Inuk teen displaced from foster homes 78 times before her suicide: Quebec coroner
CTV
A Quebec coroner has released a report citing a 'shocking' number of times an Inuk teenager was moved from foster home to foster home before her suicide in 2019.
A Quebec coroner has released a report citing a "shocking" number of times an Inuk teenager was moved from foster home to foster home before her suicide in 2019.
Since she was a child, Maggie Kimattuuti Padlayat was displaced more than 78 times in six different communities in northern Quebec. In total, she lived with 18 different foster families since the age of seven — moves that contributed to her poor emotional well-being, according to Coroner Pascale Boulay.
Padlayat, who died by suicide at the age of 18 on Aug. 10, 2019, struggled with alcohol addiction in the years before her death. After a recent breakup, she posted messages on social media and sent text messages to relatives that suggested she would harm herself following a night spent at her friend's house.
The coroner's report described her death as a symbol of how the foster care system fails Indigenous children in northern Quebec and said her multiple displacements contributed to her lack of trust, difficulty integrating with families, and feelings of rejection.
"This situation alone is worrying for the psychic stability of the child and the woman in the making and can certainly have contributed to the development of the medical history," the report stated.
Padlayat was found unconscious on Aug. 2, 2019 in a shed behind a foster home in Inukjuak, a small village on Hudson Bay in the Nord-du-Québec region. She was then airlifted, while intubated, to the Montreal General Hospital, where she was admitted to the ICU. She remained in a neuro-vegetative state, and despite the efforts of the medical team, she was declared dead eight days later.
The coroner ruled her death a suicide.
