The body on the rooftop: Attila Csanyi was failed in life and in death

Hamilton Spectator reporter Teviah Moro spent months investigating the many injustices in the short life and death of Attila Csanyi, a once promising athlete who endured horrific childhood abuse and died homeless and alone on the roof of Jackson Square as his twin searched for him in vain. How could this happen?

Warning: This article includes graphic descriptions of abuse that may be upsetting for some readers.

An unidentified young homeless man was found dead on the concrete rooftop of Jackson Square in downtown Hamilton during a pandemic spring.

Months later, he is on the mind of his twin brother, Richard Csanyi, who coaxes a forklift out of thick mud at an east Mountain construction site on a soggy fall morning.

One of the workers on his bricklaying crew has managed to get it stuck, but he calmly frees the beast and steers it to the front of the home.

Richard's name is on the front of his hard hat and Attila, the fraternal twin brother he lost, is on the back.

It was the inseparable brothers' ambition to work together one day.

But in early May, after he went missing on the streets of Hamilton, Attila was found dead of an overdose on the roof of the downtown shopping mall. He was 28.

Richard had led a desperate search to find Attila, who, before developing schizophrenia, was a teenage baseball phenom with a blazing fastball.

At the police station, a photograph of his brother - intelligent, magnetic, handsome and athletic in life - was unrecognizable" to him in death.

It was very, very hard. That was probably the worst image I've ever seen in my life," says Richard.

Victims of abuse in foster care as young boys, Richard and Attila slept back to back to guard against lurking danger.

But it was Attila, Richard says, who bore the brunt of the torment, and did his best to shield his smaller brother from their abuser.

Later, as young men, when Attila became ill, the roles reversed, with Richard looking out for his twin. But he could only do so much.

The toxicology report pointed to methamphetamine and fentanyl, highly addictive substances in an increasingly volatile market.

Richard accepts the autopsy results but sees Attila's death through a prism of systemic failures that chipped away at him since early childhood.

At six, the twins were placed in the Scarborough foster home, where Richard says they endured horrific abuse at the hands of a teenager living in the residence.

That was the turning point in our lives," he says.

Those two years of trauma in the Scarborough foster home echoed for the twins into adulthood.

And when Attila slipped deeply into mental illness, Richard, his primary caregiver, struggled to find him decent affordable housing and support services.

Attila's fragile foundation collapsed after he lost his room at a Hamilton lodging home in a dispute with its operators on March 11, just as the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic set in.

It was a rupture that Richard describes as the nail in the coffin."

Unmoored, Attila wandered the streets, stopped taking his medication, took hard drugs and drifted from his family's orbit before he was found dead.

Richard wants the province to conduct a coroner's inquest into his brother's death to shed light on the circumstances of his final days and prevent similar tragedies.

The Mississauga resident knows Attila's tragic demise can't be viewed in isolation as a homelessness crisis continues to unfold during the pandemic.

I just feel that there's so many people on the streets right now. They need more support than what they're getting."

The last time Richard Csanyi saw his brother alive was in late April.

It was around 1:30 a.m. and Attila was outside the door of his twin's home in Mississauga.

Bouncing between shelters and the street, he wanted his health card, which Richard held onto for safekeeping.

Attila was using crystal meth. He had welts on his legs that Richard believed were abscesses from shooting up.

Attila, however, thought it was cancer and worried his leg needed to be amputated, Richard recalls.

He was distraught and scared."

The forensic pathologist who examined Attila's body didn't find cancer, but other health problems, including hypertensive heart disease.

That early morning, Attila had a bike with him, and Steven, a friend from the street, as he sat on the lawn and spoke with his brother.

Richard, mindful of his four-year-old daughter and girlfriend inside, tried to arrange for an Uber to take Attila and Steven back to Hamilton.

But nervous drivers cancelled, so they walked to Meadowvale Town Centre, a nearby shopping plaza, to spend the night in a bank's ATM alcove.

Worried about Attila's mental state, Richard asked police to apprehend him under the Mental Health Act to put him in hospital care for 72 hours.

But they declined, not considering him an imminent risk to himself or others since he had company in Steven, he recalls.

So in the morning, Richard went to the plaza to see if Attila and Steven were still there. And they were gone."

After that, Attila disappeared.

He hadn't shown up for his monthly injection of medicine at St. Joseph's Healthcare's schizophrenia outpatient clinic.

Nor had he picked up his disability pension cheque. His social worker called Richard and flagged her concern.

Frustrated with police efforts to find his brother, Richard, his dad and others combed Hamilton and launched a social media campaign to generate tips.

I searched every nook and cranny of the city," Richard says, noting he was in frequent contact with police.

He kept searching, more than a month after emergency responders tried to resuscitate an unidentified young man found without vital signs on the roof of Jackson Square on May 2.

It wasn't until June 5 that Richard learned about Attila's death after police released a composite sketch and appealed for the public's help to identify him.

It was salt in the wound for the family; society failed Attila, not only in life, but also in death.

The police, who had Attila's fingerprints from previous dealings with him, apologized.

They'd failed to connect the dots between two parallel efforts, one to find a missing person and the other to identify a body.

I feel that they were very sincere about it," said Richard after meeting with the detective who worked on his brother's case.

Before they were taken away, the twins lived with their large blended family in a social housing complex in east Toronto.

Their father, Alex Geczi, who arrived in 1977 from Hungary, worked long hours in construction.

But he still made time for activities with his little boys, whether it was sports, chess or card games.

He loved being a father," says Richard, who also has a sister, Sophia, now 32. His greatest achievement in life was having us three kids."

Their late mom, Klara Csanyi, a Roma immigrant from Hungary, had six children before marrying Geczi following an abusive relationship.

With just one breadwinner and plenty of mouths to feed in the Blake Street townhouse, money was tight, but Richard remembers a nurturing family life.

I feel that our parents had every ability to raise us."

Klara, who had bipolar disorder, wasn't abusive, but flew into fits when distressed, which drew the attention of the Children's Aid Society of Toronto.

Visits from child welfare workers alone were triggers for Klara, who, like her children, was placed in foster care as a girl and abused, says Gina Csanyi-Robah, who is Richard's cousin.

It's impossible to look at Attila as just an isolated incident. His mother went through what he went through," says Csanyi-Robah, 46.

She believes Klara's mental illness had roots in the trauma her Roma parents carried with them from Hungary, where they'd lived through the Nazi-orchestrated Holocaust, subsequent prejudice and political upheaval.

One of the biggest problems was around the kids not going to school regularly," says Csanyi-Robah, a Vancouver-based advocate for the Roma-Canadian community, about her grandparents' involvement with children's aid.

Years after her own ordeal in foster care, Klara again found the state at her doorstep, taking away all but one of her sons and daughters.

Attila and Richard were removed from their home at age six in July 1998.

That destroyed the family," says Csanyi-Robah, who spent time living with her relatives in Toronto.

This painful chapter registers as anguish on Geczi's face as he watches Richard direct the tight-knit crew working on the Mountain home's bricks.

He recounts how he and Klara voiced concerns to children's aid about marks they saw on the twins' bodies during weekend visits home from Scarborough.

Every time, they had bruises on them," says Geczi, who moved to Hamilton about two years ago to be near Attila and live with a brother, Otto, after Klara died of cancer.

But he said children's aid attributed the marks to falls and even deemed them to be self-inflicted.

They would suggest that we were banging our heads off the walls," says Richard, still incredulous at the conclusions.

All of this was detailed in a lawsuit the twins and close relatives launched in 2011 against the Children's Aid Society of Toronto and the Scarborough foster family.

The visible and distinct bruising" the twins' relatives had flagged were the product of regular torment meted out by their foster parent's 14-year-old son, the statement of claim alleged.

It described how for two years little Richard and Attila lived in grave and substantial fear" of the teenage predator. The allegations were lengthy and harrowing:

The teen beat the smaller boys; sexually assaulted them; urinated and defecated on them; tied them up and threw them down the stairs; forced them into scalding bathtub water; denied them access to the toilet; carved the initials of his favourite rappers into their arms; deprived them of food at meal times; suffocated them with pillows until they lost consciousness.

It was a nightmare over there," recalls Richard, who says he still bears scars - physical and emotional - from that time.

Though just a small child, Attila was always a protector," he says, expressing a reverence for the brother he'd eventually watch over later in life. He went through the worst of it out of the two of us."

In her statement of defence, the foster parent categorically" denied any wrongdoing or that she allowed such conduct on the part of others."

Likewise, children's aid and its employees rejected they had been negligent in not removing the twins from the home.

The allegations were never tested in court.

But in an email referenced in the statement of claim, a children's aid supervisor acknowledged the twins had indeed been sexually abused in foster care.

Moreover, following out-of-court mediation, the Children's Aid Society of Toronto and the former foster mother agreed to a financial settlement with the family.

The CAS of Toronto told The Spectator it couldn't comment on specific cases due to privacy concerns.

But a spokesperson said there are strict requirements in place for assessing, training and monitoring substitute caregivers such as foster parents" and to include children in dialogue about services.

More than 20 years after the abuse, Richard carries a bitter memory of how he and Attila were pushed to recant through an apology letter shortly after leaving the Scarborough residence.

A tough and confusing pill to swallow for the small boys, it also meant police would never investigate the allegations.

It was just an unfortunate event that prevented us from getting the help that we needed at that point, psychologically," says Richard.

He and Attila were both diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In its email, the CAS of Toronto wrote:

We know that whether trauma is experienced by a child or youth in their family of origin or in alternate arrangements, it can contribute to poor outcomes in adulthood. This is why it is so vitally important that children and youth who experience childhood trauma are supported with early intervention."

By August 2000, the Scarborough foster residence was in the twins' rear-view mirror.

After two years, children's aid removed Richard and Attila from the home.

But it wasn't due to the allegations of abuse.

The Scarborough foster parent had expressed reservations about long-term care" of the twins if their chaotic" weekend visits home continued, the agency said in its statement of defence.

But the boys didn't return to their biological family on Blake Street in east Toronto.

Instead, they went to Lindsay, Ont., a small community near Peterborough in the Kawartha Lakes region.

There, they found loving foster parents in Pat and Rick Gerris.

Richard was 46 pounds at eight years old. Attila was about 54," recalls Rick Gerris, a retired school teacher. So we were quite pleased with the physical shape they were in."

But there were signs of past distress.

During their first meal together, Attila reached over to grab food from his brother's plate. Richard explained Attila was hungrier than him.

So we put a stop to that, of course, and said, Any time you want more, just let us know.' So that's the type of background they were coming from."

The twins became ensconced in the Gerris household, joining their grandchildren on road trips to the Maritimes and Florida. They also signed up for Scouts and baseball.

On the diamond, Attila discovered an untapped talent, becoming a star pitcher with a wicked fastball that visiting teams feared.

These on-field talents boosted Attila's morale and fortified a charisma that easily won him friends, Gerris recalls.

As soon as you knew Attila, you were rooting for the kid, and here was something he was good at."

Stephen Hosier, a friend since childhood in Lindsay, described the twins as good, charismatic guys" who carried an against-the-odds" air of mystery.

Hosier says he gained some insight about their past life during a sleepover in Grade 5.

They had shared enough that night that I kind of pieced together they had probably had some pretty tough experiences growing up."

The twins didn't make a habit of talking about what happened to them in Scarborough.

That was just something we kept in the dark," Richard says.

The brothers were inseparable, but each possessed traits that set them apart from each other.

Attila, who had curly brown hair and intense brown eyes, was bigger and more physical than Richard.

I think Attila was always kind of the athlete and one you wouldn't necessarily get into a scrap with," says Hosier, a Toronto-based documentary maker.

But Richard, although smaller and less aggressive, carried an aura of uncanny durability - the toughest kid we know," Hosier says.

This reputation was burnished during an after-school baseball game, when Richard cast his eyes skyward to snag a pop fly.

On the ball's way down, the batter took another swing and cracked Richard in the face and hand.

The whole field just gasped," Hosier says. And Richard just turned around and didn't blink an eye, like it was perfectly fine."

That's how Richard remembers it, too. They thought nothing was wrong with me because I wasn't crying." But he'd broken his hand.

Not one to seek attention, Richard was quiet, even-keeled and more focused on others, Hosier recalls. He just seemed saintly."

But together, Attila and Hosier formed a rambunctious duo of nuisance-grade troublemakers," hurling snowballs at passing cars or goofing off in French class.

The twins thrived through these better times, weaving themselves into the social fabric of Lindsay.

But the long, brutal shadow of the past torment was still cast over them during quiet, private moments together.

We slept in the same bed up until we were 14 after our abuse," Richard says. We slept back to back ... so we didn't feel like someone was behind us."

Meanwhile, Attila's stock on the diamond hit a high note when he led the Lindsay Lakers to a provincial crown.

He pitched a seven-inning, two-hit shutout, notching eight strikeouts, a feat celebrated in the local newspaper.

He single-handedly won us an all-Ontario championship," says Andrew Doble, another close friend.

Later, they were invited to try out for an elite eastern Ontario team that would travel to tournaments, including the United States.

During the tryout, Doble was paired with Attila.

I just remember he threw three fastballs by me, and I couldn't even comprehend to swing."

That pretty much ruined his chances of making the cut, and later in the car, Attila apologized.

I said, You know what, you're amazing, and I knew you could do this,'" says Doble, a property assessor in northern Ontario.

But Attila just didn't have the wherewithal to keep up with the touring squad, despite a talent that was head and shoulders above the crowd, he laments.

He would have gone to college on a full-ride scholarship. I know that for a fact. He was an absolutely amazing baseball player."

At 18, Richard and Attila were both back with their biological family in east Toronto.

Attila continued to play competitive baseball, but soon started showing signs of serious mental illness.

Doble thought it was odd not to see any trace of Attila, once a close friend, on Facebook.

All of the sudden, it was just like he kind of fell off the edge of the world."

Hosier, who left Lindsay for university, remembers strange messages from Attila over social media. It would just be gibberish."

Rick Gerris, the boys' foster parent in Lindsay, was struck by Attila's change in demeanour during a return visit over Christmas years later.

Out for Chinese food, he kept his hoodie up the whole time; his eyes darted suspiciously at people entering and exiting the restaurant. He wouldn't accept a hug.

He'd turned into something else. It really was heart-wrenching," Gerris remembers.

And, of course, wherever Attila went, (his twin brother) followed along behind him. He just took care of him."

Richard, understanding Attila was in a vulnerable state, worried gangs in their neighbourhood would prey on his brother, especially after the financial settlement.

I actually had to move him out of Toronto when we got our money for his safety. He would have been shot dead in the streets."

At first, Richard booked hotel rooms in Mississauga for his brother, wracking up a tab of about $60,000.

Then, they tried an Airbnb condo near Square One Shopping Centre, but Attila got kicked out.

Richard called police dozens of times to have his increasingly ill brother hospitalized to ensure his safety.

But they were Band-Aid interventions. He was put in hospital only to be discharged to the street in what became a dispiriting cycle.

It was just like spinning your wheels. We kept trying and trying and trying, but nothing was happening. There was no improvement."

At a loss, and with funds running low, Richard decided to move Attila to Hamilton, which was known for its strong network of social services.

He rented a house on Wentworth Street North, where Attila lived with a former foster cousin and employees of his fledgling masonry business.

Attila got along with the familiar young men, but the home had a rat infestation and an unco-operative landlord.

Unable to sleep, he grew restless and wandered the streets, staying away from the house for extended periods.

When issues with the landlord came to a head, Richard found himself struggling once again to land a stable home for his brother.

He's schizophrenic. It's so hard to find a landlord for somebody who has episodes like that."

Alex says his son would only stay with him for short stints as he became increasingly entrenched in street life.

Richard, meanwhile, reached a breaking point.

He was exhausted from long hours on the road between work, home, where he had a newborn baby daughter and girlfriend, and with his brother at St. Joseph's.

I was just overloaded with everything."

So he relinquished his power of attorney to the Ontario government and placed hope in its resources.

He figured the state would have more resources to make sure Attila stayed medicated and received the attention he needed.

It seemed to work for a time.

After a discharge from hospital, Attila found stability in a lodging home on Robinson Street in the Durand neighbourhood.

His room was tidy. There was a common area where everyone played games, watched VHS or DVDs. It was a lively area to live and a happy place for people with schizophrenia," Richard says.

But less than a year later, for reasons Richard doesn't know, his brother's stay at the lodging home ended.

He wound up at Sampaguita Lodge and Rest Home on Bay Street South - his last address before dying on the roof of Jackson Square in early May.

I feel terrible that he went into that house," Richard says.

For a while, at least, Attila's life at 265 Bay St. S. seemed tranquil.

Ever the scavenger," and fit at six feet tall and 180 pounds, Attila hoofed it across the city, collecting little trinkets" and pretty-looking stones."

He had quite the collection in that house, and those were his worldly possessions," Richard says.

His brother seemed to get along with the residents, mostly older adults.

But all was not well. His mattress had bedbugs, Richard says, recalling his brother scratching his itchy legs.

Sharing a room with a man he didn't know wasn't the best scenario, either.

He was very fearful at night and with someone else," Richard says.

Tensions boiled over when the home's operator took issue with friends Attila had over just as health officials started sounding alarm about the COVID-19 pandemic.

On March 11, after about nine months, his stay ended abruptly when Sampaguita's operator ejected him.

The next day, Attila returned with his father and uncle to collect his belongings and demand a refund of the rent he'd paid out of his disability pension.

In June, upon learning of Attila's death, Sampaguita owner Amelia Acierto told The Spectator the lodge warned him more than once not to have friends over.

She also alleged he'd punched a resident in the shoulder two days before his departure. Richard maintains Attila wouldn't have assaulted anyone unless he'd felt threatened.

The eviction, we did it right," Acierto said, despite the lack of required notice under Ontario's Residential Tenancies Act.

But she acknowledged personal support workers at Sampaguita couldn't handle Attila. The proper care is in the hospital."

Attila's death less than two months after losing his room laid bare the inextricable ties between health and housing stability.

Past trauma and mental illness are recognized by social workers, health professionals and academic researchers as common factors in homelessness.

A Mental Health Commission of Canada study in 2014 involving 2,148 homeless participants with mental illnesses found a significant number had been abused in childhood: 62 per cent (emotionally), 55 per cent (physically) and 38 per cent (sexually).

But bridging gaps between the two sectors remains a work in progress for governments and organizations.

Just getting somebody who's homeless a house is the right thing to do," Toronto MP Adam Vaughan told The Spectator after his government announced $10.8 million in Hamilton rapid-housing projects last month.

But the better thing to do is to get housing with supports and those supports nine times out of 10 are medical," added Vaughan, a parliamentary secretary who focuses on the federal housing file.

We're making headway on the housing piece, but there's a huge piece on the health front that needs to be added to the mix to make these sustainable over the long term," he said.

The Mental Health Commission of Canada has called on governments to dedicate nine per cent of overall health spending to mental health.

However, in the fiscal year before the pandemic, the province allocated less than 2.5 per cent of the entire $58-billion health care budget to mental health and addictions," Camille Quenneville, CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association Ontario, said in an emailed statement.

Meaningful and ongoing funding is needed so that Ontarians can treat their mental health like their physical health and have access to high-quality programs and supports no matter where they live in the province."

How private lodging homes such as Sampaguita, also known as residential care facilities, should fit into the mix remains a long-standing question.

Of 83 residential care facilities in Hamilton, the city subsidizes 50 homes with total monthly expenditures that average about $540,000.

They house some of the city's most vulnerable residents, including frail, older adults, people with developmental disabilities, mental illnesses and addictions.

Some of the these homes, including Sampaguita, have come under city scrutiny for substandard conditions, ranging from poor sanitary practices and pest infestations to improper storage of medication and inadequate meals.

In June, with advocates pressing the city to improve oversight, Coun. Brad Clark cited Attila's tragic unnecessary" death as a catalyst for a city liaison position to field complaints from residents, loved ones and employees.

But an overarching review of Hamilton's network of residential care facilities is running more than a year in the making.

Unfortunately, with the onset of COVID-19, staff were required to turn attention to pandemic response, which has delayed next steps," a city spokesperson noted in an email. Further steps are planned for early 2021."

Information on how many of the roughly 710 residents of lodges subsidized by the city have mental-health issues wasn't available.

But the review includes local health-care partners to explore opportunities of providing additional supports," the city says.

A dire need" for affordable housing is the linchpin of Hamilton's homelessness crisis, says Sue Phipps, chief executive officer of the Canadian Mental Health Association's Hamilton branch.

But resources, including mental-health services, to help people stay housed are also under-resourced. That holds true, by varying degrees, for those who live in residential care facilities, Phipps says.

Five staff members of CMHA Hamilton provide support for 28 of the 50 residential care facilities licensed by the city. Sampaguita, where Attila lived, is not one of them.

We're there strictly to support the clients, so you do have to be respectful that we're going into a private home. We have to essentially be welcomed by the owners," Phipps said.

At least once a week, staff lead social and therapeutic group activities, such as crafts, crosswords and games, or outings to the art gallery, library or coffee shops. They also offer one-on-one counselling and advocacy for clients who ask for it.

Phipps adds it's important for lodging-home operators to know about trauma-informed" practice, a recognition of how past events, such as childhood abuse, can influence behaviour.

We wouldn't necessarily have people sharing rooms and we would ensure that those rooms could lock at night."

But Phipps also recognizes personal support workers responsible for the care of dozens of residents - some with acute mental health needs - can be challenged to handle outbursts and conflicts.

Calvin Cain says CMHA Hamilton's visits to Sunrise Lodge, the residential care facility he operates on Park Street South, are helpful. For the ones who participate, anyway."

But Cain, who's also Hamilton regional director for the Ontario Homes for Special Needs Association, says operators need more support from health partners when residents experience crises.

He says such highly charged situations can put operators in untenable positions, especially if a person refuses to speak to COAST, a phone- and mobile-based crisis service run by police and St. Joseph's Healthcare.

St. Joseph's didn't respond to a request for comment about what services it offers residential care facilities in Hamilton.

As it stands, Cain says, a funding shortfall makes it difficult for operators to hire staff with mental-health expertise or train employees to care for people with high needs.

A lack of information during intake can also lead to lodging homes taking on mentally ill residents they later realize they're not able to handle, he adds.

Mixing older adults with people who have schizophrenia under the same roof in catch-all" residences is fraught with challenges.

You have to weigh the condition of both to see if they're compatible," Cain says. And if they're not compatible, you can't just fill that bed just for the sake of filling the bed."

Attila didn't ask for much, Richard says.

A little bit of humanity."

That, and organized activities alone or just someone to talk to, in his brother's lodging home would have made a big difference, he says.

It's all about keeping people's minds occupied and putting them in a happy place."

And it's not as if Attila was looking for a four-star meal," he adds. He was looking for a place to stay and people to kind of be his friend."

Stephanie Cox, a lawyer with the Hamilton Community Legal Clinic, is helping Richard push the province to conduct the coroner's inquest into his brother's death.

One of the main goals of a coroner's inquest is to identify system gaps and failures and more importantly obtain recommendations/directions for improvement," Cox said. A systemic response is required to ensure that others are not victims of this system."

In the meantime, Richard has started making weekly trips from Mississauga to Hamilton to get to know people who live on the street like Attila did for spells.

He has joined Helping Hamilton's Homeless, a small organization of volunteers who helped his brother, in handing out care packages to those in need.

In sharing his brother's story, Richard also wants to dispel misconceptions about people experiencing homelessness and mental illness.

I feel that the general public doesn't really have a grasp or understanding of people who appear crazy, but they're actually hurting on the inside."

He and Attila once dreamed about working together, says Richard. Inseparable, they also aspired to live together once they aged out of the system. It didn't work out that way.

But they remain close. Attila's ashes sit in an urn on a shelf in Richard's bedroom.

Sometimes, his brother tags along with him to work. Other times, he puts Attila in a backpack for a motorcycle ride.

I just want him to have the same experiences that I have."

Teviah Moro is a Hamilton-based reporter at The Spectator. Reach him via email: tmoro@thespec.com