Mother who admitted abducting her children from CFS facing new charges

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This article was published 18/03/2018 (2223 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg mother who admitted to abducting her own children from foster care nearly two years ago now faces new criminal charges.

The 45-year-old woman, whom the Free Press is not naming to protect the identity of her children, was arrested March 16 on one count of impersonating a peace officer and five counts of failing to comply with a court order that was meant to keep her from coming within 200 metres of her two children.

She was on bail awaiting sentencing after she pleaded guilty last summer to abducting her 11-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son. She was set to be sentenced in May, but has now been returned to custody on the new charges.

She admitted to taking her kids from their temporary Child and Family Services placement during a family court custody battle with her ex-husband. She told court she was concerned about her children’s safety while in CFS care. Court heard no evidence the children had been physically harmed, either while in their CFS placement or by their mother.

The children’s disappearance triggered a police search for the kids and their mother, who had been ordered not to have contact with them.

On June 20, 2016, the children were playing outside when their mother pulled up in a rental car and drove away with them. For four days, they were declared missing and investigators received no response from the mother when they tried to communicate with her. Through access to her phone records, police discovered the woman had asked to have herself and the children flown out of the city on a private plane and had told a friend she should have taken the children and run.

On June 24, police found the woman and her two children after conducting surveillance on a rented, unfurnished house in Winnipeg.

Officers saw the woman driving an SUV clogged with boxes and pursued her in rush-hour traffic along Portage Avenue. As police tried to box her in, a cruiser and her SUV collided, leaving the police cruiser with a flat tire. Officers caught up with the woman shortly afterward, when the mother and her children abandoned the vehicle in a back alley and tried to run away.

The mother had been under a court order not to have unauthorized contact with her children. They had been taken into foster care despite their father being granted full custody because Child and Family Services was concerned about the children’s safety during the ongoing family-court battle between the estranged couple.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay