Disabled inmate was forced to sleep on cell floor for 3 weeks, lawsuit alleges
CBC
An Indigenous inmate in a federal women's prison who uses a wheelchair is suing the attorney general of Canada for $10 million because she says she was forced to sleep on the bare floor of her cell when she couldn't be moved from her wheelchair to her bed.
In the lawsuit, Kitten Keyes said she slept on the floor of her maximum security cell for 21 days straight in April at the Grand Valley Institution for Women (GVI) in Kitchener, Ont. She also said she was left to defecate on herself on the first night when no one came to help her get onto the toilet.
Her statement of claim, which was filed last week in Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Brampton, is seeking $5 million in general damages plus $2.5 million under Section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms for cruel and unusual treatment or punishment.
The claim seeks another $2.5 million under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, of which Canada is a signatory. Article 15 of the convention states that: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."
"It's torture," Keyes, 54, said in an interview in August, before the suit was filed. "The guards have told the warden that you need to come up with a solution and make this prison wheelchair-accessible."
The attorney general of Canada has yet to file a statement of defence and declined to comment.
Correctional Services Canada (CSC), which oversees federal prisons, declined to comment on the lawsuit or the specifics of Keyes's living conditions at the prison.
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