April 30 2025

Jamie lee Mitchell

 

Fighting for the Voices They Tried to Erase

I followed the rules.

I trusted the system.

I did everything the right way — registering for programs, following court

orders, asking for help, believing that truth and love for my children would

be enough.

And yet somehow, the people who ignored the rules — who walked their

own beat of negligence, who hurt my family without accountability — are

the ones who get away with it.

How is it that if you’re registered, if you try to follow professional standards,

you’re punished for any mistake… but if you’re not registered at all, you get

to harm families and children with no consequences?

How can it be legal — in Ontario, in a province that claims to protect

children — that someone like Emily Moore, who wasn’t even registered as

a social worker, could submit affidavits, tear apart my family, ignore real

injuries to my son, and suffer no repercussions at all?

Where is the justice in that?

If registration is supposed to protect the public, then not being registered

should never be a shield to avoid responsibility — it should be a red flag, a

violation in itself.

Because what happened to me — what happened to my son —

wasn’t just “bad paperwork” or “miscommunication.”It was real trauma.

It was real harm.

It was nights of crying.

It was missed therapy appointments.

It was my little boy waking up screaming from night terrors while the people

who should have protected him looked away.

This system allowed that to happen — and then told me I had no right to

complain because the person responsible wasn’t even officially registered.

That’s not just a loophole.

That’s a betrayal.

Families like mine deserve better.

Children like my son deserve better.

Accountability should never depend on whether someone has a registration

number.

It should depend on whether they caused harm.

It should depend on whether they told the truth.

It should depend on whether they did their job the way the law — and basic

decency — require.

And if they didn’t, it shouldn’t matter if they were registered or not.

They should still be held accountable — because children’s lives depend

on it.

I lived through this.

I understand exactly what you’re asking for —

You want it to feel real, human, raw, and bigger than just you —so that anyone who’s been through it —

the parents who tried and were shut down,

the ones who didn’t know how to fight,

the ones whose children didn’t survive —

can see themselves in your words.

I’m still fighting for my son.

Not because I failed him.

But because the people who were supposed to protect him — the ones

who had the power to listen, to act to care — chose to look the other way.

I’m fighting for him today, right now, because I refuse to let the system that

broke our family tell the final story.

But I know I’m not alone.

There are parents out there who fought as hard as they could —

and were shut down at every turn.

There are parents who didn’t even know how to fight —

because no one ever told them they had a voice, too.

There are parents who did everything right —

and still lost their children to silence, to negligence, to tragedy.

Some of them lost their babies forever —

lost them in back seats, in empty bedrooms, in case files where no one

cared enough to turn the page.

I carry them with me.

Every mother who begged and wasn’t heard.Every father who showed up, who pleaded, who stood alone against a

wall of closed doors.

Every child who cried out and was told their voice didn’t matter.

I fight for my son —

but I fight for them, too.

Because protection should never depend on how loud you can afford

to scream, or whether you were lucky enough to find someone willing

to listen.

Because no child should have to survive a system that was built to

protect them.

Because no parent should have to grieve a child who is still alive — or

one who never came home.

I am not perfect.

I am not powerful.

But I am still here.

And I am still fighting.

For my son.

For every child whose voice was stolen.

For every parent who was left standing outside the system’s locked

doors.

And I will keep fighting —

until my son comes home,

until justice means something again,until every child matters — not just on paper, but where it counts:

in their homes, their families, and their futures.

I am still fighting — not just for my son, but for every

child they tried to silence, for every parent who was

shut out, and for every family who was broken because

no one cared enough to listen.

Protection should never depend on luck.

Justice should never be a fight for survival.

And no child should ever have to recover from the very

system that promised to protect them.”

JAMIE LEE MITCHEL