Holding BB gun to her head at Portage and Main a ‘cry for help’, but court praises teen’s progress

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This article was published 28/04/2017 (3315 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Before she donned a white mask, picked up a replica handgun and walked in circles through traffic at the city’s busiest intersection one summer morning, a Winnipeg teen had spent her childhood dealing with the fallout of a family history of mental illness and an unstable upbringing. She was a child forced to act as an adult before she was ready, and to cope she turned to drugs, alcohol and negative peers — none of which helped her get a handle on her own mental illness.

After a standoff with police at Portage and Main, as traffic snarled and motorists watched in fear to see what would happen to the girl holding a gun to her own head, she told officers the public stunt was her way to “put on a show for the city.” She sees now, after months of mental-health treatment, that it was a cry for help. And it was the criminal-justice system, where she ended up, that was tasked with giving her the “fatherly advice” she needed to set her on the path toward a bright future.

The case of the young woman, who can’t be identified under provisions in the Youth Criminal Justice Act, has highlighted the growing need for prompt, comprehensive mental-health care for Manitoba youth and their families, before it’s too late.

Manitoba is “significantly under-funding” mental-health services for children and teens, particularly the kind of therapy options that could help nip their mental-health concerns in the bud before they become too severe, said Marion Cooper, executive director of the Canadian Mental Health Association for Winnipeg and Manitoba.

“What we see, unfortunately, with mental-health services is that often the services that they’re funded to deliver are the services that are for the most sick kids,” she said. “What we need is early intervention for the kids that are starting to struggle so that we can actually get the help they need early, so that we can avoid some of this involvement with the child-welfare system or involvement with the criminal-justice system.”

A recent report from the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy found children from lower-income families were more likely to have a mental disorder and that children with suicidal behaviours were nine times more likely to be accused of a crime.

What’s needed most in the province is greater access to specific types of therapy that can help kids who have experienced childhood trauma, Cooper said. “There is definitely more need in our community and we haven’t seen any investments in increasing mental-health services for this particular group of youth, and we have a lot of kids falling through the cracks.”

The young woman pleaded guilty to possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose for waving around in public what turned out to be a black BB gun — it looked like a real handgun, and “it’s only by the professionalism of the police that they were able to defuse the situation with no injuries,” the Crown attorney said. She was given a conditional discharge Thursday. If she follows her court-ordered conditions for 18 months, she won’t have a criminal record — a potential consequence that arose primarily out of her lack of support to begin with.

Had she been 18 at the time of the incident, the case would likely have been diverted to Winnipeg’s mental-health court — a criminal-justice resource that doesn’t exist for youth. As it stands, the young woman spent time in adult jail after her 18th birthday for getting out of a precarious home environment — in violation of a bail condition to live with her father, who court heard suffers from addiction and mental illness.

She “was put in the position of feeling safe or following her conditions,” said Crown attorney Julia Negrea, who dropped the breach charges Thursday.

“You guys made me smile a couple times,” the young First Nations woman told court Thursday after hearing Crown and defence lawyers praise her for “doing remarkably well” on her bail conditions and “exceeding expectations” despite the challenges she faced growing up. The young woman said reading through her own “heartbreaking” pre-sentence report, which is not publicly accessible under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, overwhelmed her. She said her desire to be perfect “just drove me crazy” and she was surprised at the positive comments included in the report — a report created because of her criminal charges.

“I’m actually pretty happy… that you guys understand,” she said softly.

Before he imposed the 18-month conditional discharge with 100 hours of community service, provincial court Judge Murray Thompson offered the young woman some advice — ranging from the importance of her education to healthy relationships and confidence, to letting go of the guilt she may carry because of her tumultuous childhood.

“You talked about this as a cry for help. That’s exactly the way I see it. And I’m pleased to see that you got some help, and I hope you understand that everyone here today is hoping that you continue to get the help that you had asked for and need and deserve,” the judge told the teen.

“Be more confident about who you are. You’ve got a lot of strengths that you don’t recognize. You’re a good person. Just take it as it comes, OK?”

It’s not uncommon for players in the criminal-justice system to act as supports for kids who don’t have stable families to turn to, said Marg Synyshyn, CEO of the Manitoba Adolescent Treatment Centre, which offers centralized intake for mental-health services in the region and provides court-ordered assessments for youth in custody.

“I have to say that a lot of people that work in the criminal-justice system and work with kids are really very caring and very tuned in, and a lot of the judges are, too — very tuned in to the difficulties that these kids are coming with,” Synyshyn said.

“A lot of these kids come with trauma that happened very early in life, and that in and of itself is problematic because it really puts them at risk for so many more difficulties,” she added. “They don’t necessarily come with a good start.”

Early intervention and access to therapy is key to preventing children’s mental-health concerns from getting out of control — and providing support to families can go a long way, Synyshyn said.

“A lot of times, if you can support the parent, in fact that’s really helpful for the whole family.”

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay