Prosecutor Accuses Babysitter of Lying to Protect Herself
By Christie Blatchford
Originally published in the National Post, January 25, 2002
TORONTO — There are two individuals charged in the death of Randal Dooley, the seven-year-old's natural father Tony and his stepmother Marcia. Jurors are now hearing testimony at the couple's criminal trial on charges of second-degree murder.
There are also two organizations that, the early evidence suggests, arguably failed to protect Randal despite at least some knowledge of some of his injuries—the Children's Aid Society of Toronto and the Toronto police.
This systemic conduct is an issue for another day, another forum, perhaps a coroner's inquest.
But if the trial prosecutor Rita Zaied is right—and some evidence is beginning to emerge that she is—then the little boy may also have been the victim of a monstrous conspiracy of silence.
Ms. Zaied put it plainly yesterday as she concluded her vigorous cross-examination of Charlotte Williams, a woman who is Marcia Dooley's sister and who was at one time Randal's chief babysitter.
Ms. Williams had spent her day-plus in the witness stand insisting she never saw anything awry in the Dooley household, and distinguished herself with a blanket protestation of such monumental ignorance that she even claimed not to know the real name of a man called Prince with whom she once regularly shared her bed.
Ms. Zaied, clearly, had had enough.
"You're lying to protect yourself first of all," Ms. Zaied charged, "from scrutiny in the community for not protecting Randal?"
"No," said Ms. Williams.
"And you're protecting your sister [Marcia Dooley]?"
"I don't need to protect her," Ms. Williams sniffed.
"And your mom and dad and all the family because they all knew [what was happening to Randal], correct?"
"Not correct," said Ms. Williams.
But some short time later, Ms. Zaied's contention received some direct support when Audrey Ogle, a first cousin of Ms. Williams and Mrs. Dooley, was recalled to the stand.
When Randal and his brother Teego, then eight, arrived in Canada from their native Jamaica in the late fall of 1997 to live with the Dooleys, Ms. Ogle and Ms. Williams were close and, as they have both acknowledged, talking frequently on the phone. And at that same time, until April of the next year, Ms. Williams was also seeing a great deal of her sister Marcia, with Marcia babysitting her two girls when Ms. Williams was working, and Ms. Williams looking after Randal and Teego weeknights while Marcia was working.
According to Ms. Ogle, within a month of the boys' arrival in Toronto, Ms. Williams was complaining to her about how Marcia was treating Randal.
First, Ms. Ogle said, it was that the little boy was having trouble adjusting to a diet of Chef Boy-ar-dee and the like, and Ms. Williams was reporting that Marcia was forcing him to eat it and then, when he "gave it up," forcing him to eat his vomit.
Then, Ms. Williams was telling her that Marcia had thrown Randal against a door, where his eye was struck by the doorknob and swollen shut for three days—and that he was out of school, and at Ms. Williams' place, for part of this time. Two or three weeks later, Ms. Ogle said, Ms. Williams told her Marcia had broken Randal's arm by putting her foot "in the child's back and twisting" it.
"Why don't you call the Children's Aid?" Ms. Ogle said she asked Ms. Williams at this point.
"'No,' she said, 'I don't want to get involved.'" Ms. Ogle replied, she said, by saying, "OK, give me her [Marcia's] number and where she lives and I'll do it," but that Ms. Williams declined, saying her "family would know it was her."
According to Ms. Ogle, "all her [Marcia's] friends knew about" what she was doing to Randal because, she said Ms. Williams told her, Marcia "was bragging to her friends that she was punching the boy in the head, kicking …"
Ms. Williams was distressed by all this, Ms. Ogle said, and at one point told her she had pleaded with her sister, "Why can't you take care of them [Randal and Teego] the way you take care of my daughters?" but that Marcia had replied, "They're boys; boys are different from girls."
Randal was found stiff and lifeless in Teego's bed on the morning of Sept. 25 that year—dead of an acute brain injury, but covered in bruises and scratches and U-shaped welts. A litany of internal damage, including evidence of three old brain injuries, a torn liver and 14 broken ribs, was subsequently revealed at autopsy.
The very day after Randal was discovered, Ms. Ogle said yesterday, Ms. Williams was on the phone to her.
"She said, 'She killed him! He's dead!'
"I said what?
"She said 'I cannot wait to get on the stand and tell them everything.' I said OK, I'll come with you."
But Ms. Williams called her back later that day, Ms. Ogle said.
"She said, 'I just had a call from my mom. She told me to keep my mouth shut—she [Marcia] is my sister, and you have to stick with your sister.'"
Now, the presiding judge, Mr. Justice Eugene Ewaschuk, later cautioned the jurors that this alleged statement by Ms. Williams to Ms. Ogle, "if made, is inadmissible conjecture or speculation on the part of Charlotte Williams," and that they must, "in fairness to Marcia Dooley," disregard it. And Ms. Williams denied virtually everything—what she is alleged to have said to Ms. Ogle, what her sister is alleged to have told her, and any knowledge that Randal was being hurt. And Ms. Ogle has not yet been cross-examined, so her evidence on these critical matters is untested.
But one genie remains out of the proverbial bottle: Who in that sprawling extended family knew what?
