Inquest into welfare mother's death begins
By DARREN YOURK
Globe and Mail
Oct. 15, 2002

The inquest into the death of Kimberly Rogers — found dead in her sweltering apartment during a heat wave on Aug. 11, 2001 — began Tuesday morning in Sudbury, Ont. Ms. Rogers had been serving six months under house arrest for welfare fraud. She was eight months pregnant at the time of her death. The official cause of her death has never been released.

"We extend condolences to the family and friends of Kimberly Rogers. We know the next six weeks will be a difficult time for them," ISAC legal director Jacquie Chic said. "We believe it is vitally important that the jury has the opportunity to examine all the issues and factors relating to the tragedy of Kimberly Rogers' death last August."

OSSN spokeswoman Barbara Anello said she hopes the inquest "sheds light on the dangers of cutting the social safety net and imposing discriminatory penalties on vulnerable people like Kimberly Rogers."

A straight-A social-services student at Cambrian College, Ms. Rogers had pleaded guilty to defrauding the provincial government by taking student loans while still collecting welfare cheques. Her welfare benefits were cut off and she was ordered to repay the government about $13,300. The ruling left her unable to pay her monthly bills. A published newspaper report in August said that Ms. Rogers died of an overdose of a prescription antidepressant, not heat stroke or hyperthermia from being confined to her apartment. The National Anti-Poverty Organization says the results of the inquest will have far-reaching impacts.

"Issues and recommendations emerging from this case are poised to have profound impact on the struggle for strengthened social safety nets, on economic justice, on public policy, on the anti-poverty movement," NAPO said in a release. "How we challenge governments on a myriad of issues — the decimation of income support programs, systemic obstacles to achieving economic and social justice, federal abandonment of responsibility, flaws in conditional sentencing schemes, the fallacy of welfare fraud — will be impacted by this case."

On May 14, 2001, Ms. Rogers launched a case under the Charter of Rights that challenged the constitutional validity of Ontario Works regulations that suspended benefits after a conviction of welfare fraud. Ms. Rogers' was able to have her welfare benefits reinstated May 31, but the court had yet to rule on her challenge at the time of her death.

Bleak House
By MARK MACKINNON AND KEITH LACEY
Globe and Mail
August 18, 2001

SUDBURY, ONT. -- 'I ran out of food this weekend. I am unable to sleep. . . . I am very upset and I cry all the time.' Kimberly Rogers wrote these words in her court appeal in May. Three months later, 40 years old and eight months pregnant, she was found dead in the Sudbury, Ont., apartment where she had been confined 24 hours a day for the crime of taking student loans while on welfare. It's a 21st-century Dickens story There's not much to look at out the narrow second-floor window of 286 Hazel St. in downtown Sudbury. The back yard is a grey gravel driveway strewn with litter. There's a rusted black Ford that looks as though it's been up on blocks for a decade, and a yellowed dishwasher that someone discarded years ago. And overlooking it is the ramshackle two-storey, five-tenant apartment building where Kimberly Rogers, perhaps Ontario's best-known welfare recipient, spent almost every hour of the past three months, after a judge ordered her confined to her home for all but three hours a week. This is where the 40-year-old expecting mother and straight-A recent college graduate spent her last days, before she died last week of unknown causes. Her body wasn't found for two days. Some speculate that it was suicide. Others angrily reject that idea.

Rogers's crime was one only a poor person could be convicted of: She pleaded guilty in April to receiving student loans while on social assistance. The size of the loans -- $49,000 over four years -- would have made her ineligible for welfare had she reported them. Her punishment, some say, was straight out of a 19th-century Charles Dickens novel: She was kicked off the welfare rolls and ordered to repay $62,000 (the loan, plus the size of her social-assistance overpayment) despite having no source of income and little opportunity to work, or even look for work, during her sentence. The judge, Greg Rodgers, ordered her to serve six months of house arrest. She avoided eviction only through the grace of her landlord, and often relied on charity to pay for the prescription medication that kept her chronic depression under control.

To some, Rogers's was an unfortunate life that met an unfortunate but blameless end. To others, her death was the fault of a society -- many specifically name the provincial government -- that no longer cares for its own. Ontario, under Progressive Conservative Premier Mike Harris, is the first province to impose such harsh penalties for welfare fraud: It not only metes out punishment but cuts off all benefits, and bars those convicted from receiving welfare ever again. "You have to look at the way we've criminalized welfare recipients, the way we stigmatize them," said Toronto lawyer Sean Dewart, who represented Rogers in her constitutional challenge of the Ontario law.

"I ran out of food this weekend," read Kim Rogers's affidavit in her plea to a judge to relax the restraints on her. "I am unable to sleep because of my situation, I am very upset and I cry all the time." Those who visited Rogers during her house arrest remember a defiant woman living in deteriorating conditions. The apartment was always bare, the fridge always empty. There was a small television, without cable. Her bookshelves were cluttered with books from college courses and biographies of her heroine, the late Diana, Princess of Wales. Food banks kept Rogers from starving, but they were eternally short on fruit, vegetables and dairy products, essential foods for a mother-to-be. In the affidavit, dated May 13, she laid out her situation: She was estranged from her family, she said, and her mother had rejected pleas for financial help. The biological father of her unborn child, whom she described as verbally abusive, had contributed only a $300 payment, on the condition that she never ask for help again. Few aid organizations could or would help someone convicted of welfare fraud, she said.

Rogers was also proud of having returned to school. She graduated with high marks from the social work program at the local community college this past spring, Grainge said. He lamented that she barely had time -- about a week -- to celebrate that accomplishment before her fraud conviction. Although a coroner has already ruled out heat stroke as a cause of death, Rogers's neighbours can't help but think that the sweltering heat played a role. Grainge said the thermometer in his apartment remained above 30 for six days last week, and Rogers's top-floor apartment was always several degrees hotter than his own. "Making someone stay inside during the hottest days of the summer, it's just not right," he said.

"She was a such an ambitious student . . . very thorough in her work and very supportive of others, which made her extremely popular with her classmates," said Lynn Chetwynd, who taught Rogers communications in her social-services course at Cambrian the past two years. "She was an outstanding student who graduated near the top of her class. . . . Of my 90 students last year, she was on par with the very best." Another Cambrian official said Rogers was "a great student," with a grade-point average near 3.5 (over 90 per cent) when she graduated. While still in school, she did work placements at the Canadian Mental Health Association and another social-care centre. She seemed on track to eventually achieve her goal of helping those hit by the double whammy of medical disabilities and financial strain, just like herself. She could never have done it on welfare alone. After rent, her benefits left her only about $70 a month. Tuition had risen to $2,250 a year by her final year at college, not to mention books, transportation and general living expenses. With student loans, though, she could scrape by.

She likely would have had to resign anyway when she was sentenced to the house arrest, but by quitting early she left herself with no savings. Todd said she was frequently short on the rent, and he had to "cover" her for a cumulative $2,000 over the years.

Despite his frustrations, Todd -- who described himself as a person with little sympathy for welfare cheats -- found he couldn't say no when Rogers needed help. He described her as "a real personable person," and said he couldn't stop crying the night he found out that she had died. "What she did wasn't right, and no one held a gun to her head to make her do what she did," he said. "But to punish her and her baby by making her stay inside her apartment in the middle of summer is a little bit crazy." Chetwynd called the government's treatment of her former student "inhumane." "I think what's happened in this matter is just appalling," she said. "Two lives have been lost because of what I honestly believe to be immoral provincial policy. I hope this is a real heads-up for what this government is allowing to happen to its citizens." The fraud case against Rogers was open-and-shut, and she knew it.

Still, no one knew the crisis was dire enough to kill her. She died on Aug. 9, and by the time her body was found, the heat had decomposed it to the point that the coroner's office will need six to eight weeks before it can determine the cause of death. So far, it has only been able to rule out heat stroke. In horrified Sudbury, nearly everybody has a theory about what killed Rogers. Many insistently blame the combination of the heat wave and her lack of food and water. Some believe that her baby died in utero, perhaps of malnutrition, thereby poisoning the mother. Others speculate that she attempted suicide again, this time successfully. But those who knew her dismiss the suggestion, saying she had been in fine spirits in the past week. She had even reconciled with her mother after years of acrimony, using her last three-hour leave from her home to spend time with her. Many believe that, regardless of the details, she was first and foremost a victim of the Ontario government's targeting of welfare recipients. In a brief interview, Rogers's mother, Myrel, made it clear that she is among those who believe the province is to blame. "This is a tragic, tragic way for not only my daughter, but for anyone's son or daughter, to die," she said. "Of course, it's Mike Harris's fault," she added. "It's his law. It's his stupidity." Myrel refused to comment on all other aspects of her daughter's life, or on why the two were estranged for so long. "I think enough has been said," she said several times. Harold Duff, director of the Sudbury office of Ontario Works, agreed something went wrong in Rogers's case. Without directly pointing the finger at his political masters, the Harris Conservatives, he said the changes they made to the welfare system in 1997 created an atmosphere where more people simply slip through the cracks.

Amanda Chodura, of the Elizabeth Fry Society, spent five months working on Rogers's case, and said it was one of the most tragic she has ever witnessed. She, too, believes the system failed Kimberly Rogers. "I got to know Kimberly very well the past few months and she was not a criminal. . . . The word 'persecution' isn't strong enough to call what happened to her," she said. "This tragic case is a symptom of a government putting policies into practice without doing any research. What transpired was she and her child were placed in a dangerous situation. This should never have happened. Two lives are over." And people at all levels are wishing they had paid closer attention to Kim Rogers's second affidavit in May. "I still have no money to pay next months' rent, and I am under considerable stress," she wrote. "I do not know whether or not I will receive the help I need, and currently live one day at a time. Emotionally, I am doing worse, and I worry all the time about how I am going to care for this child inside of me."

Welfare Reform in Ontario
www.creativeresistance.ca

We've learned little from Kimberly Rogers's death
August 9, 2002
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Income Assistance After the Cuts
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A summary of the occupation
APOV Kimberly Rogers Womyn's Brigade
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