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Correctional officers dismissed, suspended at Ottawa jail slammed by ombudsman

Correctional officers dismissed, suspended at Ottawa jail slammed by ombudsman

Being a jail guard — sorry, corrections officer — is a very hard job, made no easier by prison overcrowding and cutbacks that affect staffing levels.

That doesn't justify the actions of officers at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre who ignored a woman's cries of pain and pleas for help as she gave birth alone in a cell.

CBC News said the Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services confirmed an unspecified number of officers and health-care staff at the jail have been suspended, reprimanded or fired over the incident last September.

The centre was the focus of a damning report by Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin last June that found systemic abuse in the province's corrections system that was covered up.

[ Related: Ottawa jail cell birth leads to dismissal, suspensions ]

The ministry would not provide details of the investigation that led to the discipline or publish its report.

"The disciplinary actions taken include official reprimand, multi-day suspension, and dismissal," ministry spokesman Brent Ross said in a statement, according to CBC News.

"These are confidential human resources matters between the employer and the employees, and it would not be appropriate to discuss the specific details or to publicly identify those who have been disciplined."

Julie Bilotta of Cornwall, Ont., was eight months pregnant when she was jailed Sept. 24 to await trial on fraud and drug-related charges. She went into premature labour on Sept. 29 while lodged in a segregated cell at the detention centre.

The Ottawa Citizen reported Bilotta said she was told she was experiencing "phantom labour" and that she was making too much noise.

Staff appeared to taunt her. Bilotta said she was told if she couldn't stand the pain she should have not gotten pregnant, and that the pain would get worse when the "real" labour began, the Citizen said.

She was only taken seriously when the baby's feet became visible — a dangerous, potentially fatal breech birth. Bilotta successfully gave birth to a son, Gionni.

[ Related: Woman in Ottawa jailhouse birth to plead guilty ]

The College of Nurses of Ontario was also investigating two nurses involved in the incident but the Citizen reported the college would not say if the review had been completed and what, if any, action had been taken.

However, Bilotta's lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, told the Citizen the college's investigation was finished and he had a copy of the results, which he couldn't disclose because they are confidential.

But he said he believes both reports should be made public.

“There is a public interest here that is being, I don’t think, well served by behind-the-scene investigations and results,” said Greenspon.

Bryonie Baxter, executive director the Elizabeth Fry Society, which works with women in the justice system and helped Bilotta file her complaint against the nurses, agreed.

“They have a duty to the public to report what action they took in this highly public matter,” Baxter told the Citizen. “There was intense public scrutiny. I think the public has a right to know what the results of this investigation was.”

[ Related: Overcrowded jails cause concern inside Canadian correctional system ]

Bilotta pleaded guilty to the charges against her and was sentenced to time served, Greenspon told the Citizen. He told CBC News he was awaiting a copy of the ministry's disciplinary report before he files a civil suit on her behalf.

The Ontario corrections system was the target of a devastating report released in June by Marin, who said guards were abusing inmates and covering it up.

Marin's report, entitled The Code, revealed a guard at the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Detention Centre, where Bilotta gave birth, was fired for stomping a brain-damaged prisoner in 2010, the Citizen reported.

The attack was covered up by the guard's colleagues, four of whom later recanted after investigators found their story differed substantially from another account of the assault.

The centre “exemplifies everything that is wrong in a correctional institution,“ said Marin. “It was certainly where we found the worst example of cover up and the excessive use of force.”

Marin's report detailed violent acts by officers at institutions elsewhere in the province and the enforcement of a "code of silence" to keep the wrongdoing quiet.

He made 45 recommendations to end the correction system's "dysfunctional culture" and ensure incidents are properly investigated and disciplined, the Citizen reported.

A spokesman for the guards' union played down the report, saying it made things appear worse than they actually were. Less than one per cent of use-of-force incidents are found to be excessive, Dan Sidsworth told the Citizen.

“I think in the typical fashion of the ombudsman, he has sensationalized his report. It’s not helpful to the culture in corrections,” said Sidsworth.

“He’s trying to perhaps shock people into moving and making changes and if that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes. We’ve been trying for years to get the employer to do many of the things that are in his recommendations. If this is a means to an end, then we welcome those changes.”

[ Related: 'Shocking' stories of guards' brutality revealed in Ontario ombudsman report ]

One of the worst cases to come to light in recent years was in the federal corrections system; the death of teenager Ashley Smith.

The mentally ill 15-year-old from Moncton, N.B., was jailed for throwing crab apples at a postal worker in 2003. Four years later, after an increasingly nightmarish journey through nine institutions in five provinces, she died after choking herself with a ligature as officers watched from outside her cell at a Kitchener, Ont., facility.

A marathon inquest into her death, which is in summer recess, has revealed among other things that no one could cope with her repeated attempts at self-harm and that guards were reprimanded for previous attempts to stop her from choking herself, The Canadian Press reported last month.

Three corrections officers were charged with criminal negligence causing death but the charges were later dropped in 2008. The Union of Canadian Correctional Officers welcomed the decision but criticized the decision to suspend the officers without pay and later fire them.