Exclusive: Winnipeg CFS teen attack victim “a beautiful child” from troubled home

WINNIPEG – The 15 year old girl brutally beaten in downtown Winnipeg this week was in the care of Child and Family Services at the request of her grandmother who had trouble controlling her, family members say.

Global News is protecting the identity of the teen who remains in critical condition at Winnipeg’s Children’s Hospital with “severe head trauma.”

A 15 year old boy who was also a ward of CFS and staying in the same downtown hotel as the victim has been charged in the attack early Wednesday morning on Hargrave Street.

Read more: Teenage boy charged in attack on girl was also in CFS care

A Global News reporter visited the girl’s small North End house Thursday and spoke to two family members including the victim’s older brother. He said his grandmother has been caring for him and his sister since birth because their mother was a heavy drinker and “incapable” of raising them. A younger brother has been in foster care from a young age.

But recently the grandmother couldn’t control the teenage girl and turned to Child and Family Services for help.

“She kept wanting to leave, granny couldn’t get her to stay,” her brother said.

The girl’s grandmother and parents were at the hospital with the girl Thursday.

Cathy Bird, whose children attended school up to Grade 8 last year with the victim, described her as “a very kind young girl, very helpful, a beautiful child.”

“She was an athlete, she played on the basketball team and the volleyball team with my kids, she was just a normal teenager, like to hang out and chit chat.”

WATCH: Cathy Bird reacts to 15-year-old charged in attack on teen girl in CFS care

Bird, who says she was also in CFS care as a child, criticized the placement of the girl in the Best Western Charter House Hotel in downtown Winnipeg: the place 15 year old Tina Fontaine stayed in CFS care shortly before going missing and being found dead in the Red River last summer. Police say she was murdered.

“There’s not proper supports for them in the hotels, they need to be better equipped with staff that they don’t go missing and stuff,” she said.

When informed by a Global News reporter that the suspect in the case is also a teenage CFS ward who was staying in the same hotel, Bird was shocked.

“Where are the people that were supposed to be watching them, were they sleeping? Like, get real you guys, get a grip on yourselves.”

Manitoba’s Family Services minister Kerri Irvin-Ross promised Wednesday that all CFS kids in hotels will be moved to safer locations by June 1st.

With files from Lauren McNabb