‘I’m trapped in hell’ Teen described terror in texts, audio recordings prior to slaying; CFS inquiry on table By: Chris Kitching Posted: 5:40 PM CST Tuesday, Mar. 5, 2024 Last Modified: 10:04 AM CST Wednesday, Mar. 6, 2024 Updates

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A 17-year-old girl feared for her safety and wanted to “get out” of the home she shared with a Carman man now accused of killing her, his partner and his three children, audio recordings and text messages show.

Myah-Lee Gratton sent voice notes to friends that alleged Ryan Manoakeesick was prone to violent outbursts, after dishes were thrown at her, he screamed in her face, and he kicked and threatened to kill his common-law wife in the weeks before the mass slaying.

“I literally had to go outside and scream. I screamed so loud,” Myah-Lee’s mother, Juliette Hastings, said tearfully, while describing the anguish she felt when she first listened to her daughter’s recordings. “The pain I heard (in her voice), and just what she had to go through.”

In a Dec. 9 text message, Myah-Lee said she left a voicemail for her Child and Family Services worker in which she pleaded “to be moved out of” the Carman home where she lived with Manoakeesick and her cousin Amanda Clearwater.

Around the same time, the high school student, who would have turned 18 this month, wrote to a family member: “I feel like I’m trapped in hell.”

Two months later, on Feb. 11, Manoakeesick allegedly killed Myah-Lee, his partner Clearwater, 30, and their three children — two-month-old Isabella, four-year-old Jayven and six-year-old Bethany.

Hastings said she opposed the placement, and CFS failed to heed warnings that Myah-Lee wasn’t safe.

“I told them no. My poor baby is dead, and they never listened to me,” she said Tuesday.

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Hastings said Premier Wab Kinew recently told her he supports a public inquiry into CFS involvement in the case.

Last month, Kinew told reporters he is “open to hearing the questions around a potential inquiry.” He said an internal CFS review is underway.

Hastings is looking for answers, accountability and an apology from CFS.

“I want them to admit they failed my daughter. I want them to admit they denied her her right to a safe home,” she said. “I want them to say sorry.”

Provincial officials have said legislation prevents them from disclosing specifics of Myah-Lee’s case.

“I want them to admit they failed my daughter. I want them to admit they denied her her right to a safe home … I want them to say sorry.”–Juliette Hastings

Myah-Lee was found dead in the Carman home, after police discovered Clearwater’s body in a ditch south of the town and those of the children near a burning vehicle north of Elie.

Manoakeesick, who was arrested near the vehicle, is charged with five counts of first-degree murder. A judge approved his lawyer’s request for a mental fitness assessment.

Audio recordings and screengrabs of messages were sent to Hastings after her daughter was killed. In a voice note from Jan. 6, Myah-Lee said Manoakeesick woke her up around 2 a.m. a couple of days earlier, and screamed while accusing her of stealing from him.

“When he drinks, he goes into one huge episode, because alcohol and his pills don’t mix well,” said Myah-Lee.

She said Clearwater threatened to call the police. The teen said she ended up sleeping in a bathroom.

Myah-Lee told a friend that she, Clearwater and the children left and went to Clearwater’s parents’ home.

“He was non-stop calling Mandy, threatening her: ‘I’m going to kill you. I’m going to peel your skin off when you’re dead,’” she said. “He’s still going today, but Mandy wants us to go home, and I don’t know why.”

In the second recording, a man — alleged to be Manoakeesick — is heard repeatedly coughing and hacking in the background.

“He’s going to the (expletive) mental hospital tonight, because he threatened to kill Mandy last night, and he kicked her… while she was trying to pick up the baby,” said Myah-Lee. “If he doesn’t, then she’s calling the cops on him and then getting him charged.”

Myah-Lee said she recorded video of the incident.

“If he tries to hurt one of us, Mandy wants us to have stuff against him to report,” she said. “If he doesn’t leave, we’re going to call cops and show him all the videos and stuff.”

The “tired” teen said she was sleeping with a backpack full of her belongings because things had been stolen from her.

The third recording mentions an incident in which dishes were thrown at her.

About two months ago, Myah-Lee sent a text message to a family member claiming Manoakeesick pulled a blanket off her while she was sleeping, and accused her of hiding a baby formula lid.

“I really just want to get out of this home,” she wrote.

Hastings said her daughter left her Winnipeg home after an argument, and began staying in the Carman home in April 2023.

She said CFS approved the living arrangement, but failed to do safety or criminal record checks on Manoakeesick.

After the slayings, RCMP would not say if officers had been called to the Carman home in the past.

Hastings now refers to it as the “hell house.” She said she hasn’t had time to grieve properly.

Some of Myah-Lee’s younger siblings are aware of her death, but they don’t know the details.

“They just know their sister’s in heaven. God has her,” said Hastings.

The office of Sherry Gott, Manitoba’s advocate for children and youth, is reviewing Myah-Lee’s involvement with CFS.

After the NDP won the October election, Kinew’s mandate letter to Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine instructed her to work with Indigenous governments and communities “to transfer responsibility of child welfare back to the nations and families where it belongs.”

Hastings supports the transfer.

“CFS, the new residential school, is robbing our children. They’re all falling through the cracks,” she said. “No one is listening to their voices saying I’m getting hurt, or this is happening at home.

“How many other CFS kids are going to die? How many other CFS kids are going to kill themselves because they’ve had enough of the abuse, because nobody is listening?”

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

Chris Kitching
Reporter

Chris Kitching is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He began his newspaper career in 2001, with stops in Winnipeg, Toronto and London, England, along the way. After returning to Winnipeg, he joined the Free Press in 2021, and now covers a little bit of everything for the newspaper. Read more about Chris.

Every piece of reporting Chris produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.