Victim blames Children's Aid Society for years of abuse by guardian

BY SAM PAZZANO ,TORONTO SUN
FIRST POSTED: THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 2013

TORONTO - A slender, blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl suffered eight years of horrific physical and sexual abuse starting when she was just seven at the hands of the man the Children's Aid Society entrusted to keep her safe.

A jury found Mac Bool Hassan guilty eight days ago of 13 criminal offences for sexually and physically abusing the girl — who isn't biologically related to him — as well as assaulting her half-brother.

The verdict was reached swiftly after only fours hours of deliberations because the evidence was overwhelming, said Crown attorney Heather Keating.

Hassan, 49, will be back in Superior Court Monday to set a date for sentencing.

But the now 20-year-old woman is seething with outrage at both Hassan and the Toronto Children's Aid Society because it granted him custody of her when she was two years old.

And the CAS kept her and her half-brother in his care despite Hassan's drug use, criminal record and neighbours' reports of neglect and abuse.

"I had to do what he told me to do or I'd get beaten, punched and kicked, dragged by my hair along the floor. He told me he loved me and that he would marry me, like Woody Allen married his adoptive daughter, when I was 18," the girl recalled in an exclusive interview with the Toronto Sun. "I felt like I was his wife. It's like we're a couple, but he's my dad."

She is now working two jobs, one at a retail outlet and another as a babysitter, hoping to save enough money so that she can pursue her dream of becoming a flight attendant.

"Children's Aid ruined my life because I could have been adopted as a baby," she said angrily. "Instead, they thought it was in my best interest ... to be placed into this man's care. He was a single man with a criminal record who had no connection to me. Why would he want to parent me?"

The abuse occurred twice a week when she was younger but became a nightly ordeal after she turned 11 or 12, said Keating, who successfully prosecuted Hassan.

"He had no business to be basically using the victim as a vulnerable sex toy," Keating said. "It's disgusting."

CAS granted Hassan custody of the girl because he already had custody of her half-brother despite the fact that Hassan already had five criminal convictions.

"I read the CAS reports when I was 17 years old, I was one of nine children born to a drug-addicted mother and all nine were seized. My older sister was adopted, yet I was given to him," the victim said. "My CAS reports, a police file, showed a babysitter noticed I had soreness and redness in my genital area when I was eight years old.

"There were reports that we were malnourished and grossly underweight while we were living in Regent Park (until 1999) — we barely had enough to eat."

When the girl was seven years old, reports of drug use and prostitutes frequenting Hassan's Regent Park apartment forced the CAS to apprehend the two children.

Once Hassan completed drug rehab, both children — who cannot be identified due to a publication ban — were returned to his care and the family moved to another neighbourhood in the GTA.

The half-brother confirmed that the victim was sleeping in Hassan's bed almost nightly, but he didn't know of the abuse. Hassan explained he wanted company in his bed because he wasn't feeling well or was lonely .

When she was 15 and began having crushes on high school boys, Hassan erupted in a violent, jealous rage.

He stripped her naked and overpowered her, calling her a "whore." When he left her alone, she bolted to a neighbours' home where she hid and finally disclosed her nightmarish life to her friend, her mom and police in July 2008.

The case has dragged through the courts for almost five years with Hassan mostly free on bail as he fired various lawyers and delayed proceedings.

Hassan is on a disability pension with heart problems, undergoing quintuple bypass surgery in June 2008, his family court affidavit stated.

He maintained that he's innocent and that the victim fabricated these allegations to free herself from his harsh discipline.

CAS spokesman Dave Fleming said he couldn't comment on this case specifically due to confidentiality reasons.

In general, the CAS tries to keep siblings together "when it's safe to do so," explained Fleming, the CAS's intake co-ordinator.

The CAS investigates suspicion of child abuse, especially sexual abuse, jointly with the police and "can intervene based on a balance of probabilities," Fleming said.

The CAS conducts 8,000 investigations of neglect or abuse a year, he said.

"Our goal is to keep children with families where it's safe and practical," Fleming said. "(But) the child's safety comes first."

http://www.torontosun.com/2013/03/14/...