PWAC Victoria: Sid Tafler, Writing Sample

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The Lonely Death of Reena Virk

by Sid Tafler © 1998

The story of the brutal murder of a 14-year-old girl at the hands of her "friends." A version of this article was published in Saturday Night, Apr. 1998.

Part 1 of 2

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Samson has long bushy fur as white as falling snow. His owners discourage him from going down to the water, where the beach is thick mud, and he usually obeys. But in mid-November, in cold, foul weather, the big Samoyed tramped down to the beach below his home three days in a row to investigate. Back on the deck, he barked down at the water. Lynda Miller described it later as a warning bark. But she ignored it at the time.

Later that week, on Saturday, November 22, the metallic roar of a search helicopter blasted out all other sounds in the usually quiet waterside neighbourhood in Saanich, Victoria's biggest bedroom community.

Eight days after she went missing, 14-year-old Reena Virk's body, brutally beaten and drowned, was spotted by police from the air a few feet off the beach where Samson had muddied his white paws. But even if Miller had gone down to the water that week, she might not have identified the floating object as a human body. Only part of an arm was reaching out above the water line. It looked like a log, said neighbour Jeff Hanman, even after he knew what it was.

As details of the murder were revealed, shock waves spread through the city, across the country and around the world. The day before the body was found, police had arrested eight suspects, all teenagers, half of them students at Shoreline School, which stands on a hill above the crime scene by the Gorge waterway, a stream-like extension of Victoria Harbour. Two teens were charged with second-degree murder, six with aggravated assault. Police said there were two separate events--an initial beating by one group of kids, then a second beating and the drowning by two other teens.

A series of disturbing elements turned the brutal crime into an international sensation: the victim was young and the motive seemed petty. The accused were young as well, between 14 and 17 years of age, seven of the eight were girls, some of them friends of the girl they beat and drowned. And the thought of a body floating in cold salt water undetected for eight days left a chill in the hearts of thousands of Victoria residents, who treasure the Gorge as a playground for boating, hiking and bird-watching.

Further investigation into the crime and the young victim leads to even more disturbing conclusions: that a supposedly structured, loving family lost control over the fate of their child; that Reena's very believable accusation of sexual abuse remains unresolved--an apparent crime without a criminal; and that Reena herself, a sensitive, caring, empathetic girl, ignored every shrill alarm signal and cast herself in a tragedy that led to her death. A victim since early childhood, Reena assumed the familiar role in exchange for acceptance from a peer group that copied the lifestyle and brutal ethic of the violent street gangs of U.S. inner cities.

Across the city, youth and community groups held rallies and memorials to Reena, young people signed petitions and pinned gold ribbons on their shirts, pledging themselves to non-violence. Hundreds of flowers and notes of sympathy were tied to the Craigflower bridge near the crime scene. Reena's death quickly became a symbol of a community's struggle against senseless youth violence.

In February, three of the girls charged in the first beating were convicted of aggravated assault. Three others pled guilty to a reduced charge of assault causing bodily harm. All six will be sentenced later in April. The murder trial of two other teens--a boy and a girl--is expected in the new year. But the focus on the legal issues, the crime, the trials, the perpetrators, will likely fade away in a few months. The lasting memory is of the teenage victim. In Victoria and across the country, Reena Virk has joined the ranks of celebrities instantly recognized by their picture or first name alone.

Reena is described by relatives and friends as a girl who loved her large extended family and the language and culture of her East Indian heritage. But from her early school years, she was a victim, someone convenient for the schoolyard big-mouths and bullies to harass. These are the roles we act out as children--and often continue to play as adults. The grade school predators recognize their prey in an instant: they look and act different, unsure of themselves, often stand alone, cut off from the protection of the group.

Reena's curse was her size. Tall and heavy, she towered over other Victoria school girls. And, with deep-set eyes and dark skin, she was considered unattractive, "an ugly," as one boy commented to his teacher when her picture was first flashed across the front pages. In schools full of hundreds of children, she felt alone, yearning for the acceptance and embrace of the peer group, a longing that intensified as the years passed.

"To me she felt she deserved all the crappy stuff that happened to her," Balrag Pallan, Reena's uncle and confidante, tells me as we share soup and coffee at a mall restaurant. It was a sentiment I'd heard before: the victim comes to expect the worst, to blame herself, to offer herself up to the next predator. Reena's erratic, reckless behaviour, her conflicting emotions about her family, her need to cling to a peer group at any cost, point to a deeply troubled young girl, a victim waiting to fall into the hands of a brute--or gang of brutes.

"They knew they could pick on her," said another relative, her mother's cousin Beena Kashyap. "They knew her history--not being accepted, unattractive. They knew they could kill her that night."

Manjeet and Suman Virk are attentive, watchful parents who guided Reena and her younger sister Simren, 12, and brother Aman, 10, with a moral compass set to strong religious values. The Virks are a minority within a minority: members of Victoria's small East Indian community of 3,000, but not Sikhs like the vast majority of B.C.'s Indo-Canadians; they are devout Jehovah's Witnesses, attending the Portage Inlet Kingdom Hall on Sundays and even going door to door spreading the message of the end of the world, the devil's work and the promise of redemption for true believers.

Reena was raised as "a classic Daddy's girl," her mother remembers. It was Manjeet who often fed her, dressed her, took her to the park, put her on the swings and slide. When he came home after an evening shift at the Kennametal metal shop, he would often check up on his child asleep in bed before he put down his lunch bucket.

Manjeet and Reena developed "a special bond," he says. "She knew she could count on me at any time. She was very loving, she'd hug me, come close to me. But if I had to discipline her, she knew I meant it. I don't play games."

The family went on trips together--Disneyland twice, Mexico, even India when Reena was seven, where they spent two months visiting family members in Manjeet's home village in the Punjab.

"As a result of this care and love, Reena was a very happy, self-confident, secure and loving child," Manjeet says. But some relatives, including her uncles Balrag and Rav Pallan, say she was isolated from other family members, from those who stand outside the Jehovah's Witness faith. And Manjeet's claim of a secure and loving family stands in dark contrast to Reena's assertion she was sexually abused. She first accused an unnamed relative in India, then claimed her father was the perpetrator--a charge she later recanted. Her parents both insist the charges were a fabrication to gain her the freedom that she sought.

From her early years, Reena found school to be a trying experience. East Indian kids in Victoria usually face a few racial taunts, quickly dismissed as the grunts of the ignorant, but Reena's size and physical maturity made her different. She was humiliated by her peers, a crushing experience for a child so coddled at home. "She struggled with it, sometimes she came home crying," says Suman. "But she never retaliated or got violent."

Reena's "difference" became a pattern that haunted her throughout her life. As she got older she seemed to mature more rapidly. Family friends Chris and Carolyn McPherson remember meeting her when she was 12. Carolyn had met Manjeet at work and remembers he was particularly kind to her, a new employee at Kennametal. They were invited to the Virks' home for dinner and when Reena came to the door, the McPhersons assumed she was the mother of the household. "She was one of those girls who become a woman very young," recalls Chris. "She was a 12-year-old girl trapped in an 18-year-old body."

Entering adolescence, Reena was awkward and overweight--five foot five, 150 pounds. And, perhaps the ultimate curse for a teenage girl, she developed facial hair. The nastiest kids gave her cruel nicknames: "Daddy" and "the Bearded Lady." She had a few friends and playmates, but apparently no intimates. In two months of research for this article, I was unable to find a single close friend, the kind of trusting good buddy every kid seems to have, if not two or three. She preferred the company of older people, her parents say--they didn't tease her. But she continued to crave acceptance from a peer group to guide her through the mysteries of adolescence.

It was at this stage that Reena's strong connection to her family began to disintegrate. In the summer of 1996, at age 13, she started hanging out at Rudd Park, a block from her home on Irma Street north of downtown Victoria, where she met children in foster care, kids from "bad families," in her parents' judgment. Suman describes the story of one of these boys: his mother was a heroin addict, his father a violent abuser whom the boy once attacked with a knife.

True to the Virks' faith, it seemed like the devil was active in the neighbourhood. But Reena pitied these kids and felt drawn to them; they came from broken families, they didn't have a mom and dad. They recognized her as a fellow outcast and took her into their circle. A strenuous tug of war developed with her parents over the people she chose as her friends, a battle which would continue until the night of her death.

"Kids at a certain age start striving for independence with every cell in their body," Manjeet said, spreading his fingers. "But as a father, you still want to protect your children."

The kids at the park were smoking and Reena began puffing the evil weed--a particularly nasty vice in the Virks' moral order. Some were staying out all night. Reena wondered aloud why these kids didn't have curfews and seemingly had total freedom, while she had to follow strict family codes. She looked like an adult and wanted the freedom to act like one. But her parents ordered her to stay away from her new friends, and when she broke that stricture and lied about it, they grounded her for the weekend.

A few days after the weekend detention, Reena broke free. She woke up very early one morning while the rest of the house was asleep and went to a neighbour's home. The Ministry of Children and Families was notified and Reena told a social worker she had been sexually abused--five years previously--by an old relative during the family visit in India. Reena said she was unhappy at home and wanted to be placed in foster care and the social worker began making the arrangements.

The Virks had never so much as left their kids with a baby-sitter. The thought of their child living with strangers, foster parents, was horrifying. They negotiated a compromise--Reena's maternal grandparents, Tarsem and Mukand Lal Pallan, would take the girl.

Reena seemed to adjust well to her stay at her grandparents', who live across town in the Cedar Hill area with their son Balrag, 34 and still single. Suman's mother Tarsem converted to the Jehovah's Witness creed over 30 years ago--against the wishes of her husband who remained a Hindu. Two of her five children, including Suman, remained Witnesses, but the other three rejected the faith. The parting of ways created a split in the family which still engenders hostility today.

Reena enrolled in a new school--Lansdowne Jr. High--and helped out as a volunteer at Aberdeen Hospital, an old folks' home, thinking of becoming a nurse. Tarsem, 60, remembers the time fondly. Every day she sent Reena off to school and waited for her to come home--just like in her "olden days" when she was raising five children. "She was full of love and we were real close." In the evenings, they watched East Indian videos together, embracing each other on the living room sofa.

The stay was for a fixed period. After the Christmas holidays, in early January of last year, Reena was scheduled to come home. But during the break, she dropped a bombshell. She told her grandmother the person who had abused her was not some obscure unnamed relative in India, but her own father. Her grandmother passed this shocking news on to Manjeet and Suman and to elders in the church.

Tarsem won't discuss the allegation in specific terms, but stands by Manjeet. "My son-in-law is a wonderful father and a good provider. He loves Reena." Her explanation for Reena turning against her father is rebelliousness fed by her wayward friends and her surge of physical maturity. "Her hormones were working. She had a big body and a small age."

Stung by the accusation against him, Manjeet immediately phoned the Ministry of Children and Families and was referred to the Saanich Child Protection Team. He desperately told the team leader of his daughter's allegation, pleaded his innocence and asked for help. A week went by and nothing happened. He phoned again, spoke to another Ministry worker. Again, he says, the Ministry took no action. The Ministry refuses to comment.

Two weeks later, on January 10, the day Reena was supposed to return home, she repeated the charge at school. School officials informed police and this time the Ministry got involved. Reena got her wish--instead of returning home, she was allowed to stay with her grandparents until the end of the school year. And Manjeet was arrested that same day outside his home and held overnight, his house searched, his two younger children interrogated. He was charged with sexual interference and invitation to sexual touching in 1990 and 1991. He was also charged with uttering threats on December 26, 1996, after Reena disclosed the accusation to her grandmother and he reacted angrily. He insists he never threatened her, just berated her for falsely accusing him. He was released on bail and ordered to stay away from his daughter.

Go to Part 2

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Last updated: April 23, 2001 http://www.islandnet.com/pwacvic/tafler04.html