Woman gives birth to baby in Ottawa jail cell after guards allegedly ignore pleas for help

by Zev Singer
Ottawa Citizen
October 11, 2012

OTTAWA — Gionni Lee Garlow came into the world five pounds, nine ounces — on the floor of an Ottawa jail cell.

The baby’s mother, Julie Bilotta, a 26-year-old woman from Cornwall, was in custody at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre on Sept. 29 when she tried in vain to convince staff that she was in labour and needed help.

Bryonie Baxter, executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society, which advocates on behalf of woman who come into conflict with the law, told the Citizen that Bilotta screamed for hours but the nursing staff at the jail did not take her seriously.

“They took her vitals. They told her it was indigestion,” Baxter said, adding that Bilotta, who was eight months pregnant, was later told she was in phantom labour.

According to Baxter and Bilotta’s mother, Kim Hurtubise, who have both spoken several times with the still-incarcerated woman, the jail guards responded to Bilotta’s pleas by telling her she was making too much noise and moving her to a segregated cell.

While she was being moved, they say, a guard told Bilotta she shouldn’t have become pregnant if she couldn’t deal with pain and it would only get worse when the “real” labour began.

Baxter said that from the information she has gathered it appears that Bilotta was never given an internal examination. She said the nurse only believed the labour was real when one of the baby’s feet emerged in the breech birth, hours after her first complaints.

Jail staff called an ambulance — although Baxter has questions about how promptly that call was made — and the baby was delivered in the cell by paramedics.