DRUGS, PROSTITUTION AND A MISSING DAUGHTER

Gillian Staple's family tries to find the girl who went off the rails

Marion Staple always loved kids. It's why she became a kindergarten teacher.

Both she and Greg came from big loving families and when they found they
couldn't have their own children, they adopted. First came Allison. Five
years later, on Dec. 14, 1987, five-month-old Gillian went home with them.

She was a happy, smiling baby with a seemingly innate ability to charm
everyone.

"She was always dancing. She was athletic. She played ringette and when she
played centre in hockey team, she was always double teamed," says her mom.

The Staples worked hard to reinforce the importance of family to their
adopted daughters. Christmas, for example, was a time when the whole
extended family tried to be together.

In the memory book that Marion put together for Gillian when she was in
foster care, there is a letter from Gillian to her grandmother.

"Dear Grandma, I love you so much and know you will always be beside me. . .
As soon as I looked at you, I knew that you would be the one to turn to."

The book is full of photos from family Christmases, weddings, birthdays and
family vacations to Disneyland, the Okanagan and Arizona.

One of Gillian's carefully saved mementoes preserved in the book is a letter
from her Grade 5 teacher at Seycove elementary.

"I know you are going to have a good next few years especially as you are
very highly regarded by your peers," Mrs. Haussmann wrote to her in August
1998.

"They like you for your kindness, how you cheer people up by laughing a lot
and being able to fool around with people."

Maybe it was because she was too good at sports, too kind and too cheerful,
but over the next two years Gillian was targeted by bullies. They threw
darts at her at parties. They threw stink bombs at her. They threatened to
beat her up.

"She was too much of a winner and they wanted to take her down," said
Marion. "And they did take her down."

By spring 1999, Gillian was struggling. She hated going to school and often
tried to hide on the floor of the car on the way to school, begging her
mother not to make her get out.

That fall Gillian started Grade 7. Greg, an executive with a Vancouver
energy company, was transferred to Calgary.

Because Allison was in Grade 12, the student president, and on the honour
roll, the family decided Greg would go alone to Calgary for the first year
and travel home on weekends.

It was devastating for Gillian.

The following is taken verbatim from an essay Gillian wrote called Tough
Stuff: When My Life Changed:

"Once my dad had moved, everything changed. I got moody. My mom got lonley
and my sister was never home. I started treating my mom badly and disobaying
everything so she made my life harder too. I told her I wanted to go to a
foster home so she got worried and took me to a councellor. I got the idea
of moving away out of my head and I got myself a little bit happier.

"But more bad things kept coming. My grandma got really sick with altshimers
and went into a home. My mom went on antidepressents and I was diagnosed
with ADD atention deficit disorder. It is a disorder when you can't
concentrate properly, you have bad time management and some other stuff like
that. So I had to try riddelin. A pill that was supposed to help me."

By now, the Staples were going to a private psychologist for family
counselling. And Gillian, desperate for friends, was making some bad
choices.

Only with hindsight has Marion realized that their daughter had started
experimenting with marijuana, methamphetamines and ecstacy.

"I was brought up in a really straight-laced family. I was taught to respect
my parents and go to school," she said. "It would have been the last thing
on my mind to think that she would be on drugs.

"In retrospect, there were signs.... If only we had seen the signs. But even
so, what would we have done? There is no place to get help for a 13-year-old
who is just starting out on drugs."

The mother-daughter relationship had disintegrated to the point that they
finally agreed that Gillian would begin all their conversations in a whisper
(instead of yelling). They agreed to write letters to keep the communication
open and avoid open conflicts.

In one letter, Gillian wrote that she was confused and didn't understand why
her birth mother gave her up for adoption, but kept her other three
children.

But the letter ends with a poem:

"I (heart) u more

and I am sore

that you think

that I stink

when it comes to loving you.

Love Gillian"

In June, Greg Staple was transferred back to Vancouver. But by the fall of
2000 when Gillian started Grade 8, she scarcely even made the pretense of
going to school.

She had begun what would become a cycle of running away. It started by her
staying out overnight and, on a couple of occasions, ending up at a youth
safe house on the North Shore.

"I love you so much but I can't take the pressure," she wrote in one of her
runaway notes. "I need a brake for a while. I am running away from home.
Don't worry about me, I will probably lose my strongness and come home in an
hour crying my eyes out. . . Don't worry, I won't do anything stupid."

It is signed, "Love, your devil child, Gillian Staple" and ends with this
postscript: "Don't come looking for me."

The family enrolled in the integrated family program run by the Elizabeth
Fry Society and continued weekly private counselling and mediation.

Greg was also writing to Gillian. In one three-page, typed letter, he
emphasizes to her that he and Marion chose to have her in their lives and
had never wavered in their commitment to love her and care for her.

"Mom and I made the decision that we wanted YOU to be part of our life and
family. Let me repeat that -- we wanted you to be part of our life."

Greg's letter goes to say:

"You are ruining your life and I think you know it, but for some unknown
reason are unable to do anything to get it turned in the right direction.

"We have exhausted every option that we know of -- counsellors, therapists,
programs and on and on it goes -- but you are not prepared to have these
people help you and we all know including you that you need help in the
worst way....

"Maybe I am stupid, but I think you will do the right thing and decide you
want us."

Throughout the fall and into the holidays, the Staples tried to retain some
normalcy.

Gillian was enrolled to play ringette and hockey at the North Shore Winter
Club, but she rarely went to practices. Christmas Day 2000 was spent at home
with the whole extended family.

But the delicate and uneasy truce ended violently on Jan. 8.

Gillian came home high on methamphetamines. She was furious that Marion had
asked the school to clamp down on her.

Her backpack was full of drugs that she was probably selling. As Marion
reached for the backpack, Gillian assaulted her.

In pain and fear, Marion called North Vancouver RCMP. The attack was so
brutal that Gillian snapped one of Marion's ribs and her footprint was
imprinted on her mother's back. It took two rolls of film to document all of
the bruises, cuts and abrasions.

The next day, Greg and Marion signed a voluntary care agreement, handing
over custody of Gillian to the B.C. ministry of children and family
development. They agreed to participate in counselling with the goal of
having their family reunited.

They asked specifically that Gillian attend school regularly and continue to
play ringette and hockey while she was in foster care.

They agreed to pay for all of her clothing, transportation, recreation and
school fees and medical coverage. They also had to agree to pay $1,039 per
month for as long as Gillian was in the care of the ministry.

The Staples discovered that foster care is one of few income-tested social
programs. Greg and Marion handed over a cheque as well their daughter.

"That was probably the hardest day of my life," said Greg. "Having a social
worker in my living room, asking for post-dated cheques for my child's
care."

In her first foster home, Gillian developed a strong and trusting
relationship with the foster mother -- a relationship that has continued.

But from Jan. 9 until Feb. 14, Gillian didn't receive any counselling and
there were no attempts made to begin the process of family reconciliation
even though the Staples had expected something would be done more quickly.

But Gillian was attending Lions Gate Hospital's youth and family psychiatric
out-patient program, including the academic program.

But she was still not allowed to go home and she could not contact her
parents directly.

Throughout April and May, they went to family mediation while Gillian
continued her weekly counselling with a ministry mental health worker.

In early April, the Staples regained custody and Gillian returned home. But
three weeks later on a Saturday night, she went out and didn't come back
until the next morning. Her parents refused to let her in.

A few hours later, she was admitted to Lions Gate Hospital as a suicide risk
and released later that day. But the Staples couldn't handle her any more.

The ministry took Gillian and placed her in temporary care in a new foster
home on the North Shore.

At this point, Gillian's behaviour had become very disturbed and disturbing.

In a June 10 letter to her doctor in the Lions Gate outpatient program,
Gillian's father wrote about the "unusual and unnatural behaviour" they had
observed while she was home.

The list is shocking. "Urinates indiscriminately on carpets, towels, beds,
etc. Head bangs. Showers up to three times a day. Obsessed with face -- will
shave it, pick it, put substances on it that are dangerous."

On July 7, the ministry applied for a six-month temporary custody order
which was granted on July 19 -- Gillian's 14th birthday.

Fourteen is the age that the Criminal Code of Canada has set as the age when
people are mature enough to have consensual sex.

That summer, Gillian was frequently reported missing by her foster parents.
Later documents indicate that the 27-year-old "boyfriend" who picked Gillian
up most nights from the foster home was actually a pimp.

Gillian was working the streets as a sex-trade worker. And because in Canada
prostitution is legal, there was nothing her foster parents, her parents,
the ministry or police could do about it.

E-mails that went regularly between the Staples and the foster parents are
mostly about mundane details, updates on Gillian's activities and requests
that the foster mother pass on their expressions of love and support to
their daughter.

But in one near the end of August, Marion writes to the foster mother: "I
realize that there is hardly an hour in the day when I don't think of her. I
even say goodnight to her every night just before I go to sleep."

On the first weekend of September 2001, Gillian attempted suicide.

The Staples were not notified and only found out about it the following
Tuesday when Greg phoned the foster home to check on Gillian. She was
missing and didn't return all week.

If there was any good news that week, it was that the ministry had ruled out
the possibility that Gillian had fetal alcohol syndrome or fetal alcohol
effect. The bad news? The diagnosis was made on the basis of a telephone
conversation with her birth mother, not the standard tests.

The week ended with the hasty cancellation of a case management meeting.
Clearly, it would have been impossible for the parents, ministry staff and
foster parents to discuss Gillian's progress if nobody knew where she was.

Saturday: Gillian continues her downward spiral in foster care before being
sent to a private rehabilitation centre in Utah.