I read recently that Samantha Kematch, the Manitoba woman convicted of gruesomely beating her 5-year-old child Phoenix to death, has decided to drop her planned appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. On what grounds she was planning to appeal is unknown.

News reports dating back to 2005 paint a pretty horrific picture of Phoenix’s life. Apparently beaten from the time she was born, her body showed evidence of broken bones throughout her young body.

Samantha Kematch and Karl McKay were convicted of first-degree murder.  That they murdered the 5-year-old is not in doubt.  What is in question is why Manitoba’s child welfare system failed the young child so horribly.

One of the things to come out of the trial was that on numerous occasions government works for Manitoba child services would stop by to check up on the child, but never actually see her.  THey would simply take Kematch’s and McKay’s word that the child was fine.

That’s not the way you treat child abuse allegations.  You do, at the very least, see the child in question.  These people avoided doing the absolute bare minimum to ensure Phoenix’s safety, and for that, they too have this child’s blood on their hands.  May God have mercy on their souls for abandoning the child to being deprived of food, being forced to ear her own vomit, choked unconscious and being shot with a pellet gun, just to get the list started.

These people were so inept, in fact, that they never even knew the child had been murdered. Had McKay’s teenage son not said something to his own mother, the death might never have been discovered by those inept bureaucrats.

While is is a good thing these two are convicted of first degree murder, the social workers who failed to even notice the child was missing for over ten months should also stand trial.

Maybe then we’ll finally start getting some help for children like Phoenix. You know, like taking them out of the homes so determined to snuff out their young lives so brutally?

There will be a public inquiry, apparently.  One can only hope those government workers will actually be held accountable for their gross incompetence in this, and other cases like it.

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