What an utter disgrace.An Ontario agency meant to help victims of crime and their families financially instead treats them "like rats in a maze," a scathing report released yesterday said.
Ombudsman Andre Marin highlighted two London cases to show how staff at the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board drown victims and their families in paperwork and delays because the board can't afford to pay compensation.
- Al Almeida, whose daughter Naiomi, 5, was raped and murdered in 2001, leaving him shattered by grief and unable to work, was "treated as though he was a con artist trying to scam the (board), rather than as a survivor of a horrific crime," said the report, titled Adding Insult to Injury. Even when Almeida and his young son were on the verge of eviction, the board refused to confirm his compensation had been granted and was waiting to be processed.
- Eva-Marie Devine, a blind retiree whose daughter, Deborah, was killed last year in London, had to choose between food and burying her daughter. When she desperately appealed to the board, the report said, she was shuffled between workers who told her to redo documentation before she could get help.
"They asked me why I believe I'm a victim. How can they ask that?" said Almeida, who watched Marin's news conference in Toronto.
"We're talking about a five-year-old that was kidnapped, raped and murdered while I slept in the next room. I feel like I let my daughter down as a father."
Almeida and his son, now 14, were awarded $7,000 each, the report said.
Almeida said he was forced to sign a confidentiality agreement, but the amount he was given was a far cry from what he was seeking in lost wages because of mental anguish from Naiomi's death.
Read the rest at the Star