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Nine years after Kelly Morrisseau was repeatedly stabbed and left to die in a cold Gatineau parking lot, a friend is speaking out about the handling of her unsolved murder.
Caroline Anawak, a former Ottawa teacher and counsellor who provided a foster home for Morrisseau’s three children, said she had to tell them that their mother had been killed in December 2006.
Anawak said she watched as Morrisseau’s only daughter went through grief, shock, anger, depression, withdrawal, and finally, a kind of “free-floating hostility.”
“I listened when she asked why more wasn’t being done to find the perpetrator,” Anawak wrote in a letter to the Citizen sent to mark the anniversary of Morrisseau’s murder. “There were no answers then and still no answers now.”
In an interview Thursday, Anawak said the Morrisseau case should be front and centre at the federal inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women.
Earlier this week, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould announced the first phase of that inquiry will be launched in the spring after consultations are held to shape its mandate and format.
“My hope is that it looks at root causes: Why women like Kelly Morrisseau are so devalued,” said Anawak, who now lives in Iqaluit. “What are the attitudes and biases that allow people to use them like this, disempower them like this, see them as prey and powerless?
“I’m hoping that the commission will begin to expose to the sleepy Canadian public a lot of stuff about how these women are seen as not equal to other women, not equal to anybody in society.”
Anawak said the Morrisseau case is important not least because it highlights the unequal approach to aboriginal murders taken by police and media.
The murders of Ardeth Wood and Jennifer Teague took place around the same time, she said, but the police resources and media attention focused on those cases dwarfed what was afforded Morrisseau.
Suspects were arrested and convicted in both of those random slayings, but the Morrisseau murder remains unsolved. What’s more, Anawak said, the media portraits of Wood and Teague focused on their innocence and decency, while Morrisseau, 27, was linked to allegations of prostitution and drug use.
“Why wasn’t there the same reaction? The same mobilization? The same community concern? That’s what troubles me,” she said. “Kelly should have received the same kind of treatment.”
Anawak said Morrisseau’s mother, Lisa, moved her family to Winnipeg from the Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba in pursuit of a better life. But after Lisa’s sister was killed in an unsolved homicide south of Winnipeg, she moved again, this time to Ottawa.
Kelly Morrisseau was found unconscious in a parking lot near the Gamelin Street entrance to Gatineau Park early on the morning of Dec. 10, 2006. Seven-and-a-half months pregnant, she had been stabbed more than a dozen times and left near naked on the ground.
Morrisseau and her unborn baby died soon after being taken to hospital.
In 2007, Gatineau police released a composite sketch of a suspect — a young, white male with wavy blond hair — and received 70 tips as a result. But the case faded from the headlines until 2013 when Gatineau police announced that DNA tests were being done that could link an existing murder suspect to the Morrisseau slaying.
No conclusive results were obtained from those tests, however, and the case remains open, said Gatineau police Sgt. Jean-Paul Lemay.
Lemay described the investigation as “active” and said any new leads are thoroughly pursued. He appealed for anyone with information about the case — particularly Morrisseau’s former friends and acquaintances — to contact police at 819-243-2345 ext. 4636.
Morrisseau is one of 1,017 aboriginal women who were murdered in Canada between 1980 and 2012, according to an RCMP report issued in 2014.
查看原文...
Caroline Anawak, a former Ottawa teacher and counsellor who provided a foster home for Morrisseau’s three children, said she had to tell them that their mother had been killed in December 2006.
Anawak said she watched as Morrisseau’s only daughter went through grief, shock, anger, depression, withdrawal, and finally, a kind of “free-floating hostility.”
“I listened when she asked why more wasn’t being done to find the perpetrator,” Anawak wrote in a letter to the Citizen sent to mark the anniversary of Morrisseau’s murder. “There were no answers then and still no answers now.”
In an interview Thursday, Anawak said the Morrisseau case should be front and centre at the federal inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women.
Earlier this week, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould announced the first phase of that inquiry will be launched in the spring after consultations are held to shape its mandate and format.
“My hope is that it looks at root causes: Why women like Kelly Morrisseau are so devalued,” said Anawak, who now lives in Iqaluit. “What are the attitudes and biases that allow people to use them like this, disempower them like this, see them as prey and powerless?
“I’m hoping that the commission will begin to expose to the sleepy Canadian public a lot of stuff about how these women are seen as not equal to other women, not equal to anybody in society.”
Anawak said the Morrisseau case is important not least because it highlights the unequal approach to aboriginal murders taken by police and media.
The murders of Ardeth Wood and Jennifer Teague took place around the same time, she said, but the police resources and media attention focused on those cases dwarfed what was afforded Morrisseau.
Suspects were arrested and convicted in both of those random slayings, but the Morrisseau murder remains unsolved. What’s more, Anawak said, the media portraits of Wood and Teague focused on their innocence and decency, while Morrisseau, 27, was linked to allegations of prostitution and drug use.
“Why wasn’t there the same reaction? The same mobilization? The same community concern? That’s what troubles me,” she said. “Kelly should have received the same kind of treatment.”
Anawak said Morrisseau’s mother, Lisa, moved her family to Winnipeg from the Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba in pursuit of a better life. But after Lisa’s sister was killed in an unsolved homicide south of Winnipeg, she moved again, this time to Ottawa.
Kelly Morrisseau was found unconscious in a parking lot near the Gamelin Street entrance to Gatineau Park early on the morning of Dec. 10, 2006. Seven-and-a-half months pregnant, she had been stabbed more than a dozen times and left near naked on the ground.
Morrisseau and her unborn baby died soon after being taken to hospital.
In 2007, Gatineau police released a composite sketch of a suspect — a young, white male with wavy blond hair — and received 70 tips as a result. But the case faded from the headlines until 2013 when Gatineau police announced that DNA tests were being done that could link an existing murder suspect to the Morrisseau slaying.
No conclusive results were obtained from those tests, however, and the case remains open, said Gatineau police Sgt. Jean-Paul Lemay.
Lemay described the investigation as “active” and said any new leads are thoroughly pursued. He appealed for anyone with information about the case — particularly Morrisseau’s former friends and acquaintances — to contact police at 819-243-2345 ext. 4636.
Morrisseau is one of 1,017 aboriginal women who were murdered in Canada between 1980 and 2012, according to an RCMP report issued in 2014.
查看原文...
