What Happened to Samantha Martin

What Happened to Samantha Martin

Public Fatality Inquiry - Alberta Justice
November 2 - 4, 2011, 9:30 am
Edmonton Provincial Court, Room 449

"There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair." AND, "There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." - Martin Luther King Jr.

The entire reason for a Public Fatality Inquiry is to prevent further deaths, therefore, Samantha Martin must be granted professional representation by the government. With focus on the child, legal counsel can succinctly disclose events surrounding life and death. It was the Government, in the first place, who failed to fund medical care within the natural family home for Samantha as a living child. One can only hope that Alberta will now step up and do the right by all children by learning from Samantha's death.

SAMANTHA'S LAW: To better enhance and protect Family-Centred Care Practice, loving families of children with developmental or medical diversity must not be coerced into relinquishing custody, nor forced out of home care in effort to secure Government funding for necessary medical and therapeutic services.