The Globe and Mail
January 20, 2001
Vilma Climaco was a popular nanny until a vengeful ex-boyfriend accused her of
the ultimate offence: sexually abusing her young charges. She lost her job, her
home and her own son. Two years later, she has cleared her name but fears she
may never see her boy again
by Margaret Wente
Vilma Climaco has
much in common with many Filipina nannies in my pleasant
She came here when she was 28 and is a Canadian citizen now. The families who
employed her remember her with great affection. Like other nannies, she has
always looked forward to the time when she could raise a family of her own.
This is the story of how her dream turned into a nightmare.
Vilma Climaco got caught up in the greatest social panic of our time, one that
has ruined the lives of many innocent people. She was accused of despicable sex
crimes against young children in her care.
The accusations were ludicrous, and the evidence against her was flimsy and
tainted. But Ms. Climaco spent nearly two years in the justice system before
her name was cleared last week. She went to trial twice. And along the way, she
lost the most precious thing to her on Earth -- her own son. She may never get
him back.
I met Ms. Climaco a few days ago. With her were her lawyer, Cindy Wasser, and a
friend named Pet Cleto from the Migrante Women's Collective, a group that helps
Filipina women in trouble. In her soft, accented English, Ms. Climaco related
what happened to her.
In the spring of 1998, she got a job through the nanny network with a
middle-class
Nanny and family bonded quickly. Every day, Ms. Climaco took the kids to the
park and the pool. She took along her own son, Jonathan, too. He was 2. She
found a triple stroller at a garage sale and paid for it herself. In the
afternoons, the kids would play together in the back yard until the twins'
father came home from work. Ms. Climaco and her son lived in a small apartment
nearby.
The kids thrived. The parents testified later that, at first, they could not
have been more satisfied with their new nanny.
Vilma Climaco had one big trouble in her life: Jonathan's father. His name is
Joseph Kiss, and he is married, with a family of his own. Jonathan was the
product of an affair. Ms. Climaco had decided to break off her relationship
with Mr. Kiss, and he was giving her a very hard time. He threatened to fight
her for their son.
One day, the nanny poured out her heart to her employer, who reacted with
concern and sympathy. "They were very nice to me," Ms. Climaco says.
"I thought I could trust them."
At first, they stood up for her. The twins' father even threw a punch at Mr.
Kiss one day. Shortly after that, Mr. Kiss told them to watch out, because Ms.
Climaco was hitting their children. He had seen it himself, he said. He told
them they ought to videotape her.
That is how it all began: a vengeful father, a bitter breakup. In an unrelated
court proceeding later on, a judge scathingly pointed out that under the
circumstances, Joseph Kiss was perhaps not the most reliable guide to Ms.
Climaco's character.
But by then it was too late. The snowball was rolling.
Her employers liked Ms. Climaco, but they decided to take no chances. They
remembered the time one twin had a black eye. He said he got it from playing
with a toy train, but who really knew? In midsummer, they let her go.
Ms. Climaco found other work, but Mr. Kiss kept phoning the family almost every
day with accusations: Ms. Climaco had hit their kids; she was a lesbian.
Their anxiety grew, and they began to pepper the twins with questions. What bad
things did the nanny do to them? They even phoned Children's Aid. A social
worker interviewed the twins, but they said nothing that would justify further
action.
Still, the parents were distressed; the twins were acting up with lots of talk
about their genitalia.
And then, one day near Christmas, it happened. The family was on a car trip and
the twins were acting up again. They stopped for lunch and their mother
remarked on how well they were eating, and one twin said, "Vilma never fed
us. She made us lick her pee-pee for food."
Bingo.
Horrified, the parents pressed for details. One twin (they can't remember which
one) said Vilma's pee-pee was brown and smelled yucky and was wet on their
faces when they licked it and it made them throw up.
The parents stepped up the questioning and three weeks later they phoned the
police.
In child sex-abuse allegations, the police are sometimes inclined to be overly
vigilant. It's safer to lay the charge and let the courts sort it out. The
Crown, too, has very little discretion over whether to prosecute.
And there are generally social workers and child-abuse experts on hand, some of
whom are quick to believe every suspicion and every piece of evidence, however
slight. Too often, their credo is: Believe the children -- even if it's very
hard to make out what the children might be saying.
The police interviewed each twin twice on videotape. One said he had been made
to suck a suitcase. He mentioned a green hose. The other twin didn't say
anything suspicious at all.
On Feb. 4, 1999, the police arrested Ms. Climaco at the computer school where
she was taking classes. She was charged with four counts of sexual assault and
sexual touching.
Mr. Kiss told Ms. Climaco's landlord about the arrest and got her evicted.
Children's Aid took her son away and put him into foster care. A few months
later, he was released in the custody of Mr. Kiss, with whom he has remained
ever since.
Then Mr. Kiss and his family moved to
"The most important part of my life is my son," she says.
Meantime, the twins began to receive special counselling at the local
child-abuse centre, where they were repeatedly asked about secret touching and
encouraged to draw pictures expressing their hurt and anger.
Ms. Climaco got in touch with Migrante, the immigrant women's aid group.
"I had to have company," she says. "I had to be strong."
Unemployable in child care, she continued classes and lived on a student loan.
"I kept going to school, but I could not think properly," she says.
There were no witnesses, and the kids' tapes were shaky. But there was an expert -- Dr.
Louise Sas, a child psychologist who has testified for the prosecution in
numerous abuse cases. Dr. Sas found the evidence against Ms. Climaco quite
damning.
In a report prepared for the Crown, she had this to say about the incident in
the restaurant:
"The way in which the first disclosure came about initially is of
significance. It is what can best be described as an unsolicited accidental
delayed disclosure, triggered by a conversation which brought to mind the
specific incidents of sexual abuse.
"In this case, the discussion of food and appetite by their mother at a
restaurant brought on the disclosure of oral sex with the babysitter, whom the
boys reported had withheld food from them. According to the evidence, the boys
had already been describing sexual acts in the car which they would do to each
other, and the tone of the conversation in the car was overtly sexualized.
"This in and of itself is
highly irregular, and this type of discussion suggests that they had been
eroticized and introduced to that type of behaviour."
The inconsistencies, the nonsense language, the many months that had passed
since Ms. Climaco had left before the kids spoke out -- to Dr. Sas, it all fit
together.
"The disclosures were delayed, which is consistent with the abuser being
known to the child. . . . There may well have been intimidation as well (the
eye injury) and a grooming process (such as using the term 'toy' for vibrator
or 'sandbox' for vaginal area, or involving a hose as part of a sexual game)
which made it difficult for the children to explain what happened."
Tim Moore, a psychology professor at
"Children are inclined to be co-operative and compliant," he says.
"The problem is that with the right ingredients of social pressure,
suggestiveness, repetition and unintentional reinforcement, children may say
what they think is expected of them."
I asked if frequent talk about genitalia is abnormal for four-year-olds.
"There's a natural fascination with body functions at that age," he
says. "Scatalogical terminology is hysterically funny. Kids can amuse
themselves endlessly with body-part references."
Cindy Wasser, Ms. Climaco's
lawyer, says: "Dr. Sas can interpret every fact and every behaviour as
evidence of abuse."
But the most astonishing part of the case had yet to come to light.
In fact, the twins had been enticed into inappropriate sex play -- not by their
nanny, but by an older boy who lived nearby. There was even a witness -- the
twins' own father. He just hadn't bothered to mention it.
The older boy was 12. He is developmentally delayed, functioning like a
six-year-old. Sometime in the spring of 1998, the twins' father found him in
the basement with the four-year-olds. He was on his hands and knees and the
twins had their pants down.
The twins' father asked what he was doing. The boy said, "I'm kissing
their penises. I know it's wrong, but I like it."
The twins' father eventually chose to mention this incident to his sons'
counsellor at the abuse centre. Children's Aid was summoned once again, and the
12-year-old and his family were interviewed.
The older boy's mother said she wasn't surprised, because he had been caught
interfering with other little kids.
But the boy denied the basement scene. He got counselling, and the case was
closed.
The twins' parents never discussed the incident with their sons. The police
never interviewed the four-year-olds about it either. Nor did Louise Sas ever mention it. Did anyone
ever wonder whether the twins' behavioural problems were connected to the
neighbour instead of the nanny? Evidently not.
Ms. Climaco's first trial began in September, but it didn't last long. In the
middle, the twins' father got a call one night from the father of the older
boy. The 12-year-old had told his parents that he himself saw Ms. Climaco abuse
the twins. Not only that, the boy said Ms. Climaco had abused him as well. He
didn't know her name. He described her as having blond hair and blue eyes.
At last, a witness. The Crown decided to put him on the stand.
Even someone not schooled in the law might wonder if this was wise. The boy had
a history of inappropriate sexual contact. His own parents thought the basement
story was probably true and had been grilling him about it when Ms. Climaco's
trial hit the media. In other words, he had a strong incentive to lie.
But before the wisdom of the Crown could be tested, Ms. Climaco's lawyer asked
for a mistrial because of the surprise witness. The judge agreed, and a new
trial was scheduled to start all over again in January.
Meantime, the new witness was interviewed three times on videotape. His stories
were contradictory, and in the third interview he declared that he had been
lying all along.
Once again, the Crown called
on Dr. Sas to give her expert opinion of the tapes. Her verdict? All the testimony again pointed to Ms.
Climaco's guilt.
"There are strong indices of reliability in his allegations about sexual
victimization," she wrote. "His retractions and then reaffirmation of
the veracity of the information he was providing was a clear example of his
difficulty sharing the information."
In other words, all the boy's contradictions, as well as his assertion that he
had been lying, were really signs that he had been telling the truth.
On Jan. 2, Ms. Climaco's second trial began before Mr. Justice Paul Rivard. It,
too, was very short. Before a jury could be summoned, the judge assessed the
evidence and the circumstances surrounding the case. He viewed the tapes and
decided they were completely unreliable. So he threw the case out.
Vilma Climaco was free to go.
You could say the justice system worked. After all, a judge was wise and an
innocent person did not go to jail. Ms. Climaco's defence was excellent and was
funded by legal aid. Still, the price she paid is almost unbearably high.
"She's been completely vindicated," Ms. Wasser says. "But it's a
bittersweet win."
Today, the former nanny works part-time in a Wal-Mart. She is $17,000 in debt
for student loans. She can see her son Jonathan now, but he is in
She can't get legal aid there, and she might have to fight Mr. Kiss to give her
access. To get her son back, she will have to mount an expensive legal battle.
The courts will be reluctant to give her custody because Jonathan, who turns 5
this April, has lived with his father for so long now. Ms. Climaco's toughest
fight lies ahead.
The interview is over and I've closed my notebook. We're all packing up to
leave when Ms. Climaco turns to Ms. Wasser and says, "Can you get my son
back?"
The lawyer wraps an arm around her shoulder. "We'll try, Vilma. We'll
try."