If one is ill and disabled, should your right to freedom of association be violated? What could be more natural than the desire to see one’s own son? Is it really possible that in this day and age, a husband can deny his disabled spouse these rights without provoking outrage? Sadly, this is exactly what is happening in Ottawa today.

In his biographical book Unimaginable Evil: the Unauthorized Biographies of Marcella Carby-Samuels and Horace Carby-Samuels (ISBN 978-1-927538-04-3), Raymond Samuels II details how exactly such a drama is being played out with the complicity of police and social services.

No help ‘allowed’ for disabled woman

The main problem, it seems, is that the woman in question is disabled. She cannot move around on her own and is unable to speak. She can write, but a heart-rending written call for help addressed to her son does not seem to carry sufficient weight for authorities to take appropriate action. As a result, the disabled woman is a prisoner in her own home, and her husband and daughter control who she may have access to.

Apart from this being a clear violation of the elderly lady’s expressed desire to be ‘allowed’ to see her son, this controlling behaviour has led to care, therapy and assistance being denied to the disabled woman.

According to Samuels, the whole dispute erupted because the Ottawa man became ‘jealous’ of the care attention which Samuels had been lavishing on his mother. This included ensuring that nourishing meals were prepared and served and providing the necessary assistance to allow for attention to personal hygiene needs.

But it was not only her son that excited this ‘jealousy’. Neighbours who had become concerned about the invalid’s level of care and who offered to provide help were also summarily barred from having access to her, she is not entitled to choose her own medical practitioner, and a recommendation that she attend speech therapy was also rejected.

Violent husband left in charge of disabled woman

Verbal abuse and fits of violent rage against his mother by her husband had been observed by Samuels over a period of time, but physical violence also formed part of the dysfunctional and abusive way in which Samuels’ treated his wife of more than 50 years.

In mid-April 2015, Horace Carby-Samuels flew into a fit of rage while author Raymond Samuels was preparing food for his mother and threatened the disabled woman with the eviction of her son. In attempting to prevent him from doing so, the frail woman was violently flung aside. This was not the first instance of physical abuse, as Samuels had received the written plea for help from his mother several weeks earlier. In her note, the woman wrote: “Dad abuses me”.

If this were not sufficient evidence of the man’s violent tendencies, what followed would serve as proof of violent behaviour by any standards. The man attacked Samuels with a knife as he worked in the kitchen, nearly severing his fingers as he tried to defend himself from the attack. However, police proceeded with the eviction despite this.

From then onwards, Samuels was barred from visiting his mother at the family home to which her disability confined her despite her assertion that she would like to see him “every weekend”.

Health declines as a result of neglect

By the time Samuels was able to secure a meeting with his mother with the support of social services in June, her physical condition had deteriorated markedly. Whereas before, she had difficulty talking at times, she was now completely unable to speak, and although she had previously had problems with mobility, she had at least been able to move around unassisted indoors. Now she was completely unable to walk.

Most telling of all, the woman’s appearance showed that neglect of her physical needs extended to her personal hygiene. She had always liked to maintain a neat appearance, but it was clear that no provision that would allow her to maintain her dignity was being made. Mr Samuels was so shocked and saddened by this rapid deterioration in his mother’s condition that he broke down and cried and remained in a traumatised state for a full three days after the encounter.

Samuels has reason to believe that his mother is not receiving basics such as adequate food and water. During his time as her care-giver, he was aware that she was unable to prepare food for herself. During the day, while he was at work, his mother’s husband would prepare meals and drinks for himself, but not provide any food or drink to the invalid. By the time Samuels arrived home from work, his mother would be desperately hungry and thirsty after not having received anything to eat or drink all day.

Samuels believes that the lack of adequate nutrition is largely to blame for the terrible deterioration in his mother’s condition.

One may assume that the social workers at the Nepean, Rideau and Osgoode Community Resource Centre who had arranged the meeting would be struck, both by the violation of rights that barring a mother from seeing her son implies, and by the clear-cut evidence of neglect that came to light. Instead, the Centre not only refused to investigate or take action, but also refused to facilitate any further meetings between mother and son.

Rights: do you have to be able-bodied to have them?

Under Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and in statutory law, disabled people are supposed to have the same rights as the able-bodied, but in practice, it would seem that this is not the case.

Thus, a woman can be barred from seeing her own son, simply because she is not able-bodied enough to do so on her own accord. She may express her wishes, but it would seem that her husband can override these at any time. This sheds disturbing light on the way in which the rights of women and the rights of the disabled are ‘protected’ in Canada.

In short, it would appear that if you are a disabled woman, your emotional and psychological needs as well as your physical needs for proper care can be neglected with the complicity of both the police and social services. Whether active abuse of the victim continues, is a matter on which we can only speculate, but it seems likely that if abuses were perpetrated when she had her son to defend her, the woman can now be abused more freely and openly in his absence.

The allegation of abuse was not properly investigated by police at the time when it was reported. In fact, the woman was questioned in the presence of the man whom she had identified as being responsible for the abuse, a clear breach of the appropriate procedure to be adopted in such cases. The police have acknowledged that this was a severe error, but have not re-investigated the case.

Complete disregard for the rights of a disabled woman: incontrovertible evidence

Even if one were to ignore Samuels’ increasingly desperate attempts to secure proper care for his mother, and his shocking account of the neglect and abuse that took place prior to his ‘eviction’, one cannot overlook the simple fact that a woman wishes to see her son. The heartbreak she must suffer from being able to fulfil this wish can only be imagined. Emotional abuse is a valid phenomenon of which most of us are aware, but for some reason, Ottawa police and social services refuse to view the damning evidence of abuse that the man’s continued refusal to ‘allow’ his wife’s son to see her inflicts.

In effect, this inaction (and active support) for Carby-Samuels’ psychological abuse of his spouse continues. A reasonable person may view this complete disregard for the disabled woman’s wishes as a warning sign that indicates the need for deeper investigation into Samuel’s reports of physical abuse and neglect, but it seems that the authorities would prefer not to intervene in any way to relieve the woman’s suffering at the hands of her husband.

A conspiracy of silence and hypocrisy

After reading this account, one forms a mental picture of Horace Carby-Samuels. He is a large man and clearly uneducated. But this perception, with the exception of the point related to his physical size, is mistaken. The man is a respected academic who has done much work on human-rights and discrimination issues. How, then, can he reconcile himself with denying his wife the right to see her own son? How can social services and police ‘wash their hands’ of a situation which is clearly impacting on the rights, dignity and wellbeing of a disabled elderly woman?

The behaviour of Carby-Samuels and that of the authorities reeks of a conspiracy of silence and hypocrisy in which only lip-service is paid to the rights of the individual. No Canadian citizen can afford to remain silent in the face of this hypocrisy. After all, you, or someone you love, could one day be in a similar situation.