Canadian Justice System Fails Tina Fontaine.
Written by: Corne Van Hoepen
Gasps and cries were heard throughout the Winnipeg courtroom as the judge delivered the verdict of not guilty in the case of murdered Manitoba resident Tina Fontaine.
“F — k you if you think you can get away with this,” said Fontaine’s biological mother, Valentina Duck before storming out of the courtroom.
The body of 15-year-old Tina was found in Winnipeg’s Red River on Aug. 17, 2014 close to the city centre. She was discovered wearing pink high-top sneakers and a green fleece sweater. Her body was wrapped in plastic and a duvet cover, weighed down by approximately 11 kilograms of rocks.
Raymond Cormier, a Caucasian male aged 56, was accused of murdering Tina. It took more than a year before he was charged with second-degree murder, and having faced at least 92 previous convictions, he was no stranger to the courtroom.
The not-guilty verdict comes one week after Gerald Stanley, a white farmer was found not guilty of killing a 23-year-old Métis boy named Coleton Boushie. There was a large public outcry as it became public knowledge that lawyers used their peremptory strikes to get rid of two Indigenous jury members, resulting in an all-white jury.
The R.C.M.P had been covertly recording Cormier during a six-month undercover operation, and in one recording, Cormier tells a woman “there is a little girl in a grave someplace screaming at the top of her lungs for me to finish the job. And guess what? I finished the job.” This recording was considered inadmissible in the courts due to static and crackling in the background. Three witnesses also testified that Cormier owned the same kind of duvet cover as the one that Tina’s body was discovered in.
On Tina’s last day, she was in a vehicle that was driven by a man who was in his 30’s. He was arrested for driving with a suspended license and despite the fact that Tina’s name was in the system as a missing person, the two officers let her go off alone. These two officers have since resigned.
“We need to do better,” Tweeted Caroline Bennet, who is the Minister of Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs.
Tina Fontaine’s case was the catalyst for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s movement. The R.C.M.P have released a figure of nearly 1200 women that have been reported murdered or missing between 1980 and 2012, however, activists who are working for the Walk 4 Justice Initiative began collecting names of Indigenous women who were either missing or murdered during this time period, say this number is much closer to 4,232.
“Make sure you hug your kids when you get home. Hug them tight….” Said Grand Chief Dumas after the verdict was read.