Homicide victims' families healing in support group
Betty-Ann Wassill's son, Michael, was a wonderful man, remembered by his peers as kind, sensitive and selfless.
But she did not get to tell that to the judge or jury at the trial for her son's killer. Instead, she sat in the gallery day after day and relived the worst memories of her life: the day her son was murdered in 2013.
“You're traumatized,” Wassill said in a recent interview, “and all of a sudden you're coming out to a trial and it was like it happened fresh in your mind again. It set us all back.”
It is hard to lose a loved one, but to lose someone to violence is to experience a particularly painful kind of grief — often prolonged by lengthy criminal justice proceedings, public attention and a lack of resources for victims' families. To cope, some, like Wassill, turn to a remarkable support group here in Ottawa.
Once a month, 15 to 20 parents, siblings or friends who have lost loved ones to homicide meet. Before the pandemic, they gathered in rented community centres, but now they do so online. The meetup is known as the Loss to Violence support group. It is run by the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime (CRCVC), and to many of its members it is a lifeline.
“We always refer to it as the group that no one wants to belong to,” said Aline Vlasceanu, executive director of the CRCVC and group facilitator. “Without having people who have gone through the same experiences as you, it's really hard to get the proper support because people just don't understand.”
Wassill remembered her first time coming to the group, sometime after Micheal's death. It was at an Ottawa community centre and the members sat in a circle, introducing themselves and explaining why they were there.
They told stories of loved ones they had lost, and each time the names sounded familiar. Betty-Ann recalled them all from past news reports — the sometimes invasive or traumatizing media coverage of homicides being something they all had in common.
“We were all at different stages,” Wassill said, recalling how some of those in the group had loved ones whose homicides had not yet been solved and how others had been through lengthy judicial appeals by their family members' killers, a process that can take years.
“For me, it was comforting to be in a room with other people, even though it was emotional, to know everybody else was in the same boat in terms of having lost a loved one to a crime,” Wassill said.
Beyond the basic comfort of shared experience, they were able to give each tips and pointers — survival advice, really — on what to expect from the criminal justice system.
The discussions also sometimes included warnings. The family members of those lost to homicide often reject any thought of the accused offender pleading guilty to a lesser charge — a move that would ensure a lighter sentence, but also spare the family and the justice system the burden of a criminal trial. Wassill, after having gone through a lengthy trial, now tells others to keep an open mind toward such possibilities.
“You want the murderer of your loved one to have the absolute harshest conviction,” she said, “but the reality is that to go through a trial is so tragic and the most traumatizing event that I've ever experienced. So that's why it's kind of a Catch-22. You have to decide. It's quite an awful event to go through again.”
The trauma of a trial is an experience many in the group share. The criminal justice system is set up to ensure that the accused's rights are respected, “meanwhile you're sitting there being victimized,” Vlasceanu said. “You're the one that lost a loved one and you don't have a voice until perhaps at the very end, when you have these very specific parameters when you have to put everything you want to say and all your feelings into a few pages of paper and read it at a specific time.”
The CRCVC advocates on behalf of crime victims, but they're funded predominantly by donations, which sometimes leaves them lacking resources. As a general rule, Vlasceanu said, victim support programs are underfunded across Canada.
The lack of resources and funding can amplify the impact of a crime. Victims' families sometimes suffer financially: It is costly to take time off work to attend a criminal trial, pay for parking or even hotels.
Insufficient funding also means there is sometimes insufficient outreach and awareness of what programs exist. Family members experiencing a whirlwind of grief after the loss of a loved one are often unaware or unable to apply on their own for financial assistance.
Vlasceanu said the Loss to Violence group is a resource many others could likely benefit from, but the CRCVC is unable to seriously promote it or expand it.
“I would love to have multiple sessions because right now it's just English,” she said, “but we just lack the funds.”
For Wassill, the group has helped her deal with her grief. During her experiences with the criminal justice system, she said she had a solid support network: the detectives working her son's case, the prosecutor and her family all provided helping hands. The Loss to Violence group has been an extension of that. “You just realize we were lucky,” she said. “We had all that support, but there are other people who won't have that.”
Now, she wants to pass along her knowledge and experience to others, to hopefully ease their pain, help them cope with loss.
But, ultimately, nothing will ever eliminate the grief, she said, and, though everyone deals with it in different ways, for Wassill and her family, it's easier to handle it together.
“We talk about Michael,” she said. “We talk about it. We say if we had a good day, a bad day. We have happy memories. We get together with his friends twice a year, we visit where he was buried and we talk about him.”
“For me, it's been nine years and it's still there.”