The family’s burnt-out SUV sat charred on the shoulder of the highway north of Elie, near the ditches lining farmland so flat the sky seems to stretch on forever. It was a surreal setting blanketed in light snow.
It was a Sunday in February, three days before Valentine’s Day, and the Mounties clad in white forensic bodysuits examined the scene while an ambulance idled nearby.
RCMP officers from the nearby Headingley detachment had been called to this roadside horror hours before. The vehicle engulfed in flames; the children — two-month-old Isabella, four-year-old Jayven and six-year-old Bethany — already dead.
RCMP officers investigate the grisly scene in February where the bodies of three young children were pulled from a burning vehicle.
Mounties believe the man accused of killing them, 29-year-old Ryan Howard Manoakeesick, had pulled them from the flames. He waited nearby, seemingly for the officers to put him in handcuffs.
Earlier that Sunday morning, about 50 kilometres to the south, Carman RCMP discovered the children’s mom Amanda Clearwater, 30, in a ditch next to Highway 3, about seven kilometres outside of town, while responding to what was initially reported as a hit-and-run.
Officers later found Clearwater’s 17-year-old cousin, Myah-Lee Gratton, slain inside the family’s Carman home.
Manoakeesick, who court records show had a history of mental-health and substance-abuse issues, was charged for his alleged role in the slayings. He faces five counts of first-degree murder in what a senior RCMP inspector called an “unimaginable tragedy.” It was the worst mass killing in Manitoba in more than a decade and one of the most sickening cases of domestic violence in recent memory in the province.
In late February, a judge ordered a mental-health assessment to determine whether Manoakeesick is fit to stand trial. While his case winds its way through the courts, where the allegations have not been proven, it’s unclear whether the five deaths will be reviewed by a provincial committee designed specifically for the purpose of preventing similar tragedies.
Manitoba’s Domestic Violence Death Review Committee was established by the province in 2010 and is made up of officials from the justice system, the medical examiner’s office and researchers, among others, and was tasked to identify trends, risk factors and systemic concerns in certain domestic killings and to recommend changes.
The committee, however, has sat idle for half a decade; its last annual report issued for the 2018-19 fiscal year.
The death review committee’s inaction doesn’t sit well with Prof. Kendra Nixon, who has been studying gender-based violence for over 25 years.
“I don’t know if there isn’t the political will, or there isn’t the interest, or there’s been a shuffling of people and it just got dropped — I don’t know,” she said.
U of M Prof. Kendra Nixon is frustrated that a provincial committee tasked with examining domestic
violence cases has been inactive for the last five years.
Based out of the University of Manitoba, Nixon directs Research and Education for Solutions to Violence and Abuse, or RESOLVE, a network with centres at the U of M, the University of Calgary and the University of Saskatchewan that’s focused on reducing the incidence and impact of family and gender-based violence. The network had a seat on the review committee.
“I want us to get to the point where the ones that we knew about, the ones that we could have prevented, those are the ones that I want us to stop,” Nixon said. “There’s going to be cases we don’t know about, (or) where we’ve done everything that we could have done, and a homicide unfortunately still happens. I don’t think, unfortunately, there’s any getting around it.
“I want to get rid of the ones where there was a lack of judicial education, there was a lack of a police response or there was a lack of communication — those are the cases that we need to improve on. So, I think having a death review committee to look at a particular case and identify what the gaps were, I think that would be tremendously helpful.”
Deena Brock, executive director of the Manitoba Association of Women’s Shelters, was blunt in her assessment of the committee’s pause.
“I’m disturbed — the idea that it’s not taken seriously is what pops into my head,” Brock said.
A provincial spokesman said this week the committee, when originally struck, determined it would review only 10 deaths.
Prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, Manitoba Justice’s Victim Services began looking at records to identify a 10th case to review, but did not proceed further, the spokesman said.
“I think having a death review committee to look at a particular case and identify what the gaps were, I think that would be tremendously helpful.”–Prof. Kendra Nixon
“The COVID-19 pandemic led to a pause on the (committee) but discussions are underway around renewing activities as they were pre-pandemic, or changing to something new,” said the spokesman, adding the government has made some developments since, particularly on issues involving missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
The spokesman said those discussions began last year, but a decision on when or if the committee will continue with its mandate hasn’t been made. (Manitoba lifted its last pandemic public health orders in March 2022.) A request to interview a provincial justice department official about the status of the committee was rejected.
Not only is the committee’s future up in the air, it remains unclear whether any recommendations from the review committee’s 2018-19 report have been enacted. They included an in-depth review of protection orders since legislative changes were made to the Domestic Violence and Stalking Act in 2016, that the committee be provided statistics on the orders, that a private space be provided at the courts for people to apply for orders, and for funding for transportation for people escaping domestic violence.
Protection orders are granted by judges or justices of the peace that generally bar, at risk of arrest, one person from contacting or being near another; the court orders are often used in domestic violence and stalking situations. In Clearwater’s case, court records confirm she did not apply for an order.
While the committee is on an indefinite hold, Nixon said more can be done to address the domestic violence crisis, which has worsened in recent years in Manitoba.
The province’s rate of intimate partner violence per 100,000 people has increased from 476 in 2014 to 633 in 2022, Statistics Canada data show. Provincially, Manitoba’s rate is second only to Saskatchewan’s.
Winnipeg Police Service statistics show domestic violence calls have fluctuated in recent years, from 16,332 in 2017 to a high of 17,921 in 2020, the year the pandemic began. Calls dropped to 17,652 in 2021, then down to 16,590 in 2022, the year from which the most recent figures are available. However, the number of responses that result in criminal charges has increased both those years and now accounts for 14.4 per cent of all domestic violence calls.
Following the February killings, Nixon’s research network issued a call to action to the Prairies’ provincial governments: Declare intimate partner violence an epidemic and take concrete steps to address it, including establishing provincial task forces to develop action plans and to increase support and resources to the departments and agencies that work directly on domestic violence’s front lines.
“It’s not just myself or some academics, that is a sentiment felt across many different sectors and organizations who are dealing with domestic violence… those working in the medical profession, lawyers, shelter workers, government,” Nixon said.
“I think, just on the ground, I would say that many organizations believe that we are not currently doing enough.”
Among the network’s recommendations was a call for the Manitoba government to re-establish the domestic violence death committee.
Instead, the network’s plea went unacknowledged, Nixon said.
“I don’t know at what point it is going to result in a major change. I don’t know how many more women and children it takes to be murdered for us to say ‘OK, this is an epidemic.’ But that’s not my call.”
Raymond Wyant’s legal career began in the 1970s, first as a defence lawyer, then a Crown attorney and now as a provincial court judge — with more than 25 years on the bench, including seven years as chief judge.
He has defended, prosecuted and heard more criminal cases than most in Manitoba. One case, however, continues to haunt him unlike any other.
Wyant was a young defence lawyer when he began to represent Michael Jewell regularly on relatively minor charges in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
During this time, he also got to the know Jewell’s wife, Michele, a cardiac nurse and a “bright and vibrant young woman with a warm personality and a winning smile,” Wyant wrote in his chapter of More Tough Crimes, a 2017 anthology of Canadian criminal cases, written by lawyers and judges.
He never understood why she was attracted to the petty criminal.
In February 1984, Jewell sought help to get bail on what Wyant recalled as a dangerous-driving charge.
Provincial court Judge Raymond Wyant says domestic violence cases present unique challenges to the justice system. He remains forever haunted by one such case.
Meanwhile, Michele called Wyant to say she was worried about her safety. The couple was going through a divorce, with a hearing in a few days, and Jewell had a violent temper. Wyant told her Jewell would likely get bail regardless of who was representing him and that while he would represent Jewell on the driving charge, he would not do so on anything involving her. He also said he didn’t think Jewell would hurt her.
As Wyant predicted, Jewell secured bail. Early on Feb. 27, 1984, the day divorce proceedings were scheduled, Jewell scaled Michele’s Winnipeg apartment building, broke into her suite and violently sexually assaulted and dismembered her. She was 25 years old. Jewell was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison without a chance of parole.
Wyant, who refused to represent Jewell in the murder case, soon became a Crown prosecutor, before moving to the bench in the late 1990s. He wrote, in his 2017 anthology chapter, that her blood, though faded, would never disappear from his hands.
“That case has affected me more than any other case in my life affected me, in a very personal and guttural way, for reasons that I think are probably obvious. It brought home to me, in very tragic and graphic terms, the insidious nature of intimate partner violence, and the effect it has on people, and even in a wider sense, on the community itself,” Wyant told the Free Press in a recent interview.
“It had a life-altering effect on me, and I think it has given me, at least in my career, a very personal sense of the impact of intimate partner violence.”
How domestic violence cases are handled in the courts, and the justice system more broadly, has changed like “night and day” in the decades since, Wyant said.
“It really wasn’t until the 1990s in Manitoba, as I recall, that there seemed to be an awakening, or an awareness, among people in the justice system that there was much more that went on in these cases.”–Judge Raymond Wyant
“I think it’s fair to say that none of us knew, or thought about, the fact that these types of cases in their essence and in their core were quite different than the other types of criminal cases that one dealt with, whether they were robberies, assaults, break and enters, because of the particular intimate dynamics of the relationships that gave rise to these types of offences,” Wyant said, adding many cases fell apart because, with no support offered to traumatized victims, they were unwilling to testify.
“It really wasn’t until the 1990s in Manitoba, as I recall, that there seemed to be an awakening, or an awareness, among people in the justice system that there was much more that went on in these cases, in the violence that can occur in intimate partner relationships.”
The provincial justice system went on to be a leader in better identifying and managing intimate partner violence cases; setting up special police units to investigate and training certain judges and prosecutors to handle the cases, Wyant said, before the training and education became broadly given to all those working in the system.
Later, after Wyant became chief judge, the court launched a project in 2003 to speed up the processing of domestic violence cases, ultimately doing so and winning awards in the process.
Like all individuals charged with a criminal offence, those accused of domestic abuse’s first step in the system is generally a bail intake court. There, a federal Crown prosecutor who handles drug cases, a provincial Crown who handles violent and other offences, and a speciality Crown who addresses domestic violence cases, divvy up what’s before them on the docket.
From there, an accused makes their first appearance and the prosecutors may oppose or consent to their release before trial, depending on the information before them, balancing the rights of an accused and the risk to a victim.
“I think it comes down to our office becoming more cognizant of becoming trauma-informed; the effect of intergenerational trauma, the effects of colonialism, moving away from perhaps taking an overzealous attitude — that’s my word — that’s the way, in the past, we may have proceeded.”–Attorney Bruce Sychuk
Bruce Sychuk, a senior supervising attorney in the Crown prosecutions domestic violence unit, oversees those who handle the domestic cases.
He, too, has seen the changes in the system first-hand, with prosecutors now better trained and better informed of the trauma of abuse, and of the wider societal context in which the accused and the victim live.
“I think it comes down to our office becoming more cognizant of becoming trauma-informed; the effect of intergenerational trauma, the effects of colonialism, moving away from perhaps taking an overzealous attitude — that’s my word — that’s the way, in the past, we may have proceeded,” Sychuk said.
“I think that, with the strengthening of our victim services, with the strengthening of victims’ rights, our ability to get a full picture has increased, which allows us to provide a better service than perhaps in the old days.”
He pointed to restorative justice as an example of how domestic violence cases can be handled differently than more garden-variety crimes.
“There has to be acknowledgment of accountability by the individual who is alleged to have committed the offence and then participation in appropriate counselling, so the goal is to still have an education and rehabilitation with a meaningful consequence to the alleged offender, while still trying to balance the wishes and needs of the complainant,” he said.
Sychuk said Crowns try their best to ensure the safety of complainants while balancing the accused’s right to apply for reasonable release under the Criminal Code, by assessing the nature of the alleged offence, the accused’s criminal record and input from the complainant.
“If they have a record or they’re on probation, we could seek information from probation services. Sometimes the police provide us with further information, if they have any concerns or knowledge above and beyond this incident, and we do our best to assess whether or not there can be a form of release,” Sychuk said.
“The big problem becomes when someone doesn’t have a criminal record, and sadly, sometimes, what we’ve seen is the most graphic instances of violence and murder-suicides perpetrated by someone who’s never been in the court system before.”–Judge Russ Wyant
If the Crown isn’t satisfied, prosecutors will oppose release — leaving it for a judge to decide.
In Manoaekeesick’s case, court records suggest that although he had past criminal convictions and significant mental-health concerns, there were few warnings signs raised in court indicating he may be a risk of committing intimate partner violence.
However, Gratton’s mother Juliette Hastings told the Free Press shortly after the deaths that her 17-year-old daughter sent voice recordings to friends that alleged Manoakeesick was prone to violent outbursts, that he screamed in her face, and that he kicked and threatened to kill his common-law wife Amanda, who threatened to phone police, in the weeks before the killings. Gratton was living in the house on a child-welfare placement.
Wyant, speaking generally and not about the Carman case, said it is a significant concern when the courts don’t have access to all the pertinent information.
“The big problem becomes when someone doesn’t have a criminal record, and sadly, sometimes, what we’ve seen is the most graphic instances of violence and murder-suicides perpetrated by someone who’s never been in the court system before. And it becomes very difficult, then, to get an appropriate risk assessment,” the judge said.
“From time to time, people have said why don’t we develop, and why don’t we have risk assessments that can be developed and used to provide people with that information so we can make more informed decisions, because right now it may only be based on whether the person has a prior record, or perhaps the degree of violence that may be used in the allegation of an offence… Information’s king.”
Nixon, the director at Research and Education for Solutions to Violence and Abuse, said while strides have been made, including greater awareness and understanding of domestic violence, significant gaps remain.
“Communication is a serious gap — or not even a miscommunication, but sectoral or organizational mandates that might be in opposition to one another. For instance, women’s shelters, that sector, their goal is to protect women and children, and child welfare, their goal is to protect, primarily, children. Sometimes those mandates are at odds, depending on who is seen as a quote-unquote ‘the client,’” she said, adding shelters are “woefully underfunded.”
“Then you also have systems like the family court system and the criminal justice system, where family courts may be requiring contact by the alleged abusive partner, while the criminal court may be in the middle of processing things and have put in a no-contact order, so sometimes they don’t speak to one another, sometimes their mandates are in opposition to one another.”
She said there needs to be significantly more education for justice workers and more resources put toward programming for abusers, particularly in rural and northern areas.
Further, Nixon said, those who experience abuse often tend to be the most marginalized. Those victims, many of whom are Indigenous, are experiencing individual and structurally complex issues, such as poverty, discrimination, intergenerational trauma and the history of colonization, so the justice, child welfare and social services systems don’t have the resources or ability to truly help, without significant systemic changes across the board, she said. Women who are impoverished, for example, aren’t able to leave their home easily.
“We’re seeing more cases being reported to police. Is that because people are more comfortable disclosing, or because there’s more cases happening? It’s hard to tell.”–Prof. Kendra Nixon
“In terms of ‘Are we doing a better job?’ I think that sectors have acknowledged it, but with the rates of violence escalating like we’re seeing, especially in Manitoba rates have increased since 2014… I don’t know, are we doing a better job? We’re seeing more cases being reported to police. Is that because people are more comfortable disclosing, or because there’s more cases happening? It’s hard to tell,” she said.
“To address them in systemic and structural ways — a lot of times, we’ll have Band-Aid approaches, we might have education groups for women, programs for children, and that’s really good, but we also need the preventative piece, we need all of the pieces. Preventative programming so we can prevent domestic violence, but we also need to have services and sectors with appropriate resources and responses to actually deal with it when it happens.”
Despite “tremendous” effort and resources now put into the criminal justice system to address domestic violence and to support victims, the issue is showing no signs of abating, Wyant said.
“I think it’s fair to say, there’s been no diminishment in the numbers of cases of intimate partner violence here and across the country, and it’s in spite of our efforts… sadly we see and continue to see far too many instances of it, oftentimes with very tragic results,” he said.
Wyant said those in the criminal justice system must continually improve their knowledge of domestic violence dynamics, while society more broadly needs to properly allocate resources to address the issue and its root causes, such as addiction.
For Brock, of the women’s shelters association, shelter users are facing an increased degree of violence from their abusers, based on her observations, than when she began working in the sector a decade ago.
“The severity of the abuse is worse, that’s what we’re seeing across the province, anecdotally.”–Deena Brock
“The severity of the abuse is worse, that’s what we’re seeing across the province, anecdotally,” she said.
“I don’t have answers for that, as to why, that’s just what we’re seeing.”
Brock said she thinks the education and health systems are failing to protect children and women by not adequately teaching what abuse looks like.
She urged police and courts to better work together, along with other resource providers, and be better informed about the insidious nature of domestic violence and the manipulation tactics perpetrators use.
Ultimately, sustained public pressure is the only way to bring about substantive change, Nixon and Brock said.
“We have attention to an issue when something really bad happens — like five homicides in Carman, right? And that window of opportunity, that policy window, opens and people pay attention to it, but it doesn’t stay open for very long,” Nixon said.
“It’s unfortunate that we often lose attention until another awful thing happens, another tragedy happens, and that’s what we want to get away from. We don’t want reactive responses, we want thoughtful, deliberate, purposeful responses.”
On an overcast day earlier this week, Premier Wab Kinew returned to Carman, where shock waves from the chilling crime still ripple through town.
Teddy bears, flowers and candles mark a makeshift memorial for Amanda Clearwater, her three children and niece.
Kinew, who had previously attended the family’s funeral, announced the province would give $300,000 to the volunteer-run community organization Carman Wellness Connection, which provided support to area residents following the tragedy. He also pledged $20,000 for a planned memorial for the victims.
He called the killings “senseless and inexplicable” and spoke of the community’s efforts to heal and mourn together.
Later, he sat with Amanda’s parents, Nancy and Melvin Clearwater, before heading to the slain family’s nearby former home to again pay his respects.
While only in the preliminary stage, there are discussions the memorial will be located in a park just down the street where the children liked to play.
erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca
Erik Pindera
Reporter
Erik Pindera reports for the city desk, with a particular focus on crime and justice.