A B.C. man who was the victim of a life-changing crime three years ago, says he’s been abandoned by the system.
Michael Forry was left with permanent brain damage after he was struck in the head with a longboard during a confrontation with a 15-year-old boy in 2013. The teen admitted to the vicious beating of the 47-year-old Forry and pleaded guilty to aggravated assault. He was sentenced as a young offender and given two years probation.
Now Forry says that while taxpayers are still supporting the teen who hit him, he is on his own, unable to work and has been forced to give up custody of his daughter.
And he adds that he’s getting little, if any, support.
Pointing to his injuries, Forry says his “skull was smashed and taken out. Eight to 10 inches of my skull was taken off to relieve the pressure, my jaw was smashed up and all my teeth were swollen and my mouth was split open.”
Since then Forry says his recovery has taken years and is ongoing.
“Skull and brain injuries, you don’t really come out as the same person. There was temporal damage. Even to this day, I’m different. For the first couple of years I was a different person.”
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Forry chokes up when he says, “I went into this whole ordeal a single dad and came out of it by myself. I react differently. Logic isn’t the same. I’m a different person.”
After spending five months in hospital, Forry returned to his home in Mackenzie, B.C. with a major case of post-traumatic stress disorder and suffering from grand mal seizures.
The person Forry became after his injury resulted in him handing his then 13-year-old daughter, Ariel, over to his parents, who now live in Squamish. Eventually he signed over guardianship to his parents but Ariel also suffers from the traumatic event.
“My daughter saw me when I was in a coma, so she’s never gotten over it,” he explains.
“The aftermath of this whole thing has made me be alone because the repercussions of this injury, it’s one thing to survive but to make you that much of a different man. And for my daughter, Ariel, to see me as a different person, in a coma with half a skull, is very traumatic. So everybody has been affected.”
Unable to work, Forry’s expenses were initially paid for by his insurance company but that coverage ceased. He applied for financial assistance and benefits through the provincial government’s Crime Victim Assistance Program (CVAP), which is set up to help victims cope with the physical, vocational and emotional effects of violent crime, and was denied.
“The program was supposed to kick in when the insurance runs out,” Forry says.
“I have to pay for my own medication, so now I owe thousands of dollars for medication. I had to remortgage my house.”
Having lost so much since 2013, Forry finds it frustrating that his attacker is still living in government care, supported by the Ministry of Children and Families.
According to Alison Hagreen, executive director of the Prince George Brain Injured Group, victims of crime often have a difficult road to travel.
“Systems nowadays are so complex, so bureaucratic and those are some of the issues that people with brain injuries have,” Hagreen says.
“We spend an awful lot of our time helping people make their way through bureaucratic systems. The systems do exist. They’re not as good as they should be, but they do exist.”
Public Safety Minister Mike Morris told Global News there are “very robust victims services service throughout the province” and that his staff will be reaching out to offer the family whatever assistance they can.
“For any family to go through a situation like that where a family member suffers a permanent injury that is going to be debilitated for the rest of their particular life… that is very traumatic and concerning to us.”
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