What Becky Hamber told court about using zip-ties to control boys she and spouse aimed to adopt

Brandy Cooney, left wing, is 1 of the accused in a dispatch tribulation in Milton, Ont. Cooney is seen Monday as assistant Crown attorney Monica MacKenzie, centre, questions a witness.

J.L. And L.L., left to right, are shown in an undated photo filed as a court exhibit. Their Burlington, Ont., teachers described them as clever, curious and eager students.

L.L. In his bedroom, wearing a wetsuit, in a photo dated March 19, 2022.

Earlier, MacGregor indicated he’ll have more questions for Hamber tomorrow. When he’s done, the other defence lawyer, representing Cooney, and the Crown lawyers will have the opportunity to question her.

According to Hamber, CAS workers knew about the helmets and would have seen them in the home. 

Hamber says the helmets were used "intermittently" from 2019 through 2022 – the last three years of L.L.'s life.

She said she saw “concussion helmets” online that were very expensive, so they repurposed the boys’ hockey helmets. 

It could take both women to put a helmet on one of the children, Hamber says. 

The boys would sometimes take the helmets off and keep hitting their heads, so they started zip-tying them on.

The court has seen security video of L.L. Wearing a hockey helmet indoors and heard evidence from J.L., who said he was sometimes zip-tied into one.

Today, Hamber testified the children would “bang their heads” off items, so the couple put helmets on them to stop them from hurting themselves.

“It was a truly horrendous sound when your child’s head makes contact with a surface,” Hamber said.

MacGregor further asks Hamber about the couple’s home surveillance system.

Initially, she says, security cameras were only on the outside of the home, but indoor cameras were added after a couple of years of living with the boys.

Hamber says the cameras allowed her to deal with one child while monitoring another, and she could check the videos using an app.

Court previously heard about the boys being locked in their rooms. 

Text conversations between Cooney and Hamber helped the Crown establish earlier in the trial what a typical night looked like, something Cooney confirmed during cross-examination. 

The boys were sent to their rooms around 6 p.m. “to decompress” before bed with the doors locked from the outside, the court heard. Cooney would let the boys out once in the night to use the bathroom before they were locked back in their rooms. 

In 2021 and 2022, Hamber texted Cooney on multiple occasions to say she’d let the boys out around noon. 

Monica MacKenzie, the assistant Crown attorney, said this meant they had one chance to go to the washroom over about 18 hours, which is why they may have peed and pooed in their rooms.

Cooney denied they were locked in their rooms this long, although there’s no texts indicating they were let out earlier.

MacGregor asks Hamber about the kids’ doors to their rooms being locked.

“We kind of felt like we were out of options to keep the children safe,” Hamber says, adding the women had been staying up late at night to ensure the brothers were safe. 

Locking them in meant the couple could get a few hours of sleep at night, Hamber says, adding she mentioned it to a CAS worker who probably would have seen the locks. 

She says she did not know when that discussion occurred.

In hindsight, locking the doors would be a fire safety concern, Hamber says. But at the time, it wasn’t safe to have the doors unlocked, she says.

After a time, as the boys got older, Hamber says, cameras were put in their rooms so the couple could monitor them.

Hamber says she kept the siblings apart unless they were all doing an activity together. 

She said that reduced conflict between the children, who would fight, but created more stress for her because she could not always play with both kids. 

L.L. And J.L. Would still play together while supervised, she says.

J.L. testified that in the last year of his brother’s life, he rarely saw L.L. Aside from passing him in the hall.

A Halton CAS worker told the couple they shouldn’t zip-tie the boys into tents because it presented a fire safety risk, Hamber testifies.

She says she felt “dumb” as soon as she heard that and stopped tying the tents closed. 

MacGregor asks how long they used zip-ties on tents. 

It was likely about three nights, Hamber responds. She says she took fire safety seriously and ran monthly fire drills.

Hamber says she and Cooney started having J.L. Sleep in a tent on top of a bed or cot “fairly consistently” starting in 2018. L.L. Was “in and out of various tents,” she says. 

They stopped using a tent when he would destroy one, Hamber adds. 

She says J.L. Said he didn’t want a tent during tantrums, but otherwise expressed a fear of losing one. 

The Halton CAS “knew about the tents, observed the tents in our home,” Hamber says. So too did therapist Terra Bovingdon, she adds. 

That child and family therapist testified in November that tents can create a “nice, cosy, contained feeling."

Hamber says it was not a form of punishment.

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