Michel Chretien grew up with every advantage a boy could have. At 18 months, he was adopted from an orphanage in Inuvik by a federal cabinet minister and his wife, who, after two late-term miscarriages, had been told by her doctor that it would be risky for her to have more pregnancies. He was the youngest of three children, and deeply loved. His parents were also acutely sensitive to his native heritage, because his adoptive father was minister of Indian affairs.
But Michel never fit in. He was always an outsider. He became a dropout, a drunk, a coke addict, and then a criminal. At 23, he was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman he'd met in a Montreal bar, and drew three years in prison. At 29, he was convicted of assault (he threw a can at the young son of a former girlfriend). Now he's been charged with another sexual assault, in Yellowknife, after a night of drinking. He first went to Yellowknife to seek out his birth mother, a Gwich'in Indian.
Not long ago, Michel would probably have been diagnosed with a case of cultural estrangement. Now there are other explanations. All his symptoms resemble those of someone suffering from fetal alcohol effect, the greatest preventable tragedy of our time. The Chretiens have stood by him through it all. But if, indeed, he suffers from a form of FAS, not all the resources of a prime minister, nor all their love, can fix what's wrong with him. People with FAE are permanently brain-damaged before birth.
Scratch the surface of many headline crimes and you'll find that the common denominator is FAE. The crime is usually senseless; the criminal is impulsive and has no grasp of consequences. He can't finish school or hold a job. He comes from an alcoholic and abusive family, or was adopted, or both. If the victim is female, she's likely to be a squatter in Tent City with a baby.
Full-blown fetal alcohol syndrome, which produces a characteristic facial deformation as well as serious mental impairment, isn't hard to recognize in babies. But people with FAE look and often sound normal. They're at even higher risk for conflict with the law.
Some people familiar with the syndrome believe that Christopher McBride's behaviour also may be consistent with symptoms of FAE. Mr. McBride, the alleged "hate crime" killer in Toronto, was charged with the murder of David Rosenzweig, an identifiable Jew, two weeks ago. The crime was a horrific but impulsive act. And the facts of Mr. McBride's disturbed life (unearthed by reporter Christie Blatchford) fit the classic pattern of FAE.
Mr. McBride, now 20, went to live with his adoptive parents when he was 4. They had fostered many troubled kids, and they loved him dearly. They were told nothing about his parents, nor whether his mother was an alcoholic. He soon grew violent and out of control. They took him to psychologists and counsellors; they even enrolled in parenting classes. No one could explain what was wrong with him. His troubles were blamed on a failure to bond. Like so many other adoptive parents of terribly troubled kids, they never heard the terms FAS or FAE.
Eventually, his abusiveness threatened to destroy the family, and his broken-hearted parents had the adoption annulled. They are heartsick to this day. "He didn't bond with us," his father said. "But we bonded with him."
For decades, sociologists have believed that the problems of severely troubled adopted kids result from some failure in the parenting connection. But they had it backward. Their problem resulted in their adoption. Their mothers bequeathed them a terrible legacy.
The fetal impairment that results from heavy drinking during pregnancy didn't even get a name until 1972 -- just three years after Michel was adopted by the Chretiens.
Today, FAE is still significantly underdiagnosed, even though every prison guard is familiar with its symptoms. Studies of young offenders have found that between a quarter and a half suffer from FAS/E. Another study found that 60 per cent of adolescents diagnosed with FAS/E were in trouble with the law.
Early diagnosis is important, because kids with FAE can be taught to cope with their condition. The justice system doesn't help them. The fad in juvenile justice is to get tough, and that doesn't work on people who don't understand consequences. For adult offenders, the standard rehabilitative method is therapy, which is useless for people with FAE.
FAE stories can have happy endings. And FAS/E is the one birth defect that is totally preventable. That's the good news. The bad news is, even though we know these things, we do much too little, much too late. We search for the root causes of the calamities we read about on the front pages, and we miss the real story. And that, too, is a calamity.