Gullible School Officials + Psychic Babbling = Trouble For Ontario Mom

  Colleen Leduc, of Barrie, Ontario is a single mother, raising an 11 year-old autistic daughter. She sends her daughter to public school, because that's all she can afford.

  On May 30th, she received a call from her daughter's school, asking her to come in right away. When she got there, she was informed that there were suspicions that her daughter was being sexually abused.

"The teacher looked and me and said: 'We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of "V." And she said 'yes, I do.' And she said, 'well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.'"

  Based on this ridiculous cold reading trick, school officials called the Children's Aid Society, which launched an investigation into the allegations.

  Luckily, Leduc was able to satisfy CAS that the abuse was entirely imaginary.

[A] case worker came to the Leduc home to discuss the allegations of sexual misconduct, only to admit there wasn't a shred of evidence that anything had ever happened at all. They labelled Leduc a "diligent" mother doing the best she could for her child under difficult circumstances, closed the file and left, calling the report "ridiculous."

  This, right here, is why belief in spooky mind powers isn't harmless fun. These baseless allegations wasted the time and resources of the school, the CAS and most significantly of Colleen Leduc. She's only lucky that the "psychic" didn't blame her for the non-existent abuse. I hope that Ms. Leduc sues the crap out of the "psychic," and every school official who was involved in perpetrating this farce.

MySpace validates its existence, with a question coughed up from the Ask LBB Friend Space.

Dear LBB,
  What's the deal with French Canadians?
- Erin

Dear Erin,
  Canada is the pudgy sixth grade hall monitor of the western world. Grown-ups are always complimenting it on being polite and well-mannered, but when it tries to warn the bigger kids against running in the hall, they just laugh.

  The French, on the other hand, are the awkward, angry kids smoking cigarettes and making out behind the bleachers. Napoleon inflated their already considerable egos, and they've muddled through 200 years of republics trying to simultaneously pretend that they didn't enjoy being the center of an empire, and they didn't mind being rolled over every time some other country decided it was their turn to conquer Europe. Picture these kids who are too cool for school living in a nation full of polite, mild-mannered honor roll students. It's the sociological version of a John Hughes movie, and it goes a long way toward explaining why Quebec has such a secessionist bug up its ass.