PWAC Victoria: Sid Tafler, Writing Sample

The Reading Room

The Lonely Death of Reena Virk (continued)

by Sid Tafler © 1998

Conclusion to the story of the brutal murder of a 14-year-old girl at the hands of her "friends," a version of which was published in Saturday Night, Apr. 1998.

Part 2 of 2

Go to Part 1

In April, Reena decided to leave her grandparents' home, and asked to be placed in foster care. Her parents say she wanted more freedom than her grandmother would give her. She spent the summer at her new foster home in Colwood, a suburb west of Victoria, and visited relatives frequently, including her uncles Balrag and Rav and her mother's cousin Beena.

She grew close to her relatives, including many she had hardly seen in her formative years because of the religious strictures. She was especially close to Balrag, who had lived with her at her grandparents' home for eight months.

Reena was hanging out with a rough crowd of kids, Balrag recalls. She had graduated from the playground smokers at Rudd Park to a new crowd of street kids, some involved in criminal activity. "I used to lecture her quite a bit. I told her I wouldn't hang out with those people--they're a bunch of losers. But she thought these kids were cool. She just wanted to be accepted so badly. She was lost--she didn't know her place in the world."

Balrag was shocked when Reena showed him track marks on her arm, inside her elbow. It was heroin, she said, and she got it from her friends. "I told her, there's only two places you're going to go. You're going to be dead or you're going to be in jail."

Disclosing the drug use, says Balrag, "was a cry for help. She knew the path she was taking was not going to lead anywhere good."

Second cousin Beena Kashyap, who was like an aunt to Reena, also warned her about hard drug use. "We had a big, long talk over the summer about her hanging out with the wrong people, taking drugs," said Kashyap, 33, a nurse. "I said she could die, she could end up taking an overdose."

Reena's relatives were shocked to find out she used heroin. But many teenagers aren't. People who work in youth care say casual heroin use is fairly common among street youth in the city--and some kids graduate to addiction. It's easier for a young person to score heroin on downtown streets than to buy a bottle of beer. Government liquor stores won't sell to minors, but the dope dealers downtown have no such qualms.

Kashyap noticed the word "Crips" written in blue ink on Reena's hand--the name of a notorious Los Angeles street gang some kids in Victoria try to emulate. "She used to write it all over the place, she thought it was cool." Kashyap said Reena went "from one extreme to the other"--from the restrictive life of the daughter of Jehovah's Witnesses, to the wild underworld of the Crip-wannabes.

Meanwhile, Manjeet was suffering through his own turmoil, as the sexual abuse case dragged on through the winter and spring. Confident the truth would bear him out, he dismissed the lawyer he had hired rather than face mounting legal bills.

"If you have the truth in you, you have a lot of power," says Manjeet. "There's no way I can abuse kids. If there is 10 percent truth there, I am guilty. But you can't turn a lie into the truth."

Suman supports her husband. The accusation was false, she insists, the charge an abuse of the justice system. "They all wanted to make money on a lie. That was so disgusting."

Then, on August 11, the Crown suddenly stayed the charges against Manjeet ("staying" the charge gives the prosecutor the right to proceed again within twelve months). He says the case was dropped because Reena missed curfew one night at her foster home and claimed she was late because she was sexually assaulted on a hiking trail. This story was not believable, says Manjeet, and she was no longer considered a reliable witness. The Crown won't discuss these details.

If Reena invented the story of a sexual attack on a country trail that summer night, her behaviour would follow a pattern of some child victims of sexual abuse, who invent stories to avoid painful consequences. Or perhaps, this story was true--or an embellished version of the truth. Reena was a convincing storyteller, says her mother Suman. "If she wanted someone to believe something, she was very good at it."

The officers with the Saanich police child abuse team who investigated Reena's complaint against her father are both still convinced she was a victim of sexual abuse. Jane Naydiuk interviewed Reena in detail with a social worker present and the session was videotaped. She was careful not to lead the young girl, or make suggestions, letting Reena tell the story in her own words.

Somewhere--maybe in India, maybe in Canada--the person who assaulted Reena walks free, says Scott Treble, another investigator. Sometimes transference can occur, says Naydiuk--the victim will name another party because she's afraid to point the finger at the real perpetrator.

The officers say the charges were dropped because they didn't feel they could get a conviction and the trial wasn't in the best interests of the victim. But both are convinced there is a direct link between Reena's willingness to hang out with a group that would end up murdering her and the trauma she suffered as a victim of sexual abuse. "She was victimized a number of different times by her peer group," says Naydiuk. "There was borderline date rape, she was harassed, called names, treated shabbily. She kept going back for more."

In September, the ban on contact between Manjeet and Reena lifted, there was a reconciliation between Reena and her parents. Reena missed her family and decided she wanted to move back home. But Manjeet was still angry at the abuse charge and distrustful of his daughter. He agreed to let her come home, but insisted she recant the accusation against him. She complied and withdrew the charges before the Saanich police.

Back at her family home on Irma Street, Reena registered at Colquitz, her third school in a year. But she claimed she was sick and stayed home most days. She had developed bad habits of staying out late and sleeping in, Manjeet says. It seemed school had become a trial for Reena, her troubled mind was distracted, unable to focus. The old family battle over smoking erupted. Reena wanted money for cigarettes but her parents refused. Within a few weeks, Reena had another change of heart about living at home.

One day in October, she called her uncle Balrag and asked him to come pick her up at school. It wasn't working out at her parents' home, she said, and she wanted to go back to foster care. Balrag, ever the loyal uncle trying to help his niece, complied and took her to the Kiwanis Youth Shelter, a group home and emergency shelter on the edge of downtown. It was at this shelter, say her parents, that she met the girls who led her to her death at the Gorge a month later. "That's where she met these girls, these killers," said Manjeet.

The Virk family met with social workers to insist she be returned home, but the authorities went along with Reena's request and arranged a new foster home placement--where she would be given money for cigarettes and be allowed to stay out late. Ministry officials sent Reena back to her parents' house temporarily as they lined up a new foster home. The Virks are appalled that the Ministry of Children and Families would remove their daughter because she wanted smokes and more freedom. A child is never removed from the family home for such trivial reasons, says Jane Cowell, Victoria regional coordinator for the Ministry. But she won't comment on this specific case.

Two weeks later, on Halloween night, the Virk family got a disturbing introduction to the young people Reena had recently befriended. Manjeet and Suman had gone out shopping with their two younger children. Reena stayed home alone. While her parents were out, Reena had visitors--three of her new friends, two boys and a girl. When the rest of the family came home, only the girl visitor was still there. But the young girl left in a hurry.

Reena later revealed the two boys had gone out the back door and over the fence when they heard the car pull up. The Virks discovered a box of chocolate almonds worth 35 dollars was missing. They were a school fundraising project for their younger daughter Simren. They called police to report this theft, and the names of the kids involved, but never heard back. They later discovered other items missing: a video camera and some gold bracelets and a necklace. The girl had distracted Reena, taking her out on the deck to smoke while the boys robbed the house. This was one of the same girls who enticed Reena out of her home the night of her death on November 14th.

During the days leading up to that fateful night, the planned attack was widely discussed, typical of grudge matches among school kids. The motive seems inconsequential: Reena was accused of spreading rumours about one of the girls, of taking up with another girl's boyfriend, of rifling through one girl's address book and calling the girl's friends on the phone. The story spread through the jungle wire over the phone lines and at teen hangouts--they were going to teach Reena a lesson.

The afternoon of the evening she was killed, Reena called her uncle Balrag again. By now she had been placed in her new home and she wanted to buy a stuffed animal for her new foster mother. He agreed to pick her up the next morning to go shopping. "She sounded kind of sad," he recalls. "I told her, 'Don't hang out with stupid people, don't do anything dumb.'"

She had only been back in foster care a few days, had only just registered in yet another new school, Lambrick Park. But now, on a Friday night, her ambivalence surfaced again and she was back home to stay with her family on the weekend, carrying her pajamas in her big black purse. Manjeet came home from work and found her eating a bowl of soup. She was dieting, she said, trying to lose weight.

Reena seemed prepared to spend a relaxing evening with the family. But at 7:30 some of her new friends were on the phone. They wanted her to meet them at the nearby Wal-Mart. Manjeet tried to convince her to stay home as planned. Reena was drawn to the excitement of a Friday night with her friends, but also pulled to the comfort of her family.

In the old days, Manjeet and Suman would have forbidden her to go out--after all, this was the same crowd who had stolen from the family home on Halloween night. But they were no longer her legal guardians. A foster mother living halfway across town, a stranger, was responsible for Reena's safety and well-being. They were dismayed that the foster mother allowed her to stay out late--11:45 p.m. on weekends--and that Reena had her own separate entrance from her new home to the outside world. But they were powerless.

In the end, Reena chose friends over family. She left home, saying she'd be back in half an hour. Two hours later, at 9:45, she called, her brother Aman answered, and she said she was coming home. That was the last the family heard from her. "I should have gone and picked her up," says Manjeet. "The grief counsellor told me it's not my fault, but I should have gone."

As the minutes and hours ticked by and Reena failed to arrive, the anxiety level increased in the Virk home. She may have been rebellious, but she would always call, never leave her parents hanging. "I had a horrible feeling," Suman said. "Something was wrong. This wasn't like Reena. I had a feeling she was somewhere dead." They called Saanich police, who had already received a missing person's report from Reena's foster mother.

It was a full moon that night of Friday, November 14th, a time of high tides on the Gorge, the waters swirling under the Craigflower bridge. On her way home, some of Reena's friends asked her to join about 15 other kids on a muddy bank under the bridge, a popular teen hangout and drinking spot.

According to testimony at the assault trial, many of the kids had been drinking, and an argument broke out as the distrustful accusations were hurled at Reena. Suddenly, one of the girls butted out her cigarette on Reena's forehead. Swarmed by half a dozen kids, she grabbed her black bag and tried to run up the stairs to the bridge walkway. But her tormentors caught her, beating her while she grasped the railing. As she was punched and kicked, Reena pleaded, "Leave me alone! Get away! Help!"

Most of the attackers were girls, but one boy was kicking her in the head, until he was restrained by a friend. "Chill out, it's not your fight," the friend told him. Two of the girls finally called an end to the beating. Before they left, one girl held a lit match to Reena's hair and her attackers took her purse, tossing her pajamas in the water.

Reena got up and climbed the stairs to the bridge. As she walked across the bridge busy with traffic, she passed a boy who had witnessed the beating. Her face was bloody and bruised, her eyes swollen. But she was walking in the right direction--one last attempt to find her way home. When she reached the other side, two teens returned to beat her again and drown her in the cold waters of the Gorge.

The next morning the Virks called Saanich police again, but were told no search would be conducted until Monday, as Reena was probably staying with friends over the weekend. They protested, this wasn't like Reena, but police insisted they couldn't search for every youth reported missing.

Over the weekend, rumours of the beating began spreading like flood water. Some of the bystanders and the attackers themselves described the assault in vivid, often embellished detail. Finally, after four days, one kid came forward to school authorities and the police began searching, first for a missing girl, and a few days later, as the grisly details of the story took shape, for her body.

Some of the girls charged in Reena's beating and death are no strangers to violence. Two of the girls lost their fathers to murder when they were young children--one of them witnessed the killing 10 years ago when she was six years old. And three of the girls, including one whose father was murdered, face another charge of assault causing bodily harm. This is from a separate incident in the same area last August, in which a 15-year-old girl was beaten, her hair cut off and burned.

At the assault trial three months later, the accused girls were dressed casually in jeans and sweat jackets, as if they were prepared for a trip to the mall rather than standing trial for a brutal crime. At a recess, one of the accused, a heavyset teen wearing a heart-shaped locket, approached Suman Virk and her children, who had been watching from the gallery. The girl, joined by her mother and grandmother, embraced Suman, trying to express solidarity with the Virks--fellow sufferers caught in the web of the justice system. "It was a bad mistake," the mother told Suman, stroking her daughter's hair. "I didn't even know her," the girl offered, as if that somehow excused her or justified the beating.

Some of the accused girls seem disconnected from the crime, says Steve Frankel, a Victoria school board official who interviewed them in juvenile detention as they awaited bail. One of the girls told him, "I didn't kill her, I just beat her up"; another insisted "she deserved it." They talked of their make-up, their hair, the boys in their lives--anything but the crime. "They're not feeling it emotionally. You don't see tears shed or real feelings of remorse."

In the aftermath of Reena's murder, the flood of her parents' sadness and remorse appears to have subsided. But the bitterness remains. "They took her from us and threw her in the fire," says Suman. "If they never removed her from the home, she'd be alive today."

"They," of course, is the Ministry of Children and Families, popularly known in the trade as McFamilies, the provincial government's fast-food solution to a long-standing crisis in child protection in B.C.

The Virks complain that Reena was seized on minimal and contradictory evidence of abuse that was never properly investigated. And that her exposure through Ministry placements to other young people with troubled and violent histories led to her death.

Jane Cowell, Victoria regional coordinator for the Ministry, refers back to the sexual abuse charge when asked why Reena was seized. But she was removed from the family again after the charge was stayed. We may never get to the bottom of Reena's claim of sexual abuse, but it seems fair to judge Manjeet innocent of the crime from the evidence available, as the criminal justice system did. But the nagging suspicion remains that someone, somewhere, perhaps one of the boys in her peer group, sexually abused her.

Society considers her murder a much more serious crime and her parents remain convinced that Reena, victimized repeatedly by her schoolmates and her gang-copy friends, was victimized again by a system designed to protect her, which exposed her instead to the worst elements of teenage violence and delinquency.

The Virks carry on, drawing strength from their two remaining children, from the support they've received from the community and well-wishers around the world. But it's mostly their faith that keeps them going through this trial. Toward the end of our interview, I raise the topic and Manjeet reaches for his brown leather-covered Bible.

Jehovah's Witnesses believe we are in the "last days" before Armageddon, the destruction of the world and the creation of a new order according to God's plan. "Very soon all problems will be gone," says Manjeet. "The original purpose will be realized in a new system." He clasps his hands, his mind wanders back to his daughter. "Killing hurts everyone, it's because of the last days that these things are happening. But we believe she will come back in the new system." As he flips to the front of the book, I notice a child's scribble in blue ink on one of the title pages. "That's Reena's name in Hindi." She left her mark on the family Bible.

The hope for redemption is shared by grandmother Tarsem Pallan, the family's original Witness, who was first approached in 1965 by those people who knock at the door. "I keep praying to my God Jehovah--that he may give me the privilege of seeing her again."

So often alone in life, Reena Virk in her death filled a thousand pages of newsprint and became a totem, a symbol of youth violence and the struggle to contain it for thousands of people in her city and across the country. In life, Reena was the classic victim. In death, she became a martyr to a cause. It only seems fitting that, in her family's belief, she is destined to live again.

Sid Tafler
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Last updated: April 23, 2001 http://www.islandnet.com/pwacvic/tafler05.html