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Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1999 12:40:31 -0500
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From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: canada Nov 26, 1999
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* Membertou Mi'kmaq Cape Breton - five boys attempt suicide
* S. African MD in rural Saskatchewan; Dr. John Schneeberger,
guilty drugging/raping patients; bizarre DNA coverup
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cape Breton Post 11/26/99
Mi'kmaq community dealing
with suicide attempts
SYDNEY, N.S. (CP) - Grief counsellors descended on a Mi'kmaq reserve
in Cape Breton on Thursday following reports of a group suicide attempt by
boys as young as nine. "We're not exactly sure if there was a genuine
attempt at suicide or if whatever was done was in play," Dan Christmas, a
spokesman for the Membertou band, said after a meeting with social workers,
police and the children involved.
"There is some concern, obviously, but we're not exactly sure what was the
intent or what actually happened last night." Details on the incident were
sketchy. The Unama'ki tribal police, who were investigating the incident,
didn't release a statement and the senior officer didn't return phone
calls. Several reports said tribal police responded to calls from
Membertou residents Wednesday night to find a young Mi'kmaq boy barely
conscious and hanging by a rope from a tree. As many as five other
children, ranging in age from nine to 13, were reportedly gathered around
the boy when police arrived. A Membertou mother who didn't want her name
used said her 11-year-old son and other children arrived at the scene first
to help the hanging boy. "He had a rope burn on his neck," she said.
"While the police did arrive at the scene later, they weren't there when
the incident occurred. It was children who helped children. They were the
ones who resolved the situation." Christmas refused to confirm or deny any
of the reports, saying officials needed more information. He said one child
was taken to hospital. Greg Boone, spokesman for Cape Breton Regional
Hospital, said members of the tribal police brought several adolescents to
the hospital Wednesday
night. "Police had expressed concerns about suicide," said Boone, adding a
few of the teens were seen by a psychiatrist but no one was admitted.
Social workers from several Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq agencies arrived at
Membertou early Thursday. They talked throughout the day to the children
involved in the incident and were interviewing family members into the
night. Vince Stevens, who co-ordinates crisis response at Cape Breton's
Eskasoni First Nation, was called about the incident early in the day. He
sent one counsellor from his team. There were also counsellors from
Membertou and Mi'kmaq Family Services. "These kids went through mental
hell last night," Stevens said. A local resident suggested the move was an
act of desperation.
"They're crying out for help," said Tina Paul. "And they need it. I hope
they get it." With a population of just under 1,000 residents, Membertou
is the province's third largest of 13 Mi'kmaq reserves and one of the more
prosperous. Christmas said there is no history of suicide in the native
community. (Cape Breton Post)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Friday, November 26, 1999
Doctor guilty of raping patient
Physician stored someone else's blood in his arm to produce
false DNA tests
Adam Killick
National Post
REGINA - A judge has found a rural Saskatchewan doctor guilty of drugging
and raping a 22-year-old patient and then obstructing justice by storing
someone else's blood in his arm to thwart
a police DNA test that would have implicated him. John Schneeberger, a
38-year-old physician from Kipling, Sask., a small farming community 150
kilometres southeast of Regina, was also convicted for twice sexually
assaulting a 14-year-old girl three years after the rape of the older woman
in 1992. He was acquitted yesterday of a further charge of drugging and
sexual assaulting another woman.
In what lawyers acknowledge as one of the strangest cases in Saskatchewan's
legal history, Schneeberger admitted cutting open his left bicep and
sliding a blood-filled, 15-centimetre-long rubber tube down past his elbow
in an effort to simulate the vein from which blood is usually drawn. He
had extracted the blood from an unwitting patient to foil two 1992 tests;
and, after storing it in a
refrigerator for four years, re-inserted it in his arm and kept it there
for eight months, long enough for the skin to heal around it before he was
tested again. He was forced to re-open his arm to remove the tube, called a
Penrose drain. DNA extracted from the blood they had drawn failed every
time to match semen samples found on jeans and a pair of underwear turned
in by a victim. Later, police found a match using a profile built from a
sample of Schneeberger's hair.
It was obtained with a warrant after a serologist noted the four-year-old
blood sample from his arm was "very dark, almost black," as if it was drawn
from a dead person. Schneeberger said he took the elaborate steps to hide
his genetic identity because he believed he
was being framed by one of the complainants, whose identities are protected
by a publication ban. The doctor, an immigrant from South Africa, said he
did not trust the police. Taking the witness stand in his own defence,
Schneeberger testified he believed the woman, whose baby he had recently
delivered, had somehow broken into his house, stolen a used condom from his
garbage and smeared its contents over her clothing. "There are a number of
adjectives that apply," said Justice Ellen Gunn, of the Court of Queen's
Bench, of Schneeberger's testimony. "Inventive, fanciful, imaginative.
However, one that does not apply is credible," she added, calling his
theory "preposterous." Judge Gunn found Schneeberger used Versed, a
powerful sedative known to cause amnesia to render the woman, who was a
patient at the hospital, numb and barely conscious while he raped her. The
following day, the woman testified he had asked her if she had had any
"wild dreams."
Schneeberger will be back in court today for a sentencing hearing. Although
sexual assault and obstruction of justice carry maximum 10-year sentences,
the use of a drug to carry out an assault can
carry a life sentence.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Let Us Consider The Human Brain As
A Very Complex Photographic Plate"
1957 G.H. Estabrooks
www.angelfire.com/mn/mcap/bc.html
FOR K A R E N #01182
who died fighting 4/23/99
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.aches-mc.org
807-622-5407
For people like me, violence is the minotaur; we spend our lives
wandering its maze, looking for the exit. (Richard Rhodes)
Never befriend the oppressed
unless you are prepared to
take on the oppressor.
(Author unknown)
