December 13, 2003
Girl, 6, locked in dryer for weeks at a time
OTTAWA—An Ottawa woman has been convicted of locking a 6-year-old girl in a clothes dryer, where the girl ate, slept, urinated and defecated, for weeks at a time.
Ontario Court Judge James Fontana, who heard the case over 24 days spread over more than two years, convicted the 41-year-old woman of forcibly confining the girl in the dryer and failing to provide the necessities of life for a child.
The girl was in the woman's care because the child's biological mother was unfit to handle the troublesome youngster. The girl is now back with her biological mother.
Fontana also convicted the woman of two counts of assault for hitting her son repeatedly with a paint stick and slamming his head against a wall.
The woman was acquitted of six other charges: abandonment, assault and criminal negligence causing bodily harm relating to the girl, and criminal negligence causing bodily harm, failure to provide the necessities of life and forcible confinement relating to her son.
The woman, who can't be named to protect the identity of the children, will be sentenced in February.
During the trial, court heard contradictory testimony from witnesses. Children's Aid workers, a doctor and other professionals who saw the girl when she was with the woman in 1996 and '97 found no evidence of abuse. In the end, Fontana said he relied on the testimony of the woman's teenage daughter, who corroborated much of the girl's testimony.
Fontana, who heard the case without a jury, also didn't get a chance to look at the dryer. The machine was removed from the scene long before the allegations were made, thereby denying the possibility of forensic evidence.
The child said she lived in the dryer in every sense. She said sometimes she stayed in there so long she had trouble walking afterwards.
She said the incidents took place when she lived with the woman between Jan. 1, 1996 and Dec. 31, 1997. The woman's younger son, now 12, said he, too, was abused by his mother around the same time.
The woman's daughter confirmed the abuse of both children