According to Nova Scotia's Community Services Department, the decision to remove a child from his or her home is made by a family court judge. A hearing must be held within five days if the child is removed by a social worker in an emergency situation. Parents have access to case files and workers' notes. Families that can't afford a lawyer are provided one. Under the provincial Children and Family Services Act, there are 14 situations in which a youngster is in need of protection from a parent or guardian:

- The child has suffered physical harm, inflicted by a parent or guardian . . . or caused by the failure of a parent or guardian to supervise and protect the child adequately.

- There is a substantial risk that the child will suffer physical harm inflicted or caused as described in the previous paragraph.

- The child has been sexually abused by a parent or guardian, . . . or by another person where a parent or guardian of the child knows or should know of the possibility of sexual abuse, and fails to protect the child.

- There is a substantial risk that the child will be sexually abused as described in the previous paragraph.

- A child requires medical treatment to cure, prevent or alleviate physical harm or suffering, and the child's parent does not provide, or refuses or is unavailable or is unable to consent to the treatment.

- The child has suffered emotional harm, demonstrated by severe anxiety, depression, withdrawal, or self-destructive or aggressive behaviour and the child's parent or guardian does not provide, or refuses, or is unavailable or unable to consent to services or treatment to remedy or alleviate the harm.

- There is a substantial risk that the child will suffer emotional harm of the kind described in the previous paragraph, and the parent or guardian does not provide, or refuses, or is unavailable or unable to consent to services or treatment to remedy or alleviate the harm.

- The child suffers from a mental, an emotional or a developmental condition that, if not remedied, could seriously impair the child's development and the child's parent or guardian does not provide, or refuses, or is unavailable or unable to consent to services or treatment to remedy or alleviate the condition.

- The child has suffered physical or emotional harm caused by being exposed to repeated domestic violence by or toward a parent or guardian, . . . and the child's parent or guardian fails or refuses to obtain services or treatment to remedy or alleviate the violence.

- The child has suffered physical harm by chronic and serious neglect by a parent or guardian, . . . and the parent or guardian does not provide or refuses or is unavailable or is unable to consent to services or treatment to remedy or alleviate the harm.

- There is a substantial risk that the child will suffer physical harm inflicted or caused as described in the previous paragraph.

- The child has been abandoned, the child's only parent or guardian has died or is unavailable to exercise custodial rights over the child and has not made adequate provisions for the child's care and custody, or the child is in the care of an agency or another person and the parent or guardian . . . refuses or is unable or unwilling to resume the child's care and custody.

- The child is under age 12 and has killed or seriously injured another person or caused serious damage to another person's property, and services or treatment are necessary to prevent a recurrence and a parent or guardian . . . does not provide or refuses or is unavailable or unable to consent to the necessary services or treatment.

- The child is under age 12 and has on more than one occasion injured another person or caused loss or damage to another person's property with the encouragement of a parent or guardian, . . . or because of the parent's or guardian's failure or inability to supervise the child adequately.

File Larry Finck is escorted from a Halifax courtroom on May 25, 2004. He and his wife Carline VandenElsen were arrested after a standoff with police ended with them losing custody of their baby. File Larry Finck nails a sign to the front of his house during the third day of an armed standoff on Shirley Street in Halifax in May 2004. Mr. Finck and his wife Carline VandenElsen, who eventually lost custody of their baby girl, have blamed the legal system for their problems. File Sheriff's deputies escort Larry Finck into a courtroom in Halifax in June 2004. Mr. Finck, who was arrested the previous month in an armed standoff, was in court seeking a bail hearing.

Fighting the System

Finck's custody battles have been bitter ones

By EVA HOARE - Staff Reporter

Larry Finck had run-ins with the law for drug and weapons offences and child abduction long before the three-day armed standoff in Halifax that thrust him into the national spotlight in May 2004.

Psychiatrists have called him delusional and potentially dangerous.

But friends and supporters say the Kentville-born ex-plumber is a loving, supportive man who's a victim of the system.

Mr. Finck, 51, will be sentenced Tuesday for his part in the standoff that developed when authorities tried to seize his infant daughter.

He has already served time for abducting one of his children - two years in federal prison in 2000 for taking a daughter from her legal guardian, an uncle, on a First Nations reserve in Ontario in 1999. (Mr. Finck brought her to Nova Scotia, where he was later arrested by police.)

The girl had been living at the reserve with the guardian since her mother died of cancer on Jan. 13, 1996. Mr. Finck was allowed to have her for two, two-week visits per year, according to documents filed in the Ontario Court of Appeal.

The mother had left instructions that her young daughter was to be solely left in the custody of her uncle, court papers said. At the time of her mother's death, the girl was not quite a year old.

It was during one of those two-week court-ordered visits that Mr. Finck decided not to return his daughter to her uncle, court records show.

The guardian agreed to be interviewed by The Chronicle Herald but broke numerous appointments.

In one brief phone conversation, he said any reference to Mr. Finck having mental problems was "putting it mildly."

Prior to the Ontario abduction, Mr. Finck had tried to get his daughter declared a "child in need of protection" by the courts while she was in her uncle's custody, but that case was dismissed.

The Ontario parole board noted that Mr. Finck had been involved in a "lengthy and bitter" custody battle over his daughter since her mother's death.

Marilyn Pearson, a retired social worker in London, Ont., who first met Mr. Finck while the child's mother was ill, attested to the "awful" fight on his part to gain custody of his young daughter from the mother's family.

"They didn't want Larry to have the child, that's obvious," Mrs. Pearson said in an interview from London.

"I never got the truth. The cultural came before the biological all the way through," she said.

She believes the child's native heritage was a deciding factor in the custody case. "They believe that child should be raised on the reserve.

"He wasn't even able to see the child. It went before the judge. Every time Larry went to get that child, there was a problem," said Mrs. Pearson.

Court papers, including psychiatric records that could not be legally released until after Mr. Finck's conviction on the standoff charges in May, paint a portrait of a man suffering from mental illness who continues to believe the legal system is conspiring against him.

A Halifax psychiatrist who assessed Mr. Finck after the Halifax standoff stated Mr. Finck has delusional disorder of a "persecutory nature," which includes "narcissistic, antisocial and histrionic personality traits."

"The accused suffers from chronic persecutory delusions," wrote Dr. Robert A. Pottle, with the East Coast Forensic Hospital in Dartmouth. "His perception of a persecutory conspiracy extending to the level of the former prime minister J. Chretien, CSIS, and the federal minister of justice is steadfast, despite other more likely alternatives and an absence of concrete evidence," Dr. Pottle wrote in his report, dated June 29, 2004.

After assessing Mr. Finck, and examining information from the Crown file, witness statements, police reports and recordings of 90 telephone conversations that occurred during the standoff, the doctor found him fit to stand trial.

Halifax friend Marilyn Dey, who met Mr. Finck at a family court hearing in January 2003, says Dr. Pottle's report is wrong.

"Larry is and was . . . a loving, attentive concerned father. He adored his daughter," Ms. Dey said in a recent interview.

"I could see the same adoration between him and (his infant daughter). She just looked up at him and focused her full attention on her father." Ms. Dey said psychiatrists label parents whenever parents come in conflict with child welfare authorities.

"This is what they call the assessment. As soon as they apprehend your (child) nothing but garbage . . . comes out of it."

Ms. Dey holds similar disdain for court documents filed in the case. "It's based on hearsay, double hearsay and triple hearsay."

Mrs. Pearson, another Finck ally, said she believes the loss of his daughter in Ontario may have ultimately led to the Halifax standoff.

"I wonder if that happened to me, if I would be the same way too," she said.

"He sometimes carries things too far. . . . There's truth in what he says, but he turns people off with his anger."

Mr. Finck had three children by a previous marriage to Theresa Ann Windjack of St. Catharines, Ont. Their 1975 marriage ended on April 24, 2000, according to family court records in London, Ont.

Ms. Windjack did not return calls from this newspaper.

Mr. Finck, the second-oldest of four siblings, had an "unremarkable" childhood, according to Dr. Pottle.

He said Mr. Finck maintained that he'd completed Grade 12 and was a master plumber. Mr. Finck's friends say he furthered his education and took law courses at the University of Western Ontario in London but did not take bar admission exams in Ontario.

A more promising career appeared possible in 1974, when as a five-foot-10, 180-pound defenceman, he was selected in the eighth round of the National Hockey League draft by the Pittsburgh Penguins.

He never played in the NHL but did skate for Fort Wayne of the International Hockey League.

Dr. Pottle's report states Mr. Finck's plumbing career ceased after he lost his tools in a house fire in Ontario. Mr. Finck has contended the blaze, which happened about a year or so before the assessment, was deliberately set.

"He believes there have been attempts to kill him on at least two occasions," Dr. Pottle stated, noting that Mr. Finck believed the fire was started to thwart his plumbing work and to destroy his law library and volumes of court transcripts.

The psychiatrist noted an apparent paradox of Mr. Finck stating his disdain for lawyers and the justice system, while at the same time holding himself out to be a legal expert. (He represented himself at trial in Halifax on the standoff charges.)

"He spent much of his time at a communal table (in the hospital) covered with heaped documents, often standing in a 'Thinker-like' pose holding a copy of Martin's Annual Criminal Code or documents."

In his and partner Carline VandenElsen's self-representation form, filed last month at Nova Scotia Supreme Court, the two called their then-lawyer, Burnley (Rocky) Jones, and his co-counsel "a couple of dump trucks."

His disdain for the legal profession was also evident during his August 2000 sentencing for abducting his Ontario daughter, when he told the London judge: "I thank you for the penitentiary time and hope possibly there I could be rehabilitated because I'd like to be a scumbag lawyer now."

But Ms. Dey and Mrs. Pearson say the rancour arises from the unfair treatment he and Ms. VandenElsen have received.

Dr. Pottle said Mr. Finck characterized himself as a "hero" in the eyes of First Nations people, boasted about his "superior education" and hogged telephone time from other residents at the facility.

(He was later charged with striking one of them while he was a resident of the psychiatric facility shortly after the standoff.)

National Parole Board officials in Ontario expressed similar opinions to those of Dr. Pottle a few years earlier when rejecting Mr. Finck's request for accelerated parole on the abduction charge. (Having gone to prison on Aug. 2, 2000, he was eventually released on July 10, 2002, on conditions.)

"According to a psychological report of Aug. 23, 2000, your belief in the corruption of the criminal justice system borders on the delusional," parole board members wrote in early 2001. Board members also were fearful he would commit a violent act, stated parole papers obtained by this newspaper.

"The board concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that, if released, you are likely to commit an offence involving violence. . . . You have made threatening comments in relation to your daughter's new caregivers, and told police (passage blacked out) that you wanted to bring an AK-47 to (passage blacked out again) . . . and assassinate everyone."

But the board later noted improvements, saying in the papers that he had never acted upon his threats.

According to the board, Mr. Finck's past record included weapons and narcotics possession, but an assault charge against a peace officer was stayed. Dates on the charges were not provided.

Mr. Finck enjoyed a level of family support while going through the legal system; his brother Albert, from Kingston, N.S., testified on his behalf during Mr. Finck's standoff trial. "He has some anger and frustration, but to put it in perspective in terms of how he's been treated by the system, it's quite understandable," Albert testified.

That same support didn't initially appear to come from Mr. Finck's 79-year-old mother, Mona, who died of natural causes during the 2004 standoff.

In her April 21 will, Mrs. Finck left him $5. The remainder of her $740,000 estate was ordered to be divided among her four other adult children.

Still, Mrs. Finck offered her Halifax home on Shirley Street, where the standoff took place, as a place for her son to stay after he was released from jail on the Ontario abduction charge. And there are several photos filed in Nova Scotia Supreme Court showing Mrs. Finck holding and helping feed her grandchild. Others are not so supportive, including Ms. VandenElsen's family members, the police in Stratford, Ont., and the lawyer for her ex-husband, Craig Merkley, also of Stratford.

"I shouldn't say this, but I think he (Finck) was one of her huge downfalls and we couldn't tell her any different," Ms. VandenElsen's sister, Maureen Davidson, of Mannheim, Ont., told this newspaper.

"I think she was doing very well until she met this person, who, unfortunately, had some problems of his own."

It was Mr. Finck's criminal record that helped Ms. VandenElsen's ex-husband get an order severing all contact between her and their triplets.

Mr. Merkley's lawyer, Alfred Mamo, told this newspaper that the pairing of Ms. VandenElsen and Mr. Finck "brought a new dimension to the fight" between herself and her ex-husband.

Stratford police Sgt. John Wilson said in an interview Mr. Finck's influence negatively affected Ms. VandenElsen. "He's pushed her to a new level."

'For All the Children . . . Affected by CAS'

Friends form a small army of support for woman, man who've lost their kids

By PATRICIA BROOKS ARENBURG - Staff Reporter

Seven people gathered at Ann Kelly's home in Stratford, Ont., one night this month, just two doors down from Carline VandenElsen's former Hibernia Street residence.

They are ordinary people - men and women, younger and older and parents, none with custody battles of their own - who have become activists after meeting the woman who has lost two huge battles over her children.

In 2003, Ms. VandenElsen was denied all access to her triplets and last Thursday, she and husband Larry Finck lost custody of their Halifax-born baby girl.

Now the group wants answers.

"We could smell injustice right from the start," said Ms. Kelly, a friend and former neighbour.

Distrustful of a media they say has maligned the couple, they politely asked to videotape the interview.

But once the conversation started rolling, there was a feeling of warmth and purpose, a genuine belief that a tragic wrong has been done.

"I don't think she thinks she's any kind of hero," Kimberly Lefebvre said of Ms. VandenElsen.

"But I look at it and think (that) this woman is not just an ordinary woman. She is not doing this just to get her kids back but for all of the children that are being affected by CAS (Children's Aid)."

During the four-hour meeting, they presented prepared statements on the need for a public inquiry and letters they've sent to politicians and media. They also played a videotape of various Ontario news accounts of Ms. VandenElsen's previous trial on charges of child abduction for allegedly absconding with the triplets to Mexico in October 2000.

She was acquitted in 2001, based on the defence of necessity: it would likely have caused her children psychological harm to be without her. Her retrial is scheduled to begin July 18.

Watching Ms. VandenElsen on television, the friends cheered her on when she offered a quick answer to a reporter's question. They talked about how healthy she looked and how much she loves her children.

Their eyes filled with tears when she reacted bitterly to being granted two daylong visits with her children while awaiting trial.

Ms. VandenElsen was a striking woman in her early Stratford court appearances - her long, dark hair flowing behind her as she strode past reporters in a form-fitting black shirt and long skirt. With her dark, thick-rimmed glasses, she projected a trendy, yet purposeful image.

It's a sharp contrast to the woman in a Halifax court: incredibly thin with a gaunt face, often wearing camouflage army pants and big, baggy woollen sweaters.

Ms. VandenElsen's drive to publicize allegations of abuse within the family court and children's services system is seen by some as proof of her instability, while her supporters see it as a commitment for change.

It's that drive that has led her to her latest protest: a hunger strike.

"She's in jail - what more can she do?" asked Ms. Kelly, who followed a liquid diet for 21 days in support of Ms. VandenElsen.

Worried about her health, supporters hoped Ms. VandenElsen would stop. They don't want to see her die.

Maureen Davidson, one of Ms. VandenElsen's sisters living in Mannheim, Ont., said in a separate interview that the VandenElsen family is very worried about her condition, especially given that she is so thin.

"I say a little prayer for her at night and hope God will take care of her," she said.

The Stratford group is pushing for a public inquiry into the role of Children's Aid in the May 2004 seizure of the Halifax-born baby.

They maintain websites related to Ms. VandenElsen's case and that of others fighting for family justice, share information with those in Halifax who speak to her and critique media reports.

They believe the seizure of the baby in Halifax was unjust and unnecessary.

Friend Carol Bast believes it was driven, in part, by a need to punish Ms. VandenElsen, who some say got away with breaking the law.

They also believe that children's services in Nova Scotia and Ontario acted against their mandates.

"They didn't try to keep the child with the parents," Ms. Lefebvre said.

"They had a tip and that was it. (It was) 'We have a court order, we have a court order, we have a court order,' and they went in with all the gunmen and took the baby."

Ms. Kelly believes a public inquiry should start with the Halifax standoff and seizure order and go back to 1995 when a judge granted interim custody of the triplets to Ms. VandenElsen's then-husband, Craig Merkley.

Mr. Merkley was represented by a lawyer at that hearing but the couple didn't attend. Ms. VandenElsen has testified that she didn't know the proceedings were going ahead.

There were no transcripts of the hearing in the unsealed portion of an Ontario Superior Court file in Stratford.

Andre Lefebvre believes this case serves to illustrate the pain and suffering being felt by many parents and children.

"These people are being set up," he said in a telephone call after the June visit.

"There was no reason (to take the baby). They've never been proven to be unfit parents by anyone."

Instead, he said, they've been "pushed to the limit."

Infant Needed Her Own Lawyer, Group Says

By BILL POWER - Staff Reporter

Before an armed standoff with police late last spring, Larry Finck went to court to try to keep his daughter.

A group pushing for a public inquiry into the events surrounding the seizure of the newborn by child-welfare workers said Monday the baby should have had her own lawyer.

"No one is independently representing the interests and fundamental rights of (the child)," said Dulcie Conrad, a member of the group.

She said the lack of legal representation is a violation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The group, composed of neighbours and academics, held a news conference Monday to reinforce their insistence that Justice Minister Michael Baker order a public inquiry into the forcible removal of the baby girl from the care of her mother, Carline VandenElsen, and Mr. Finck.

Members of the group said the public has a right to know what prompted the Children's Aid Society of Halifax to seek the court order that led to police descending on the family home in the wee hours of May 19, 2004. The standoff ensued and lasted until the evening of May 21.

Court documents indicate Nova Scotia authorities were responding to an alert from child welfare officials in Ontario.

"We still don't know why authorities really decided to seize this baby or why they used such massive force to do it," Ms. Conrad said.

The justice minister, in Greenwich for the Tory caucus meeting, repeated Monday he believes there is nothing to warrant an inquiry.

"I'm not aware of any new information . . . that would require an inquiry," Mr. Baker said.

He said the matter has gone before two different judges at two different levels of the court system.

"I don't know if (the issue) is more complicated than (that) people don't like the decision," he said. "That doesn't necessitate an inquiry."

Mr. Baker wouldn't talk about why the child did not have independent representation.

He said proper procedures were followed, "and that's to consider the best interests of the child, not of the parents."

Documents show Justice Deborah Smith of Nova Scotia Supreme Court' s family division had concerns about Ms. VandenElsen's mental health after she went into hiding with the child rather than comply with a court order to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

But some say evidence that the child was at risk was not presented. Lawyer Ray Kuszelewski said questions remain unanswered about the original court order to seize the newborn.

"It really is important to know how this entire matter got to the point that it did," said Mr. Kuszelewski, who provided some representation for the couple during their high-profile trial on charges related to the standoff.

He said an inquiry would review evidence presented to the family court by Children's Aid staff and also consider larger issues relating to child seizures when concerns exist about the mental stability of parents.

Ms. VandenElsen and Mr. Finck were convicted of several offences in the standoff, and the 18-month-old child is in the care of children's aid.