Two moms’ child murder trial hears from family therapist

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A child and family therapist tried to help two moms deal with two difficult Indigenous foster children who’d survived years of early trauma – but her advice never included dressing them in onesie pyjamas and zip-tying them shut.

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Her strategies didn’t include forcing the two boys to march up and down the stairs for 45 minutes, she said Friday. It certainly didn’t include confining them in zip-tied hockey helmets.

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And she wouldn’t have advised treating the boys as toddlers.

Terra Bovingdon was testifying for the Crown at the judge-alone trial for Becky Hamber and Brandy Cooney, who have pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and failure to provide the necessities of life charges. The married couple had taken in the young brothers in 2017 and they’d been in the midst of adopting the boys, whose names are protected by a publication ban, when the oldest died.

The 12-year-old emaciated victim, the size of a child half his age, was found unresponsive on the floor in a basement bedroom, soaking wet and wearing a wetsuit on Dec. 21, 2022.

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The cause of death was “unascertained.”

Defence lawyers suggest boy had serious behavioural issues

The moms’ lawyers have suggested the boy had serious behavioural issues, a severe eating disorder and struggled with binge eating and regurgitating his food.

Bovingdon first saw the Burlington family in June 2018 and said she was helping them use “therapeutic parenting” to help regulate the children, who were acting out, wetting themselves and tantruming because of their childhood of abandonment and trauma. She explained to Hamber and Cooney that they couldn’t use the typical kind of time outs and punishments that would be appropriate for other kids.

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It doesn’t sound like they got the message.

Reading from her session notes, the therapist said in August 2018 that Cooney complained the oldest child, who would be found dead four years later, was wetting himself on purpose.

“Brandy feels it is behavioural and within his control,” her note reads.

Bovingdon told her these were “survival behaviours” and “he’s not willfully doing it.”

On Nov. 1, 2018, the therapist has a concerning note that the older boy continues to be treated as a “one-year-old” dressed in a one-piece pyjama worn backwards and zip-tied shut, provided mushy food and left to sit in his bedroom to “think about his choices.”

“They had ziptied the zipper shut,” she recalled, “so that he wasn’t taking off his pull-up (diaper) and urinating in the house.”

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She told them these were punitive measures that would shame the child.

“Would any of those have been things that you would have recommended to Ms. Hamber and Ms. Cooney?” asked Crown attorney Monica Mackenzie

“No,” the therapist replied, adding that she had advised Children’s Aid.

Bovingdon noted that once again, Cooney complained the boy’s behaviour was intentional and the therapist had to explain that they were survival behaviours he couldn’t control.

In late November 2018, she noted the boy was being punished for losing multiple mittens: no books for two weeks and “four sets of stairs.”

In a following note, Bovingdon met with CAS where there were already numerous red flags: “Concerns about the punitive measures being used by the family. Concerns coming forward from the community. Also worried about Brandy being triggered and responding in an escalating manner.”

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In January 2020, she said Cooney texted her that the boy had an “epic blowout” and was inflicting pain on the moms and himself.

“Brandy vented about lack of support, the willful nature of the behaviours and financial strain,” she noted.

The court has heard the boys drank from baby bottles and slept in tents on their beds – the therapist said those were possible strategies she would have suggested: the bottles could provide a soothing sucking sensation while the tents could provide security.

But, she added, only if the child was willing.

“Would you have recommended that they consistently treat either of the boys like a toddler, for instance, using toddler toys all the time, dressing like a toddler, going to bed at a toddler bedtime, eating pureed meals?” the prosecutor asked.

“No,” Bovingdon replied.

There were so many of her notes read out in court that were disturbing, but one is particularly haunting.

“He reports,” she wrote, “that he wants a forever family for Christmas.”

Instead, that poor child was dead four years later.

mmandel@postmedia.com

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