FREDERICTON – Questions are being raised about what has been learned from the Donnie Snook case and how similar situations can be prevented from happening again.
Snook, a former Saint John city councillor and youth ministry director, was sentenced in 2013 to 18 years for sex crimes against 18 boys.
But some say the alarms were raised about Snook six years earlier.
“For whatever reasons, and believe me I don’t know the reasons, the Crown decided not to proceed,” said the province’s child and youth advocate, Norman Bossé.
An allegation was made against Snook in 2007, but it’s unclear how his employer, the Anglican Diocese of Fredericton, responded. Snook worked as director of the Inner City Youth Ministry, which is funded by the Diocese.
Bossé said there is a lesson to be learned.
“Would a criminal background check make a difference? No. He didn’t have a criminal record,” he said. “If we’re not vigilant, and check and choose to say, ‘OK, wait a minute, it looks like there’s a problem here,’ to recognize that there’s a problem and do something about it is as important as having all the systems in place.”
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However, there are organizations that work with children and have strict systems in place, and the believe those systems work.
“For example, we don’t allow any one-on-one contact between any staff, volunteers and participants in our programs,” said John Sharpe, CEO of Partners for Youth.
Partners for Youth, which had no connection with Snook, has rigorous rules in place designed to protect children. Sharpe said along with several background checks, criminal record checks and references, employees and volunteers are vetted frequently while they are working. Not even the CEO is above the rules.
“For example, if I all of a sudden take a child out one-on-one, I expect my coworkers to say, ‘Why are you taking a child out one-on-one? It’s against our rules and regulations, you’re no different than anyone else. What’s happening?’
“If it raises red flags, it gets talked about,” he said.
The Diocese told Global News it had improved its policies, which includes the development of a “Safe Church” policy, since the 2007 complaint against Snook.
“One of the main aspects of the Safe Church policy is the appointment of a misconduct officer at arms length from the diocesan office. As well, we have installed a Safe Church clickable button on the front page of our website to give people easy access to our policy and the means for reporting concerns,” Bishop David Edwards said in a statement.
When asked how it dealt with the 2007 complaint, the Department of Social Development said it could not speak about specifics involving foster parents or children.
“This includes the review of an individual foster parent and the department’s handling of that review,” a department spokesperson said in an email.
But the department did conduct a review of the province’s foster care and adoption application process.
After that review, the province implemented a SAFE (Structured Analysis Family Evaluation) assessment model and approximately 100 staff in the department have been trained to follow the new model.
The department described SAFE as a standardized home study assessment tool which produces a more “in-depth, concise and comprehensive report than a traditional home study.”
Global News asked Bossé if an inquiry is still needed to find out what happened with the 2007 complaint by the department of social development.
“I would rather see that money go into programs for kids. Because I’ve got to tell you, he was charged criminally, he went to court, he was sentenced to 18 years, what more are we going to learn about the Donnie Snook affair, we may not know already?”
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