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Crown prosecutor James Braydon argued the boy didn’t act in self-defence, but in vengeance and hatred. Defence lawyer Doug Majaesic argued the 13-year-old acted to save himself and his mother. The judge deliberated for just two hours before acquitting the youth, who has spent the last two years held, without bail, at the Edmonton Young Offenders Centre, far from his northern home and his surviving family.

But the conclusion of the trial shouldn’t stop us from asking important questions.

Given this father’s known and documented history of violence, couldn’t the RCMP or child welfare authorities have done more to intervene? Despite the terrible dysfunction and the abuse authorities knew about, the children were repeatedly returned to their parents’ care. If someone had stepped in to protect those kids, a lot of horror could have been averted.

Isolation may have been a factor: this particular community is extremely remote, far from the kinds of social support services available in larger communities. The First Nation also has delegated authority to run its own child welfare system. Sometimes, small First Nations simply don’t have the resources, the funding or the trained staff to handle complicated child welfare files. Finding local foster families in small isolated communities can be a huge challenge. Many bands are loathe to send kids off-reserve, especially to non-aboriginal families.

But whatever the reasons or challenges, almost anything would have been better than keeping these children trapped in a family situation so hellish that a boy who’d just turned 13 felt he had no chance to save his mother than to kill his father.

Human Services needs to do a review — not to lay blame, but to figure out how to extricate the next kid, the next family, from this kind of hell. We can’t give this teen the last two years of his life back. We can, at least, try to learn from his tragedy.

psimons@edmontonjournal.com

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