WINNIPEG – The family of a 15-year-old Winnipeg girl who was seriously assaulted while in government care says she was a talented musician with a bright future who needed extra support.
The girl instead was placed in a downtown hotel and is now in hospital clinging to life after the attack, they said.
READ MORE: Winnipeg teen assault victim taken off life support
A boy who was also in the care of Child and Family Services at the same hotel faces charges in the assault.
The girl’s relatives turned to family services for help after she fell in with the wrong crowd, said family friend David Harper, grand chief of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak.
They want to know how things could have gone so wrong, he said.
The girl has been taken off life support and her fate should push the province to make fundamental changes to social services, Harper said.
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“That young girl had a lot of potential,” Harper said Thursday. “Instead of giving her that help … they put her in hotels.”
Derek Nepinak, grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, said the girl’s family gathered at the hospital Wednesday and made the agonizing decision to unhook the machines that were keeping her alive.
“They are at her bedside now in a heartbreaking situation,” Nepinak said late Wednesday night.
RELATED: Manitoba kids kept in jail because nowhere else to go: watchdog
The girl’s story is eerily similar to that of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine, whose great-aunt contacted Child and Family Services when she had difficulty managing the teen last August. Fontaine was brought to Winnipeg, where she was reported missing from foster care.
She was eventually picked up by social workers after being found passed out in a downtown alley, her family has said, but she ran away again.
Her body was found wrapped in a bag in the Red River more than a week later.
Manitoba has about 10,000 children in care. The vast majority are aboriginal. On any given day, dozens of those children are put up in hotels because there isn’t room in a foster or group home.
Manitoba Family Services Minister Kerri Irvin-Ross has promised to stop housing foster children in hotels by June 1 — a promise the province has made before. The governing NDP have been criticized for housing foster children in hotels for 15 years.
Manitoba’s children’s advocate has released several critical reports about the practice since 2000 and has urged the government to find better alternatives.
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