'It was fully ignored': This woman's medical emergency in Ontario jail reflects broader health-care crisis

Ashley Stevens has scars inside and out from her time in an Ontario jail.

It’s not because she was involved in violent confrontations with other inmates, but because she suffered a miscarriage and then an unrelated infection.

“I got sepsis,” said Stevens, who was treated at an Ottawa-area hospital. “The doctor even said if I didn't come in when I did, I would have been dead.”

Earlier this year, Stevens, 30, spent four months at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre for crimes related to domestic violence — uttering threats, mischief and assault. She was initially granted bail, but ended up in jail after breaching her conditions.

The day she was sent to jail, she found out she was pregnant. It would be her fourth baby.

Weeks into her incarceration, she knew something was wrong.

“I kept telling the nurses I'm still bleeding a lot,” she said.

Stevens said she bled for five days before she was sent to the hospital, where it was confirmed she’d lost the baby.

When she returned to jail, she noticed a wound on her left buttock that was painful and swollen.

“I was just feeling really sick, but not, like, pregnancy sick. I felt like I was dying, and I ended up passing out,” said Stevens.

She was taken back to hospital and had surgery to remove the failed pregnancy from her uterus. While there, Stevens said a doctor told her the wound on her buttocks had gone septic.

“It was fully ignored… I was pulling my pants down, showing [correctional officers] my infection," said Stevens, to which the officers replied, “‘Don’t worry, just stay off of it and if it gets worse, just let us know.'”

She said she had little contact with jail medical staff because “to see the doctor, you're only allowed to see him once a month, and you get to see him for a few seconds.”

Stevens’s struggle to get care is not unique. According to CBC’s analysis, complaints filed by inmates have doubled over the past six years.