‘The system, everything… in Tina’s life failed her’

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This article was published 21/02/2018 (2254 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

She entered the courtroom crying, and Thelma Favel’s tears did not stop once the jury declared its verdict.

“My baby girl, my baby girl, my baby girl.”

From the centre of a prayer circle that surrounded her, moments after an 11-member jury acquitted Raymond Cormier of second-degree murder in the death of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine, the woman who raised Tina cried.

She cried as family, friends, supporters and Indigenous leaders spoke the words to the Lord’s Prayer. She cried as a complement of sheriffs led Cormier out a back door of the Winnipeg courtroom, his ankles still in chains. She cried as the courtroom emptied, as the circle enveloped her and guided her into the hallway.

“That’s my baby,” Favel, Tina’s great-aunt, repeated, her voice strained through sobs. “They took my baby away from me again, like her life didn’t matter.”

After a three-week trial and about 13 hours of deliberations, jurors found Cormier, 56, not guilty Thursday afternoon, in a case that sparked international attention to the plight of the many missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls across Canada.

Nearly four years after Tina’s body was pulled from the Red River, her diminutive body tied in a duvet cover and weighed down with rocks, Favel, her family, and the community at large were left reeling.

In the wake of the decision, Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal thanked the jurors for the “difficult task” of their civil service.

Meanwhile, Tina’s mother, Valentina Duck, cursed and threatened Cormier as she left the room.

 

“Just you wait,” Duck said over her shoulder, glaring at a silent Cormier, who was seated in the prisoner’s box.

Favel, who was Tina’s primary caregiver, later made a plea for peace and calm, via her supporters.

As a crowd of reporters waited outside the courthouse to document reactions to a verdict that prompted official statements from Manitoba’s justice minister, the Winnipeg Police Service and Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman, Indigenous leaders prepared to face the cameras with another prayer. This one to the Creator, asking for strength to continue to advocate for justice and uphold Tina’s legacy.

“To be the shield for the youth that we lost today,” Grand Chief Arlen Dumas of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs said, as he led the prayer and then stepped outside into the frosty air, just as the sun slipped below the horizon.

“All the systems that were to protect Tina failed her,” Dumas said.

“How can we talk about reconciliation when the very nets that we’re asked to participate in do not fulfil what they’re supposed to fulfil? We can no longer maintain these mechanisms that are prescribed to us. If we want reconciliation and to truly protect our children and our families, we can no longer allow the status quo to exist. This is unacceptable.”

Crown prosecutors have 30 days to file an appeal of the decision; there was no immediate word on whether they will do so.

Legally, the jurors — seven women and four men, some of whom are visible minorities — had only two choices in this case.

If they believed Tina died by an unlawful act Cormier committed, they were to find him guilty. If they didn’t believe Tina died by an unlawful act — the official cause of her death was undetermined — or if they didn’t believe Cormier committed the unlawful act that caused her death, they were to find him not guilty of second-degree murder.

The lesser charge of manslaughter was not an option in this case.

“Clearly, to me, they considered a lot,” said defence lawyer Tony Kavanagh. “To me, it was about the time that I would have expected,” for jurors to spend on their deliberations, based on the legal instructions they were given and the evidence in the case.

Kavanagh and Andrew Synynshyn, who represented Cormier throughout the trial, thanked everyone involved in the case, and said they were aware of its wider implications, as well as the potential risk to Cormier’s safety after his acquittal.

Justice Minister Heather Stefanson said she can’t comment on the specifics of the case because of the appeal period, but she described Tina’s death “a horrible tragedy” for all Manitobans.

“My heart is with her family as they continue to grieve the loss of their beautiful 15-year-old girl,” Stefanson said in a statement.

Cormier was one of the last people to see Tina alive. They met in Winnipeg in the summer of 2014, when Cormier was riding his bicycle down Charles Street and Tina and her teenage boyfriend stopped the much older homeless man and told him they had nowhere to go.

Cormier admitted he was sexually attracted to Tina and admitted arguing with her before she died. His last words to Tina, he said, were “go jump off a bridge.”

There was no DNA or forensic evidence linking Cormier to Tina’s body, even though investigators believed the duvet cover her body was found wrapped in belonged to him.

Cormier repeatedly denied killing the teen, but Crown prosecutors argued the jury should have convicted him based on what they said were admissions of guilt in covertly recorded conversations. The defence presented different interpretations of those same recordings, and attempted to have the case tossed for lack of evidence prior to the jury’s deliberations.

Cormier was considered a suspect early in the investigation, and was first arrested and questioned on Oct. 1, 2014. He wasn’t charged, but was jailed on theft and breach charges until June 2015, when the Winnipeg Police Service began a six-month undercover investigation that ended with Cormier’s arrest for second-degree murder in December 2015.

In a statement following the verdict, the WPS declined comment on the case, but said it “conducted an extensive investigation into the murder of Tina Fontaine.”

When she didn’t return home to Favel after what was supposed to be a weeklong visit with her mother in Winnipeg, Tina was taken into care of Child and Family Services. She didn’t stay long in any of her placements, ended up selling drugs to make money, and was believed to have been sexually exploited on city streets. She was reported missing four times to the WPS in the month before her body was found in the Red River on Aug. 17, 2014.

The national conversation and calls to action that were renewed when Tina died are not over, Stefanson said in her statement.

“This is not the end of the discussion about murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls. There have been far too many victims both in our province and across the country. Our government will never give up on our work to end the marginalization and violence that too many Indigenous women and girls experience in Manitoba.”

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay