment but stayed at Anselma House, in 
large part to convince children's aid that she was not using drugs 
and was protected from John, and kept fighting to get Molly back. (In 
an affidavit filed in court, a children's aid worker confirmed he 
visited her at a twobedroom townhouse later that year.)

The first hair drug screen mentioned in the documents was performed 
in June 2007 at the request of children's aid, through Life Labs, 
then called MDS, and came back positive for cocaine. Subsequent hair 
drug tests conducted through Life Labs in October, January and 
February were positive for cocaine, but the concentrations varied widely.

As a result of the January 2008 hair test results, the society 
amended its protection application for Molly to seek to make her a 
Crown ward with no access to her mom "for the purpose of meeting her 
need for permanency through her being adopted," according to a 
worker's affidavit.

Rupert, who consistently maintained she was not doing drugs, was 
determined to prove the tests wrong. She soon enlisted the help of 
Motherisk, which she believed would prove her case.

*

The positive hair tests baffled Rupert, whose 70 urine tests had come 
back clean for drugs in all but one instance over the course of 
several years. In early 2008, she did some research and learned that 
because hair grows at about one centimetre per month, the hair matrix 
can be tested in one-month segments, to reveal historical drug use.

Motherisk performed these segmented hair tests, and she hoped the 
results would disprove what was coming back from Life Labs.

The pressure, meanwhile, had ratcheted up: Rupert was due to give 
birth again in the spring.

"As soon as she found out she was pregnant, it was like a quest for 
her. She was going to be able to keep (the baby)," her brother recalls.

On Feb. 5 and April 18, 2008, by her choice and at her expense, she 
submitted hair samples to both Life Labs and Motherisk, so two 
independent facilities could test her hair.

All the tests came back positive for cocaine, with varying 
concentrations between the medium and high ranges.

It is not clear if the tests were conducted independently. Life Labs 
spokesman Mitchell Toker told the Star in an email that, from 2007 to 
2009, his company collected samples and sent them either to Motherisk 
or another lab for "testing and analysis," depending on how the 
request was made.

He said he could not discuss the specifics of the case and none of 
the documents the Star obtained, including the 2009 judgment, mention 
a connection between Life Labs and Motherisk, which declined to 
comment for this story.

When Emily was born, Rupert says she refused pain medication, 
believing it could taint future drug tests.

But despite dozens of clean urine tests - she tested positive once, 
before she was pregnant with Emily - the newborn was taken from her, 
"due to the results of the hair screens," the 2009 judgment states.

Like her sister, Emily's hair and first stool tested negative for 
drugs, according to Motherisk's analysis. And like her sister, she 
remained in foster care anyway.

"Christine was literally incoherent for about a week," her brother 
says. "She was in her room, pretty much just sobbing uncontrollably."

*

Two crucial, largely unanswered questions in Rupert's case are how 
her hair was tested for cocaine, and the reliability of those tests.

The province decided to probe Motherisk after the Star reported on 
questions surrounding the accuracy of the type of hair drug test the 
lab performed in 2005 and presented in a 2009 criminal case. The 
Court of Appeal tossed the cocaine-related convictions in that case 
in October, after fresh expert evidence criticized Motherisk's hair 
tests as "preliminary."

Although forensic standards stipulate hair tests presented in court 
must be confirmed with a gold-standard test, Sick Kids has said 
Motherisk did not start using the confirmatory test until 2010, 
casting doubt over at least five years of analysis.

However, in a letter to the children's aid worker in Rupert's case 
during her final hearing, Motherisk manager Joey Gareri stated that a 
sample collected in January 2009 had been tested with one of the 
gold-standard tests "as pertinent to the case history involved with 
this client."

It appears that test was done at U.S. Drug Testing Laboratories in 
Des Plaines, Ill., which Gareri referred to as "Motherisk's reference 
laboratory." Gareri also stated that several samples identified 
during the court proceedings "had not previously been confirmed with 
secondary analysis."

One of those samples did not have enough hair remaining for further 
testing, he said. In the other case, he said the amount of hair was 
"borderline sufficient and successful analysis may not be possible." 
The outcome of that effort is not known.

Gareri said the analysis performed on the hair sample from January 
2009 showed "significant cocaine exposure" during the previous 
six-month period.

"The result falls into the 'high' range of exposure, indicating it is 
about the 75th percentile for positive cocaine findings in our 
laboratory's client population," he said.

Toker said he "cannot speak to how hair samples were analyzed" 
through Life Labs.

Although Emily's hair tested negative for cocaine at birth, it tested 
positive for the drug six weeks later and again in October 2008. 
(Molly's hair never tested positive.)

Rupert, whose urine screens continued to be clean throughout this 
period when she never had custody of her daughter, wondered if 
perhaps the baby had somehow been exposed to the drug at the group 
access centre, where supervised visits were held with other parents.

At the hearing, Gareri testified that if the mother didn't do cocaine 
until the final days of her pregnancy, it was possible for the baby's 
first stool and hair samples to test negative, but there could be "a 
positive result on more hair that grew out from the scalp following the birth."

About six months before her final hearing, Rupert's visits with the 
girls at an access centre stopped, following an emotional breakdown 
in fall 2008.

A letter to her lawyer from children's aid stated that visits were 
being temporarily suspended until she recovered. In an affidavit, a 
children's aid worker said he was advised in November 2008 that 
Rupert "wished to have no contact" with him. She says she later tried 
to resume visits, but children's aid told her lawyer to hold off 
until court proceedings were through.

Rupert says the breakdown was due to the anxiety of trying for years 
to prove her innocence.

"They kept saying, 'Stop doing drugs.' I kept saying, 'I'm not on 
fricking drugs. Somebody please help me,'" she recalls. "I kept going 
back for these stupid tests. But these stupid tests kept coming back 
worse. I was digging a hole."

*

Karen Spencer, the acting director of Family and Children's Services 
of the Waterloo Region, said she could not respond to specific 
questions about the case, but in general, said hair drug tests are 
"one factor out of many factors" that are considered in child protection cases.

"We would never made a decision to apprehend children or take 
parents' rights away - to make kids Crown wards - based on a positive 
hair test alone," she said. "It really is based on the parents' 
ability to safely care for their children."

Spencer also said it is relatively rare for the agency to use drug 
screens in child protection matters. She said she has no plans to 
discontinue the relationship with Motherisk in light of the review, 
or any concerns about past cases that may have relied on the lab's 
analysis. The judge that made Molly and Emily Crown wards cited 
several factors, including the "emotional breakdown" and the recent 
lack of contact with the girls, which he claimed Rupert initiated "to 
meet her own emotional needs."

"To abandon them completely indicates that she could not really have 
been concerned about the care they were receiving in their foster 
homes," he wrote.

However, he said he believed she had overcome other challenges, 
including ending all involvement with their father and taking 
"appropriate steps to ensure her safety from him." The judge said he 
had "no doubt" she had "appropriate accommodation" for the girls and 
the "appropriate furnishings to meet their needs."

 From the time Rupert had Molly, reasons children's aid cited for 
seeking protective custody did not include observations of visible 
impairment or drug use, according to the documents obtained by the Star.

International experts, a British high court and a U.S. government 
department have raised questions about the reliability of hair drug 
and alcohol tests in general, as the Star has previously reported, 
but it does not appear doubts about the effects of hair products, 
colour or other concerns were considered in this case.

Despite Rupert's insistence she had not done cocaine since fall 2006, 
the positive drug hair tests remained the major sticking point.

Gareri and another expert (who Rupert called) testified that the 
levels of cocaine in her hair could not have been caused by passive 
exposure unless she were living in a crack house or processing 
cocaine daily, which there was "no evidence" she was doing, the 
judgment states. Hair tests, unlike urine tests, could not be 
falsified, they said.

"The difficulty with her plan is whether the children can be 
protected from harm in her care. I find they cannot," the judge wrote.

"Ms Rupert is either using cocaine, is accidentally ingesting cocaine 
regularly or is in an environment regularly that is producing high 
amounts of cocaine."

The girls, the judge noted, were "both thriving and are adoptable.

"Any access order to Ms Rupert . . . would impair the girls' 
opportunity for adoption," he wrote. "They are very young and should 
not spend a moment more in temporary care, but should become part of 
a permanent family home."

*

On a recent afternoon, Rupert sat at her dining room table in 
Bracebridge, sipping coffee and flipping through old photos of her daughters.

For the purposes of the visit, she had hauled out all of her files 
from storage, which fill about a dozen bankers' boxes.

After she lost the girls for good, she had to leave Kitchener, 
because she couldn't stop looking for them, in the faces of the 
babies in strollers at the grocery store, in cars, on the streets.

"I wasn't having a normal day-today life," she says. "I couldn't function."

When she heard about the province's review, she started to cry. "This 
wrecked my life," she says. "The girls - I don't even know where they 
are. I don't even know if they're OK."

It is difficult to think about where to place her hope if the review 
leads to a larger inquiry - if a court decides she was right all along.

"I can't say that I would go back in and remove them from where they 
are now. Does the selfish person in me want to? Oh yeah. But the 
loving mother in me also says that I can't disrupt their lives even 
more than what's already happened.

"I don't even know what the answer is," she says.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom