Grandma Forced Grandson To Eat His Feces

Jeffrey Baldwin was found wrapped in a towel on the kitchen counter. He had suffered prolonged starvation and abuse. His emaciated body weighed just 21 pounds. His arms and legs looked like sticks. This story may make you cry, it may break you, but we owe it to Jeffrey to listen to his story.

The child was born on January 20, 1997, in Seattle, Washington. He was the son of Yvonne Kidman and Richard Baldwin. While he was living with his parents and three siblings, Jeffrey had been relatively healthy and weighed an average weight for a baby his age.

Flash forward to just before his sixth birthday, and Jeffrey’s life had drastically changed. In those few short years, Jeffrey had gone through endless trauma and ended up dying from septic shock and bacterial pneumonia. He had been starved for years and ended up weighing only 21 pounds. His weight was a pound lighter than he had weighed during his first birthday.

Jeffrey’s parents had been teen parents, and many people believed that they weren’t prepared for the responsibility of raising their children. In total, they had four young kids, one of which had already been removed from the home. The Child Protection Services decided to remove young Jeffrey and his older sister from their parents’ care, which ultimately led to Jeffrey’s death.

At that point, the children’s maternal grandparents, Elva Bottineau and Norman Kidman, stepped forward and offered to take in Jeffrey and his older sister. The Catholic Children’s Aid Society, or CCAS, believed that the children would be safe with their grandparents, as they viewed the elderly couple as well-meaning and thought it would be a good fit for the children to be with their grandparents.

Elva and Norman already had custody of one of Jeffrey’s siblings, and they would later get custody of his younger brother. In many cases, children are placed with immediate family members so that the children can stay together and they don’t have to be placed in foster care or group homes. However, the worker who placed the children in the grandparents’ care failed to ensure that it was a safe placement for the children. Had they done a background check on Elva Bottineau, they would have learned that she had a child abuse conviction dating back to 1969.

Her five-year-old daughter, Eva, had died of pneumonia, and when Eva’s death had been investigated, the doctors had discovered that she had multiple fractures. Elva had been convicted of assault causing bodily harm, and in 1970, she had done a year of probation. On a side note, how incompetent is that? Imagine hiring a babysitter for your child, and this babysitter had a child conviction of some sort beforehand; that would be incompetence on anyone’s part.

Elva Bottineau had been through two psychological evaluations, and both of them stated that Elva should not be in care of children. After baby Eva had died, Elva Bottineau had given birth to two more children. These children were taken away after Norman Kidman had abused them so badly that the children were hospitalized. He was convicted of two counts of assault causing bodily harm. The children had been neglected and abused in a great deal of ways, including their parents tying them to their beds and also forcibly containing them in dog crates.

Once the two children had been removed from Elva’s care, the CCAS kept a watch on Elva and Norman’s child care for a while. Elva was raising her three daughters, and over the years, there were more abuse investigations in the household. That is the kind of place Jeffrey was put into.

Now in 2000, one of the workers from the CCAS made a short visit to Elva and Norman’s household, which had been the first visit in a long time. During the visit, the worker had noticed that there had been a bruise under Jeffrey’s eye, but the injury had been quickly dismissed as an accident, and no action was taken to further investigate Jeffrey’s home life with the grandparents.

On November 30, 2002, Elva and Norman called 911. They stated that Jeffrey was not breathing. When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics instantly became aware that Jeffrey had been abused. He had been covered in sores, bruises, and abrasions. He had been starved for so long that he only weighed 21 pounds, which was less than his weight at his first birthday. Jeffrey had no body fat or muscle tone, and his clothes were falling off of him because he was so skeletal. The boy’s death was horrific.

The CCAS claimed to have no previous knowledge of the grandparents’ child abuse convictions from the 1970s, and they only learned this fact after Jeffrey had died. There had been a record of abuse convictions in the Child Aid Society in their own files. For whatever reason, the CCAS had claimed to have no knowledge about Elva and Norman’s child abuse records at the time of the children’s placement with them.

On March 19, 2003, Jeffrey’s grandparents were arrested and charged with second-degree murder. On April 7, 2006, Elva and Norman were convicted in court. This all took place in Toronto, by the way. The sentencing hearing took place on June 9, 2006. Elva was sentenced to 22 years in prison, and Norman was sentenced to 20 years.

During the court testimony, details were revealed about the ordeal Jeffrey and his sister had endured. Jeffrey and his sister were locked in the bedroom for up to 14 hours a day with the furnace vents shut. Their bedroom was freezing cold, and they weren’t allowed to have any toys. The room was filled with bags of dirty diapers. Although the bedroom where Jeffrey and his older sister lived in was a horrifying mess, the rest of the house was heated appropriately and kept clean.

Jeffrey was often made to drink out of the toilet. His grandparents refused to allow him to use the bathroom, and he was forced to go to the bathroom in his bedroom. His mattress was a biohazard with dried feces and urine soaked into the material as well as on the floor. Each time he went to the bathroom in his bedroom, Jeffrey would be physically punished even though he had no choice. Jeffrey and his sister were locked inside the bedroom with a lock on top of the door purposely installed well out of the children’s reach.

In the mornings, Jeffrey and his sister were called pigs, and they were forced to sit on a shoe mat in what the household had called “pigs’ corner.” The children had to eat leftovers out of bowls using their hands. They were often also forced to eat their own vomit.

Once Elva had gotten permanent custody of Jeffrey in Family Court, things had changed for the worse. She refused to take him to a doctor past the age of 18 months and refused to allow him to attend school, using the excuse that he was not potty trained. In order to keep him hidden away in the house, Elva would continually lie to doctors and staff about Jeffrey’s health so that she could cover up the extreme abuse.

Jeffrey’s sister was allowed to go to school. Some of her teachers thought that something might be amiss because she would often smell like urine. At snack times, the young girl would be ravenous and would eat as quickly as she could. Although the teachers had some concerns about the young girl, they chose not to report anything.

Jeffrey had developed pneumonia a few days before his death. He had gotten bacterial pneumonia from sleeping in his own fecal matter in his room. The fecal bacteria had ended up in his bloodstream and caused breathing problems due to septic shock.

The other adults in the household had not been charged. This was because they were bound by the Child and Family Services Act. The law states that everyone has a duty to report suspected child abuse. The only ones who can be found guilty for not reporting the abuse are people that work in a professional capacity with children, such as doctors and teachers.

James Mills, who had been dating Jeffrey’s aunt, had been living in the house at the time that the children were abused. He stated in court that Elva had zero love or affection for the children and that they had only been in the house for dollars and cents, as the grandparents were receiving a monthly amount of $600 to provide care for Jeffrey and his sister.

The family’s caseworker testified about Jeffrey and his placement with his grandparents. She stated that she had zero concerns about leaving Jeffrey in their care because she believed that Elva was a reliable pillar of support. She thought that it was better than Jeffrey living with his parents who had been too young and immature to deal with raising their four young children. She testified that she had never bothered doing any record checks on Elva or Norman.

Elva testified at the inquest, and she stated that she had found it difficult to parent Jeffrey because he had a slow learning ability. Elva gave examples saying that if she asked Jeffrey to pick up a fork, he would pick up a spoon instead, or if she tried to get him to do simple tasks, the young boy would do things wrong or simply stare at her, and this angered her. Elva continued to testify that she forced Jeffrey to live in those conditions, forcing him to sleep on the soiled mattress in a frigid bedroom that had barely anything inside.

Elva and her husband showed no remorse in court for the boy’s death, and she had even rolled her eyes and made remarks when she looked at Jeffrey’s autopsy photos or heard details about her young grandson.

At the time that Jeffrey had died, the household had consisted of six adults and six children under the age of 10. You had Elva, Norman, their daughter Tammy, their daughter Yvette, and the four Baldwin siblings, as well as James and other adults. The six adults from the household had done absolutely nothing to protect Jeffrey or any of the other children.

When James Mills testified at the trial, he told the court that the Baldwin siblings had been treated worse than the dogs living in the house and that the other children who lived with them had been treated much better. Mills testified that months before Jeffrey had died, he had witnessed the young boy struggling to crawl up the stairs to his bedroom. It had taken him more than 10 minutes, and Jeffrey’s pajama pants had been falling down because he was so thin. Mills had been living with his girlfriend at the house. He explained that although he was aware of the boy’s ill health from his living conditions and the abuse, he did nothing to protect Jeffrey or the other abused children in the household out of fear that they would jeopardize his free room and board at the house. Others in the house had stated that they didn’t want to step forward as they did not want to cause any problems.

Dr. Stanley Zlotkin, who had worked at the Hospital for Sick Children since 1980 and also worked in Africa, had seen a great deal of sick children throughout his career, as well as children suffering from illness, starvation, and malnourishment. He was stunned and appalled when he studied Jeffrey’s autopsy photos. He wrote about the deceased boy’s condition in a report saying that Jeffrey was literally skin and bones, the child was likely chronically starved of food, and there was no alternative hypothesis to explain the severe wasting and stunting.

Both Elva and Norman had the audacity to appeal their sentences. Elva’s lawyer told the court that their client had only an eighth-grade education and an IQ of 69. Her lawyer had made the assessment that Elva was wholly unqualified to raise children, making the argument that due to her low IQ, Elva was not able to understand that Jeffrey would die from the malnourishment and abuse.

Norman tried to get his murder conviction changed to manslaughter.

Once the remaining Baldwin siblings had been removed from Elva’s care, they were put into various foster homes. Though they were not placed together, the children were able to maintain contact throughout the years. They would often have dinner at each other’s foster homes and even took an annual camping trip together. Although they had a rough upbringing, the surviving three children started to thrive once they were removed from Elva and Norman’s care. Jeffrey’s sister, who had shared a room with him, had gone to university. His younger brother made plans to go to college after high school.

Furthermore, a coroner’s inquest took place in September 2013 through the jury’s recommendations, but these details were not released until February 2014. The main goal of the inquest was not to put blame on those involved; their goal was to explore the systemic issues that are taking place in relation to Jeffrey’s death. The reason why the inquest took place more than a decade after Jeffrey had died was because Elva had exhausted all of her appeals.

Children like Jeffrey, who are left to the mercy of the system, especially children as young as Jeffrey, need someone in the system looking after them, making sure that the people they are placed with and that they stay with are safe places. To take a child away from their parents for abusive behavior only to place them in an even more abusive household is absolute cruelty. The system failed them, and there are so many other children in the system that have been failed over the years.

During the inquest, there were more than 300 cases. The lawyers made the case that Jeffrey was not just an unfortunate child who slipped through the cracks, but that he had actually slipped through what they deemed a whole institutional safety net. The CCAS stated that Elva and Norman’s horrific child abuse convictions would not go unnoticed if he had been placed there now. But just a few decades ago, everyone who was involved in protecting Jeffrey did nothing to look into the grandparents. The inquest ultimately decided that Jeffrey’s death was ruled as a homicide, as Elva and Norman had both contributed to his death. This was what led to his grandparents being convicted of second-degree murder. They were also charged with forcible confinement.

Now, Jeffrey’s other grandmother described both tearfully on the stand and later stated to reporters outside the court how she desperately tried to see the five-year-old boy before he died, her efforts all but ignored by the CCAS.

Susan Demitrius, the other grandmother, said, “If I had seen what he looked like, if I had seen what wasted state he was in, I would have grabbed him in my arms and ran from the house, and I would not have cared if the police came to arrest me.”

Susan told prosecutors that she kept trying to see the four children but had to get an appointment with Elva, who kept making excuses why Susan couldn’t come over. When she finally got to visit Jeffrey and his siblings in 1999, it only lasted 15 minutes, with Susan testifying that she didn’t feel welcome in the house and wasn’t even invited to sit down. At the time, though, Jeffrey looked fine.

Two weeks before he died, Susan told the court that she tried again to see him so she could take Christmas presents to him, but this time she never even got into the house. She described how she was met at the door by Norman, recalling how he wanted to know why she was there and accused her of making trouble.

Norman told her, “We don’t want you here, we don’t want your presence, you’re not going to see the children again.”

And then he slammed the door.

Susan said it was such a heartache. She just wanted to see her grandchildren. Badly shaken by the incident and upset that she couldn’t see them, Susan told the court that she called the CCAS for help in getting a visit.

She said the social worker told her, “Sorry, love, you just got to book an appointment with Elva.”

Outside of court, Susan demanded that there be an investigation into the CCAS over why she was blocked from seeing Jeffrey.

She said, “I want to know why I couldn’t get access. I can’t comprehend how this could have happened. As their grandmother, I should have rights. This would not have happened had I been in their lives.”

James Mills, who lived in the house, also testified, and under cross-examination from the prosecutors, he acknowledged that he lied to police when he said Jeffrey ate more than he did.

The prosecutor said, “You’re not suggesting that a child whom you claim ate three or four times more than you looked like this?” as she showed him Jeffrey’s malnourished face.

He said, “No.”

“You knew Jeffrey was not eating,” the prosecutor said.

Mills said, “Yes, I knew he wasn’t.”

“You lied to the police,” said the prosecutor.

And again, Mills agreed.

“Seeing what you saw over the months, I’m going to suggest to you that Jeffrey’s death did not come as a surprise,” the prosecutor stated.

And Mills replied, “No, it did not.”

Now, the conclusion on the story is as follows. The responsibility is with the parents and the grandparents. The CCAS failed at their jobs, but why are these grandparents behaving in that way? They saw their grandchildren as a monetary piece, a piece of flesh that you just throw away.

There is actually nothing else to say except Norman is scheduled to be released in 2026, and the grandmother is scheduled to be released in 2028, or at least that’s the earliest eligible parole.

Shocking tales of child abuse were heard today in the inquiry into the starving death of five-year-old Jeffrey Baldwin. For the first time ever, we’re seeing interviews videotaped with Jeffrey’s siblings, and those interviews suggest Jeffrey wasn’t the only child being abused.

An interviewer asked, “What happened to your brother?”

Jeffrey Baldwin’s six-year-old sister, whom we will call sibling two, shared a room with Jeffrey. This video was taken just a few days after her brother died, and she told police what she feared.

She replied, “He’s dead.”

She added, “My thought too.”

Jeffrey and his three siblings were living in the home at the time of his death. The older sister, eight-year-old sibling one, told police her sister and Jeffrey were at the bottom of the food chain in the house.

The interviewer noted, “You said that Jeffrey would get the leftovers. Where would the leftovers come from?”

Sibling one explained, “From people’s plate who didn’t finish their supper, didn’t want any more.”

“Mhm,” the interviewer responded.

The sibling continued, “They would give, they would put it in a bowl, and then give it to Jeffrey.”