Note: We will be using all proceeds of this fundraiser towards legal fees against the Rotary Club of Bowmanville, and any excess will be used towards our supports for our daughter Delilah. Thank you graciously for any assistance provided.

Hi, I am Daniel, with my wife Mallory. We thank you for your time and attention to this issue that we are raising for our community, and ask that you keep in mind that this is an accurate account and what we believe to be illegal handling of our conflict with the Bowmanville Rotary Club. Since coming out publicly of how poorly we were treated, many others have reached out with similar issues with this organization's program and leadership.

Meet our family

We are a community oriented family, who loves our town. I completed my school placement at Community Living Oshawa Clarington, which provides living assistance for people with developmental disabilities. Around this time, I also served in leadership positions at our church, where my wife and I first met. We grew up in Durham, and purchased our first home in Bowmanville. We married and purchased our home while my wife was still in school with our intense discipline to achieve our goals. We stretched ourselves thin to do so knowing it would be much easier after Mallory is able to graduate and enter the workforce.

After graduating from her Social Service Work program with honours, Mallory had entered the workforce where we continued our plan for a normal and successful life. After great anticipation and planning, Mallory and I were expecting our first child.

The pregnancy had many strange quirks, but given our age and screenings, we were assured that our expected daughter was healthy. To our surprise, our beautiful daughter Delilah was born about 2 full months earlier than expected.

Delilah was the most wonderful gift we could ask for, and was cared for at the hospital where she was getting treated in the NICU to become strong enough to come home. After about a week, a very skilled doctor informed us that our baby was much more "floppy" than they expected. The doctor believed that Delilah had an exceedingly rare condition. The hospital had her transferred during a snowy night to SickKids, where they believed they could confirm the diagnosis and provide her with the treatment she needed.

During her time at SickKids, Delilah required constant air flow to help her breathe. Delilah was unable to swallow, requiring the nurses to suction her mouth so that she wouldn't choke on her secretions. She also had irregular dips in her heart rate, requiring resuscitation in one instance.

After a few weeks at SickKids, a doctor pulled us to a room where they asked how we thought Delilah was progressing. We expressed that we were excited by her progress. We had been actively lowering the amount of airflow she was receiving from the device. We felt that she wasn't needing her mouth suctioned as frequently. We felt that her heart rate was remaining a bit more stable. Despite our perception, the doctor shared with us that they had a much more grim outlook based on what they have been seeing. Although the formal diagnosis was not finalized and still waiting testing, they felt strongly that the clinical diagnosis was accurate, and their expectations were that our beautiful daughter would spend her few remaining days in the Hospital.

Delilah's hospital stay was during the pandemic, where we were unable to include our family in the care of this innocent child who had no say in being forced into this fight. Delilah was now under the care of SickKids' palliative care team. During this time, we received a formal lab diagnosis for our child, who has Congenital Myotonic Dystrophy. As we learned about this disease, we also learned that it is both genetic, and progressive, and its severity is based on the age that symptoms begin to show.

While grieving for our child, we were now also grieving that this came from Delilah's mother, who will also now begin to experience increased symptom severity.

After receiving exemptions to allow for our family to meet Delilah, and the incredible amounts of love and care we poured on her, she began to strengthen beyond any expectations of the doctors. She graduated from the NICU, and out of the care of the palliative care team. Delilah was eventually able to come home with us, where we continued to beat further expectations such as being able to remove her feeding tube after 2 weeks home, rather than the 2 years she was expected to need one for.

Delilah keeps us incredibly busy, and with Mallory's medical issues, it is incredibly hard for us to keep up with ourselves, but we are doing the best we can every day. We strive to give Delilah the most normal life she can be offered. She loves her family, giggles all day, and loves her life.

The "conflict"

Due to Delilah's diagnosis, our family has been one of few families in the area that is eligible for the respite program offered by the Rotary Club of Bowmanville. This program provides relief care a few times a week during the summer to allow families to catch up on themselves. We were happy participants for 2 years, making lasting relationships with our respite workers. We were happily welcoming our third season in the program, and had what we thought was an amicable experience.

We had the worker come for a short visit to get accustomed to Delilah's medical equipment, and show her how to use them. We also offered to show her how to change her diaper, which the worker assured she didn't have to be shown as she knows how.

My wife had text exchanges with her, and even referred to her as an "angel" for being much awaited relief that we needed.

We then had one more session. Delilah had a dirty diaper, and when the respite worker had to change it, she admitted that she didn't know how, so my wife did it and showed her, despite her claims of knowing how. We enjoyed a lot of small talk with her, and once our daughter was down trying to nap, we played a board game. Our daughter was refusing to nap, and I changed her diaper during this time and offered her some milk to settle her down, as it typically does. I then accepted that she wasn't going to sleep, got her and changed her diaper once more, rather than the respite worker.

We continued to have small talk while Delilah was playing with her toys. At the end of the shift, my wife asked if the respite worker was a "hugger". She said she was, so they hugged as we said goodbye.

The "Investigation"

The morning of the next session, we receive a text message before 6am being alerted that our respite worker would no longer be working with us, and to call the coordinator for next steps. In a bit of shock, we called and asked what happened. We were informed that she (the coordinator) was going to be going to a meeting shortly, and asked if we could reschedule the call in a couple of hours from now. She told us that the worker was not comfortable, and that we will discuss next steps.

We were quite baffled, but patiently waited for the new meeting time. After a bit of time, we then received an additional email from the supervisor alerting us that we were removed from the program effective immediately, and that our phone call was cancelled. We were told in this email that it was due to a "breach of the program's Code of Conduct", and offered no further clarity or ability to provide our recollection of the events.

In complete shock and confusion, we contacted the supervisor of the respite program. She asked who she was speaking to, and her response to us was a snarky "Oh." We tried to ignore the rude mannerisms, and tried to say that we were really confused by what just happened, and wanted an opportunity to talk about what was going on. After saying we were confused, she cut us off and remarked with a subtle laugh of disbelief "well I'm not!"

At this point, I was even more dumbfounded. We calmly asked if she could give more details, and she began to yell and further berate us. We were accused of dropping "constant f-bombs" and foul language, and that our environment was totally unsafe for our beloved child, and the worker. We were told that they determined that it was so unsafe that they couldn't in good conscience simply reassign a different worker. When we said that none of these vague details seem remotely accurate, she snapped again asking if we were accusing the worker of lying . We had no idea what the accusations fully were, and didn't feel comfortable giving a definitive answer, but assured that we didn't recall any foul language and that our home is perfectly safe. In fact, I don't even swear at all. We tried hard to settle her down and get more information, but she rudely yelled at us and hung up.

The "charity" did not have any phone numbers for us to call, so we wrote an email to Bowmanville Rotary requesting that we have someone impartial from the Respite team immediately look into this and contact us. This went from a really strange concern to allegations that contain legal weight being placed on us, as a CAS call should be warranted if the safety of our child was ever a question.

We happened to have our wonderful support staff from Grandview and Durham's Infant and Child Development services coming to our home for a joint assessment that we arranged. We told them what happened, and their jaws dropped to the floor in pure amazement of how crazy this was.

Our support OT from Durham Region reached out on our behalf to this supervisor who was incredibly rude to us. She was given similar level of rudeness, but was able to get her a bit more calm. She also got more confirmation that they believe the house is unsafe. Our OT has been to our house at least once a month for 3 years, and assured her that it is the absolute opposite of how she would describe our home. She then described minor things such as "asking about other clients". This is the first and basically only context we've really received. For context, this was my wife asking what type of challenges other clients need help with. There was nothing malicious about asking this, and it absolutely does not breach any confidentiality. We don't even have a way to identify the other clients.

I sent the supervisor a lengthy email, asking again for further clarification. None of this warranted the level of anger directed towards us, or our immediate removal. We never heard back from her on this.

We then received an email from the president of the charity, who said they will conduct an internal review. We provided her with as much context as we could (given the lack of any insight on the accusations), and asked for:

-what exactly were we accused of?

-have any stories changed since we challenged the accusations

-was CAS contacted?

-we also asked to have an opportunity to speak with them again so our side could be heard

We also reminded them that we have an endless amount of professionals from physio and speech therapists, OTs, doctors, previous Respite workers, church leaders, and many more who can vouch for our behavioral and living standards. This is compared to a 19 year old worker who they barely know, that they took at complete face value without any consultation or investigation from her leadership.

They asked for more time to conduct the review, which we graciously thanked them for and politely gave them time. 2 weeks have passed, so we requested firmly for an update as we have had these accusations unfairly clouding us for weeks. I told them how dehumanizing this has been, and showed that we are a happy family that is engaged with the community. We are told that we will get an update first thing in the morning.

We then have the pleasure of getting this absolutely pathetic response:

"Thank you Mallory and Daniel for your patience while we examined this decision more closely, and thank you for these beautiful photos of your family.

We identified immediately that the decision to remove your family from the program had nothing to do with your parenting style or the care of your child. At no point did the respite committee feel Children’s Aid would need to be notified.We want to reassure you that.

The decision was based on the Code of Conduct being breached with respect to the conversations with and around the caregiver. Ultimately the caregiver was not comfortable returning to your home, and as her employer we needed to respect that.

We have closed our file. You are welcome to apply again next year should you wish.

Again, I appreciate your patience and the feedback you were able to provide.

kind regards,"

This email response was a complete disgrace. They refused to give us any needed context. They refused to hear from us at any step of the way.

Instead, they acknowledged that they have a person who lied about the safety conditions of our wonderful daughter. Despite this, they also doubled down on their decision to remove us from the program. We were told multiple times that our daughter was in an unsafe environment (including telling this to a government employee), had us sit for two weeks on this heinous accusation, only to say it wasn't true, but that everything else somehow is. They also added insult to injury by stating that they are "reassuring" us that CAS was not called, when this was never clarified for us for the full two weeks.

The Aftermath

After having our case closed, and having our attempts at communication ignored, we proceeded to exhaust our additional options.

We contacted our local mayor, notifying him that he will want to do his best to have them call us to resolve this matter before we begin to get vocal. He gave them a call to express the concern, and we were still ignored.

We took this opportunity to post publicly of this account on Facebook groups that are relevant to the area. We also reached out with our story to the charity's sponsors. We reached out to our local MP and MPP.

During this time, the Rotary team proceeded to like a comment suggesting we should find another way to resolve this, and blocking us.

We also did further digging into the structure of Rotary, and found that Bowmanville Rotary is under the branch of the Rotary District 7070.

We reached out to the "District Governor" (Will refer to as DG for short) with our list of concerns and demands to make the situation right. We alerted her that we would gladly alert all of the communities and contacts that we had involved in this of an amicable resolution, or if we are not pleased with the outcome that we would escalate things even further.

After going a couple of days without hearing a response, we attempted to reach out to her via phone. The DG was very pleasant and understood our frustrations completely. We allowed for her to prioritize Whitby Ribfest which was in a couple of days, and then she said she would have this as her top priority. It was so refreshing being treated like human beings by someone in this organization after all of this. We were told that we would hear back on Monday from her with a phone call. She also was quite surprised that the Bowmanville team had not escalated this to her at any point, and that our email was the first she had heard of it.

Monday goes by without us hearing anything, so we reach back out to her on Tuesday. She had still not heard from all people she needed to, but was also concerned about how little information even she was able to receive about the situation. She assured us that she would wrap this up, and that we would hear more from her by the end of the week once she hears from the last person.

Days go by without hearing from the DG. We followed up once more on Wednesday the next week to this treat of an email:

"Hi there Daniel...

Thank you so much for reaching out. I did meet with some members of the Bowmanville club. They gathered some documentation for me.

From what I understand, it was explained to you why you were removed from the program and you replied to that email on June 19th.

The Rotary Club removed you from the program as you/Mallory had breached the code of conduct of the respite program. This was explained to you in an email in June.

Thank you so much for being so patient while I tried to gather information.

I wish you and your family well. "

We demanded we get our phone call that we were promised, and she replied that she will call us tomorrow.

After waiting all day for a phone call, we then receive this email in its place:

"Dear Mr. and Mrs. Arathoon:

Thank you for your email. We cannot comment at length on the advice of counsel but we can confirm that your family was removed from the Respite Care program for violating our Code of Conduct and to ensure that we meet our legal obligations under the Ontario Human Rights Code and Occupational Health and Safety Act. We must ensure our employees, including our Respite care workers, have a workpace that is safe, and free from workplace violence and sexual harassment. The safety of all our Rotarians, especially those working with the most vulnerable, is our paramount consideration. I will also note that under the Personal Health Information Protection Act, we have an additional obligation to protect participants in our program, and to that end we will not be commenting further on this matter, publicly or privately.

Please accept this email as written notice that if you continue to defame the Rotary Club of Bowmanville and/or its employees and/or volunteers and/or sponsors, we will take the appropriate legal action, including seeking remedies under the Libel and Slander Act.

Please govern yourself accordingly,"

Conclusion

We have absolutely not "defamed" this company with liable or slander. We have publicly spoken with facts about how we were treated. These claims that we have made are all able to be proven with our correspondence with this organization. The Rotary Club has nothing left, and are threatening a family who struggles with disability and tries their hardest every day.

I understand you have an obligation to remove an employee if they claim to be unsafe. That doesn't give you the right to breach your Code of Conduct by not attempting to find a respectful solution to this issue. We could have very easily resolved this situation with the organization if they treated us like human beings, but they have refused to at every step.

We have said numerous times that we do not recall breaking the Code of Conduct at any point.

We are calling your bluff, as we know we have acted in good faith to alert the community of how a constituent was treated. We will see you in court if that's what you wish for.