Four  pigs  watched  a small  child  starve  to  death

Let’s face it folks. There are human beings that act like pigs so I have no qualms about calling some of these detestable people pigs. Four of their names in this article are; Elva Botineau, Norman Kidman, Tammy Kidman and Michael Reitemeire.

When I tell you about their roles in the house they all lived in, you may very well call them pigs also. And now I will tell you about their roles with respect to the terrible abuses heaped upon two small children by two of the pigs while the other two pigs watched. I will also tell you about the death of one of the small children—a five-year-old boy who cried while waiting to die.

Jeffery Baldwin was born in Doctor's Hospital in Toronto, the son of Yvonne Kidman and Richard Baldwin. On 28^th of April 1998, he and his older sister were taken by the Catholic Children's Aid Society after allegations of abuse were leveled against their parents. They were given into the custody of their maternal grandparents, Elva Bottineau and Norman Kidman—the first two pigs I am writing about.

The first two pigs kept Jeffery and his sister in a locked room at night with furnace vents shut. They couldn’t leave their rooms at nights so they urinated and defecated on the floor. When Bottineau saw what they had done, she made the two small children clean the mess up by themselves. When released from the room, the two children were forced to eat the food with their hands from a mat on the floor.  They were also on occasion, left to drink from the toilet.

James Mills, the boyfriend of Jeffery’s aunt who also lived in the house, said that Jeffery’s grandmother did not love him or his sister.  He said that Bottineau and her husband, Kidman were simply after the money, since as the children’s grandparents and caregivers, they received social assistance for the care of the two children.

Over a period of five years, the two small children withered away from starvation. The children were thrown scraps of food which they had to eat out of one bowl while being forced to stand while eating. The evil Bottineau had them eat in a corner which she told them was the pig corner.  The two children also slept in cribs and when the grandmother wanted to wake them up, she would jab them through the bars of their cribs with the end of a mop. The evil woman would also hit them with a metal spoon if she thought that they were bad. 

When this pig was being questioned by the police after Jeffery’s death, she talked about their toys. Actually, they had none.  For the most part, Jeffery remained in his   room with nothing to keep his mind occupied.

Jeffery was of school age but Jeffery wasn’t permitted to go. His sister being a year older did go to school and that makes me wonder why her teacher didn’t notice that something was wrong with her physically. She was saved from starving because she like the other children were given snacks at lunchtime.

Their father tried to visit them but Bottineau always gave him an excuse as to why he couldn’t visit them although there were several times when he could take them to a nearby park. When he did see them, he noticed that the children didn’t look well at all.

He was later asked why he didn’t contact the Catholic Children’s Aid that had removed the children from his home and placed them in their grandmother’s home. He replied; “I have hate towards the Catholic Children’s Aid. The worker is the last person I would ever want to speak to.”

There is justification in his reason for his hatred of the CCA and the worker he spoke of. Jeffrey's grandmother, 51-year-old Elva Bottineau, was convicted on June 10, 1970, of assault causing bodily harm in the death of her own baby daughter, five-month-old Eva. An autopsy revealed the infant had also suffered from tiny fractures of the shoulders, elbows and wrists.

Due to the developing nature of child-abuse investigations at that time, and the lack of sophisticated diagnostic tools such as bone scans that only became available years later, the assault was then believed to be unrelated to the baby's death which was caused by pneumonia. Modern investigations have shown that pneumonia may be linked to such injuries as rib fractures, which inhibit the ability of an infant or young child to breathe properly or cough to clear her lungs. A psychiatrist had described her as being as “mentally defective, but not mentally ill, and impatient and aggressive.”

This was the woman whose home the Baldwin children were to be placed in. The CCA really screwed up by not checking Elva Bottineau. Simply being the grandmother of an abused child is not enough to place the child in her care.

Norman Kidman, now in his 50s, was convicted of two counts of assault causing bodily harm on December 29, 1978, in connection with assaults on two of Bottineau's children, then about five and six.  relationship. Kidman was sentenced to two years' probation and fined $150 for each count by Judge Walter Hryciuk.

The CCA didn’t check his background either before placing the children in their home.

Ms. Bottineau and Mr. Kidman had four youngsters of their own, one of whom presented them with the four grandchildren. You can be sure that their children were treated far better than the Baldwin children were.  That is a common phenomenon. When I was sent by the Vancouver Children’s Aid to live with a couple and their young son, I and another orphaned boy were treated far differently than the couple’s own son. He got to eat with his parents in the dining room whereas I and the other boy were told to eat in the kitchen by ourselves.

Years later when the grandparents' histories were found in the agency's files, Ms. McConnville of the CCA said, that the CCA set about finding out what had gone awry.

As it turned out, she said, “There was no policy at that time that staff check files in cases where relatives are seeking custody of children considered at risk with their own parents.  This is what's known as ‘kinship care’ in the child-welfare business. Jeffrey's case, Ms. McConnville said, “{raises the question of whether we approach extended family differently than we do others who are trying to plan for children.” It is not unusual, she said, “for family members to come forward where we have protection concerns.”  

Had they checked the histories of potential caregivers, none of the abuses those two pigs subjected the Baldwin children to would have occurred.

She said the agency's failure to focus on the child as the client, and not the involved adults, is one of the most troubling aspects of the case. She is absolutely right. Alas, as the Germans say it, “Too smart, too late.”

It was too late for Jeffery. On November 30^th 2003, he died of starvation while in the care of the two aforementioned pigs. At the time of his death, he only weighed 21 pounds, which was is one pound less than a one-year-old baby. On the 19^th of March 2003, his grandparents were arrested and charged with first-degree murder for their role in his death. They were found guilty and on the 7^th of April, 2006, they were convicted of second degree murder and on the 9^th of June, pig number one, Bottineau was sentenced to 22 years in prison and pig number two, Kidman was sentenced to 20 years before they respectively become eligible for parole. (2023 for her and 2021 for him). That doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be released then.

The little girl survived and is doing well in her new foster home.

And now I will tell you something about the second pair of pigs— Tammy Kidman and Michael Reitemeire.    They lived in the house the two small children lived in with the two other pigs. Tammy Kidman now 38 is obviously related to Norman. Reitemeire, now 42 was living with Tammy Kidman in a common law relationship and they had children of their own.

Tammy Kidman later said after Jeffery’s death, that she noticed that Jeffery was growing skinner and skinner but she didn’t pay that much attention to what she was seeing in Jeffery. When being questioned by her lawyer, he asked, “He was wasting away before your eyes?” She replied, “Correct.” He then asked, “Didn’t you think of giving him some food or making him something [to eat]?  Again she replied, “Correct.” When she was shown a picture of the boy’s body on the autopsy table with nothing but skin and bones, she was asked if she believed that nothing needed to be done to him to make him better.  She replied, “At the time, No!”                                             

Now you know why I referred to her as a pig.   

Michael Reitemeire said at the inquest that he didn’t do anything to help Jeffery or his sister because he was afraid of Elva Botineau, a small woman who was much smaller than him since he weighed 180 pounds. The real reasons why he didn’t do anything to help the two small children who were desperately in need of help was that if he did offer some assistance to them, he and his common law wife would be turfed from the house. That may have happened if they weren’t paying any rent. However, he could have called the CCA but instead, he chose to remain mute.  And now you know why I called him a pig also.

Unfortunately these two pigs can’t be charged with a criminal offence because they had no legal duty to protect the children like the grandparents did. I am happy to say however that they are nevertheless being punished. The Children’s Aid decided that since they were incapable of giving assistance to the two victims and even refused to call the authorities at what they were seeing, they are also incapable of caring for their own children. Accordingly their own children have been removed permanently from their care and are now living in a foster home.