Baby abductor abused, testifies psychiatrist

BY LAUREL MYERS

The infant that was snatched from Sudbury Regional Hospital last November was done so out of desperation, a forensic psychiatrist testified Tuesday at a sentencing hearing for the woman charged with the abduction.

After spending the past five months at home under the watch of her aunt and uncle, Brenda Batisse returned to the Sudbury courthouse this week to be handed down her sentence for the abduction charge she plead guilty to late last year.

As the 29-year-old Kirkland Lake woman listened to testimony from the baby’s mother, Batisse’s aunt and Batisse’s daughters, she hung her head and cried as she was forced to relive what she had done.

When forensic psychiatrist Dr. Jean-Guy Gagnon took the stand, the woman’s history came pouring out, and with it, a number of skeletons she had kept hidden in her closet.

“Brenda was very early on exposed to a lot of neglect and abuse,” the doctor told the court. “People like that develop coping skills and ways to deal with their environment. Some of those skills could include lying.”

At the age of 11, Batisse’s mother began burning her with cigarettes on a regular basis.

“Some people in the community knew but it wasn’t from Brenda telling them,” Gagnon said. Her step-father walked in on the abuse on one occasion, and the mother ended up in a psych hospital at some point after. Her mother committed suicide when Batisse was 17 or 18, at which point she began self-mutilation by cutting herself.

“These are traits of a borderline personality disorder,” the doctor explained. “This is a lady who had a fairly abnormal childhood. Her central theme has always been to please people so people would stay in her life.”

The abuse the woman endured continued into her relationships with men later in her life. The father of her children was physically abusive to her, the next man in her life went at her verbally.

“This lady has accumulated a life of being pretty disposable,” Gagnon said. “People neglected her, pushed her aside or abused her.”

However, her boyfriend at the time of the abduction, Trevor Schram, was the first man in her life she felt safe with, who offered her stability in a relationship and something resembling a normal life, the doctor’s testimony described.
Last August, Batisse was pregnant with Schram’s child. After going to Kirkland Lake to recover money she had loaned to someone, the individuals assaulted her, Gagnon said. Batisse miscarried the baby a few weeks later.

“She clearly suffered from a severe depressive disorder that seemed to be triggered by the loss of her baby,” Gagnon testified.

Batisse kept the miscarriage from Schram, and maintained she was still pregnant until November, her scheduled due date.

“She gets in her mind her relationship with Trevor is going to end because she lost the baby so she doesn’t tell him,” Gagnon said, adding there was no evidence Schram ever said he would leave if she didn’t have the baby.

“This woman went to great lengths to protect her relationships,” he continued. “She had a fear of abandonment.”

Over a period of time, desperation set in and Batisse worried about where she was going to get a baby.

“The option that she could restart the process in a couple of months didn’t occur to her,” Gagnon said.

That desperation lead Batisse to the Sudbury Regional Hospital on Nov. 1 last year, and into the room of an unsuspecting mother.

“This is a complicated series of steps she has taken in a few days,” said assistant Crown attorney Len Walker.

“The driver is desperation, and that her life is over,” Gagnon replied. “This is something she’s been going over and over in her head, trying to figure out how she’s going to fix it.”

He told the court Batisse felt her choices were to find a new baby or kill herself.

“How is she described as a very good mother with all of this?” defence attorney Berk Keaney asked the doctor.

“It’s very impressive actually,” he replied. “It’s one of her strengths and one of the things that protects her. It’s not a usual thing (for a person with depression or a borderline personality disorder). It’s her saving grace that she’s able to look after her children so well.”

Keaney asked the doctor to describe Batisse’s progress over the past five months.

“The lying has corrected itself along the way,” he said. “This is liberating, her life has always been about lying."

“If there was a separation now with Brenda and her children, do you have any concerns for the effect it will have on her?” Keaney asked.

“Obviously a mother being separated from her children is never a good thing,” he replied. “My concern is that there’s been generation to generation passing-on of inappropriate and maladaptive behaviour. I hope there is some way we can break this cycle and her children don’t experience the same separation Brenda had.

“I’m concerned that we not be here in 20 years because something happened with her daughters.”

There are still witnesses to be called in the sentencing hearing. A date to continue the proceedings will be scheduled on Friday.