The Case of Wanda Young

Canada's Supreme court has ruled that a woman wrongly labelled a potential sex offender more than decade ago as a result of an essay written for a social work class is entitled to more than $800,000 in damages from Memorial University of Newfoundland.
In a decision handed down last Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada said there was no basis to interfere with an earlier jury's verdict in the case, which centred on Wanda Young's claims that her life was ruined after she was wrongly reported as a potential sex abuser.

“Accordingly, we would set aside the judgment of the Court of Appeal and restore the trial judgment,” the court said.

The case dates back to 1994, when Ms. Young submitted the assignment as part of the course work for a social work class at Memorial.

An anonymous first-person account of sexual abuse taken from a text book was appended to the paper and her professor – wrongly believing the material was written by Ms. Young – contacted provincial Child Protection Services after talking to a supervisor.

For two years, without her knowledge, the assertion that she was a potential child abuser was passed between university professors, the RCMP and several social workers. Her attempt to study full-time at Memorial's School of Social Work was also turned down.

When the situation came to her attention in 1996, she immediately showed child-protection authorities the textbook. They apologized for the error, but she says the label hung over her for years, interfering with her ability to find work.

She later sued Memorial and her professor. The case went to trial in 2003 and a jury awarded her $839,400, although the university had argued that it had acted in accordance with child-welfare laws.

The Newfoundland Court of Appeal later overturned the financial award and ruled that Ms. Young could not seek a new trial.

In Friday's ruling, which quashed that decision, the Supreme Court noted that the Child Welfare Act requires everyone to “report information that a child has been, is or may be in danger of abandonment, desertion, neglect, physical, sexual or emotional ill treatment or has been, is or may be otherwise in need of protection.”

It also said those who have a statutory duty to report such cases have to be protected from any adverse legal consequences flowing from their action. In the current case, the court also ruled that university staff “acted in a way the jury found to be without any reasonable cause even to make a report."

“Here the university professors acted on conjecture and speculation which fell short of the required reasonable cause to make a report to [provincial Child Protection Services],” the court found.
For the text of the Supreme Court decision , see the decision