Former Royal Ottawa director Amanda Rousseau jailed 15 months for fraud

OTTAWA — A pair of Ottawa judges sentenced fraudster and disgraced former director at the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group Amanda Rousseau on Friday to a total of 15 months in jail and two years of probation in back-to-back sentencings for her crimes.

“The law is quite clear: fraudsters go to jail,” Ontario Superior Court Justice Colin McKinnon said in the second of Rousseau’s court appearances before sentencing her to nine months in jail to be served consecutive to the six-month sentence Rousseau was ordered to serve just minutes before by Justice Catherine Aitken.

Friday’s decisions came after Rousseau tearfully begged the court in December to delay her sentencings, saying her father was having open-heart surgery and that her son was expressing suicidal thoughts at the possibility of being without his mother if she were to be jailed. She had also asked for conditional sentences, which would have allowed her to remain in the community and avoid jail time.

Rousseau could have decided to stop her crimes daily but didn’t, McKinnon said. She also targeted vulnerable people and has made no effort to repay any of the more than $32,000 she stole in both cases, he said.

“In such circumstances, pleas of mercy must fall on deaf ears.”

Rousseau, who wore her signature white winter coat throughout the day’s proceedings and was even led down to the Ottawa courthouse cells with the coat draped over her shoulders hiding her cuffed hands, sat in the courtroom being held by her boyfriend Ross Phillips before both sentencing decisions were delivered.

Rousseau pleaded guilty last March to four offences while she was a director of patient care services at the Royal: two counts of committing fraud and two counts of knowingly dealing with forged documents.

Rousseau stole just shy of $20,000 from the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group and its volunteer association between 2007 and 2009, and she forged signatures of her colleagues and expense claims in order to do so. At the time, Rousseau was earning nearly $100,000 a year.

It was an audit that revealed the financial irregularities in the department in which Rousseau worked that prompted the charges.

She was suspended from that job in June 2009 and formally fired a month later. The College of Nurses also revoked her nurse’s certification. After working as a director at other care facilities, leaving of her own accord at one and for personal reasons at another, Rousseau has been employed full time as a hairstylist since last summer.

In May of 2013, Rousseau pleaded guilty to an unrelated but similar charge — receiving money in trust and not applying it how it was intended. She stole more than $13,000 from a mentally ill woman, an outpatient of The Royal, who had asked that Rousseau oversee her finances. Rousseau had previously been assigned to Tamara Lee Wyman’s case. In the summer of 2010, Wyman’s former power of attorney went to Ottawa police with her concerns. The OPS fraud unit then began investigating and a production order traced bank drafts and money orders totalling $13,119.61 deposited into Rousseau’s accounts.

Wyman is suing Rousseau and the hospital for the money Rousseau stole over a period of almost two years beginning in 2006. Lawyer Robert Houston previously told the Citizen that he was waiting for the criminal matters to be finalized with sentences before making the next move in the civil matter.

Both judges took into account several mitigating factors, including Rousseau’s traumatic childhood plagued with abuse, the breakdown of her parents’ marriage when she was very young, and the subsequent end of her own, which happened around the time the then-unproven allegations against her surfaced. She had her first child at 18 and has been a single mother for much of the time since.

Aitken, however, said that Rousseau’s “well planned” defrauding of a public institution that relies on public funds and helps the most vulnerable of society was a significant aggravating factor.

Rousseau breached both trust and authority and “acted solely out of greed,” Aitken said.

“It is important for Ms. Rousseau to accept responsibility for her actions,” Aitken said in the first decision of the day, something, according to a pre-sentencing report, she has not yet done.

Though she pleaded guilty to both sets of charges, Rousseau said she did so not because of remorse for her wrongdoing but to spare her children the difficulty of full trials.

“Her reputation has suffered a major blow and one that she may not recover from,” Aitken said.

Both judges have ordered her to repay every cent she stole.

syogaretnam@ottawacitizen.com

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CORRECTION — At the time of Rousseau’s offences against the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group and its volunteer association, she was earning nearly $100,000 a year in salary and trained as a nurse. A previous version of this story contained incorrect information.