Who is Alexander Desmarais? Casefile 1 8 7 2 7, Tristin Allaire was originally named Alexander Desmarais. He was born in May of 1994 and was the youngest child of three boys born on the southern end of Vancouver Island. Today we are going to ask the big questions. My name is Skully, and I want to know how did Alexander become Tristin Allaire.
Alex and his two older brothers Devon and Everett, we the result of a poorly planned marriage between victims of extreme parental abuse. They did not have the mental or emotional capacity to care for the children, especially the first two born.
At the end of April 1991, Rachel unintentionally got pregnant at 18 years old during a party. She had been seeing a young man named Rheal at that time. Though neither liked each other on a personal level all that much, Rachel quickly told Rheal that she was pregnant and convinced him to marry her, and in December of 1991, she gave birth to twin boys.
Rachael and Rheal struggled with their first two children, who suffered colic and digestive issues. They screamed and cried, always had bum rashes and behavioral disorders from a very young age. Because of a complicated birth, Devon lost a lot of blood and required a transfusion and actually died, but doctors were able to resuscitate him. Everette was born swollen and red as a tomato, and Devon was born as white as paper.
Thinking that life would get better with another child, the ill-fit couple intentionally produced another. When Alex was born in May of 1994, his parents showered the new healthy, nicotine and alcohol-free baby with attention and love. Alex’s parents were attentive and believed their new child was perfect, to the dismay of his older brothers. Rachel had suffered terrible postpartum depression with her first pregnancy and found she could not connect with her oldest children. She sometimes had psychotic fears that they were not hers and that she didn’t know them for anything more than the burden they were. She hated them for taking away her youth.
Devon and Everett began picking at the new baby, taking his toys and pinching him to make him cry or tripping him when he began to learn to walk. The behavioural issues of the twins became worse, which further spurred Rachel and Rheal to neglect their misbehaving children.
In attempts to protect their newborn from torment, the parents further neglected the older children; Creating the foundation for a cycle of intensifying punishments that eventually lead to heinous physical abuse. Hitting, extensive confinement and general neglect became the reality the twins faced daily at only four years. And in return, they broke windows, put dirt in the blender, flooded the bathroom or whatever other activity they could get into that would get them any twisted attention from their parents. These interactions perpetuated a developmental dislike for the problem, Alex. Devon and Everett took pains to cause the baby to cry. As Alex reached the age of two and was reasonably verbal, the crying became screaming.
Rachael and Real were drowning in debt, had minimal income, and were scamming welfare, while Rheal worked cash jobs to cover living costs. They also struggled with their new, rather expensive habits. A concerned friend told the parents about the respite care program, where apparently, they could take their children and temporarily leave them in the ministry’s care while they worked out some financial issues and got better on track. Rachel and Rheal jumped on the opportunity for a free babysitter and took all three boys to the ministry. They set up their appointments, and the boys went through the intake process.
The three boys were assessed and taken into immediate full-time custody. Rachel and Rheal were not told. All three brothers were sent into permanent foster care, rarely to see their parents again. They bounced from home to home as the ministry applied tactics to ensure the parents could not regain custody.
Visitation was lenient, and the children were able to spend weekends with their parents, but as the social workers continued to interact with Rachel and Rheal, they became less and less fit in the eyes of the ministry. Visitation was slowly stripped until it was gone completely, and Alex, Devon and Everett floated around the foster care system.
Alex had been relatively sheltered from the most extreme of the abuse. Having only witnessed it, he was suddenly faced with enduring systematic sexual abuse, starvation, and neglect alongside his brothers. But time passed as it always does, and the new life became the boy’s reality.
Listen to “A Vivid Experience” where Alexander tells us a story about growing up in foster care. This is an interview about a real life incident experienced in a Canadian foster home.
The boy’s parents had spent the previous years fight the ministry for custody, believe that their children were in more danger within foster care than with them. They took classes, went to court, and paid back their money to the government welfare system. Rheal had a full-time job, and though both were still relatively unstable, they did everything they knew how to do to get their children back.
The ministry played tricks in Rachel and Rheal, promising things they would never give, like visitations in towns hours away. The ministry would claim that’s where the boy’s current foster home was. Then they would be refused visitation when Rachel or Rheal was late, or early, or dressed inappropriately, smelled like cigarettes, or generally any reason. All while the boys were still at home in their foster parent’s care, oblivious to the interactions. The ministry never planned to allow visitations and only used them as a distraction while desperately filing appeals to keep the kids away from their parents.
Eventually, in one last desperate attempt, when Rachel and Rheal were getting close to a positive outcome, the ministry contacted the great aunt and uncle of the boys, who lived in the lower mainland. The ministry asked if they would like to adopt the boys. They agreed, and the process of adoption was rushed.
Within six months, the boy’s great aunt and uncle had custody and were packing them onto a ferry to go live with them hundreds of kilometres away. The adoption process, on average in British Columbia, should take two to three years. Now they were headed off the Island to live away from everything they knew. The boys’ biological parents were only informed after the process was completed, and they had no way to appeal the decision or regain custody of their children.
Should we wonder if this situation is unique? Are examples of the government breaking protocols and hiding child deaths rare or commonplace, and should Canadians stand together and demand change? We can ask what happened to these three boys after their rushed adoption, or we can imagine that they lived a fairy-tale ending, but what about the other brothers, sisters, and single children we do not know about? Do we need a sad article for every one of them before people realize that their suffering, just out of view, still exists? Even if children in care do not affect your family directly, it affects this nation, and its morality, as a whole, and so much more could be done to support children who are currently given no chance at a real life.
It’s time Canadians stand up for the rights of our most precious resource and consider adoption. Take the care of children back into families of loving parents, and not the cog of government bureaucracy. If you can’t adopt, please consider calling your local M.P. to demand budgetary reforms and increased training levels for those involved in the care of foster children. If you have the ability to take on a caregiver role, please consider the life-changing gift of adoption. There is some poor child out there literally dying to have a home.
Watch this video on Alex’s views about how his life turned out, and how he hopes to adopt children in the future: