Review sought after teen hangs self

Indigenous girl spent life in government care

WINNIPEG • A Manitoba judge is suggesting services for high-risk youth be reviewed following the death of an Indigenous teenage girl who hanged herself after spending most of her life in government care.

Provincial Judge Shauna Hewitt-Michta said in an inquest report released Wednesday that federal law forbids incarceration for child-welfare purposes, but there must be ways to prevent high-risk children in care from running away and facing grave danger.

“It is difficult to make a detailed recommendation but equally tough to ignore the opportunity this inquest offers to draw attention to the need for adequate safe and secure foster placement options for high-risk youth in crisis,” Hewitt-Michta

SHE DIED IN A CORRECTIONAL FACILITY, BUT THE EVIDENCE SUGGESTS SHE WAS MORE LIKELY TO HAVE DIED ON THE STREETS.

wrote in her 72-page report.

Hewitt-Michta examined the 2013 death of a 16-yearold runaway, who cannot be identified. The girl was seized from her family at birth, ran away from foster homes and group homes and was exploited by gangs to work in the sex trade.

The judge’s report said that a year before her suicide, the girl had been placed in a Winnipeg facility specializing in sexually exploited youth, but she continued to end up on the streets. An agency placed her in a facility far from Winnipeg, hoping the distance would dissuade her from running away.

The girl’s situation improved for a few months, but she fought with other girls at the facility and disappeared while visiting family members. She was found again in the sex trade and was sent to another home in Brandon.

After being arrested for a drugstore theft, she was placed in the youth section of the Brandon jail and hanged herself with a bed sheet.

“She died in a correctional facility, but the evidence suggests she was more likely to have died on the streets while on the lam from (the facility),” Hewitt-Michta wrote.