10 year anniversary of murder of little Sacha Vallee

   Tuesday marks the 10th anniversary of the death of little Sacha Vallee, who was beaten to death on Oct. 9, 2002 by babysitter Eric Grenier in Ville Emard.
   Vallee was a child orphaned in Siberia after his mom died in prison. He was adopted by Marie Claude Vallee, or Claude Vallee as she was actually known. She was a 47-year-old kindergarten teacher who had recently moved to Montreal from Roberval. She had adopted him two years earlier, I'm assuming on her own, a case of spinster motherhood as it was once called.
   She met Eric Grenier, who was 29, a couple of months earlier through an online dating site. Grenier had his own 14-month-old child that he had care of from Monday to Thursday as he was not with the mother of his own child.
   Little Sacha might have had some developmental issues, as he was still wearing a diaper at age four-and-a-half but they apparently believed that a bit more discipline would help put the child back on the right path.
  The child's mother left her little boy with Grenier under the thinking that it would be good to have him around other people and have a male presence in his life.
 The more-discipline idea was a pretty bad one, as Grenier ended up hitting the child repeatedly, dropping him on his face when he failed to clean his plate, putting him outside in the cold when he soiled his diapers, or forcing him to saying on his hands and knees that he should poop in the toilet. Eventually Grenier punched him in the abdomen, causing a fatal tear and took his sweet time to call an ambulance.
   Grenier was found guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 12 years. He had already served two years at the time of the trial, so he could very well be out by now. His 2006 appeal was rejected.
   In recent years Quebec's Department of Youth Protection has received an increasing number of reports of abuse, in fact they now receive 200 such complaints a day, far more than it once did.
   Tragic stories such as this are a no-win for anybody, but perhaps they have increased awareness of the futility of corporal punishment and the importance of reporting possible abuses.