That Lonely Section of Hell

by Lori Shenher

  Q: Did you write this?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Did you mean it?

  A: For the most part, yes.

  Occasionally, I am able to testify that I have since learned information that has changed my views from those in the manuscript or that it was in no way ready for publication in the state of that initial draft. These opportunities help, but they are few and far between. I admit to the areas where I was harsh or unfair to people, and I am able to assert that it hadn’t been assessed by a lawyer for errors or omissions or for libel, for my protection. Over and over, I explain that this was a first draft, that these were my impressions of what went on, formed in the absence of anyone’s presenting me with evidence of their side.

  Very little in this process contains a shred of concern for my protection, including my own actions. My lawyer, Dave Crossin, tries to look out for me but sees me for the difficult client and loose cannon I’ve become. I stick my jaw out like a drunk mouthing off at the biggest guy in the bar, poking my finger in any chest and hoping to be punched, to take the punishment I know I deserve. My boundaries desert me and I lay myself bare, in some misguided hope that if they see how open and honest I am about my own experience, they will think, Ah, there’s a police officer who is decent and thoughtful, different. Most of the other cops have clammed up and hunkered down; I have placed my heart on Commissioner Wally Oppal’s desk and don’t understand that this simple act is killing me. I don’t know now that I won’t see that result for a couple of years. Remnants of my boundaries were still with me the first week I testified, January 30 to February 2, 2012, but sitting here a few weeks later, they’ve vanished.

  Much has changed. I’m now seated to the left of Commissioner Oppal; two months ago, I was in a witness box to his right, before the inquiry shifted from a one-witness procedure to the more expedient and less truth-enabling multiple-witness panels, designed to move the hearings along more quickly so that the inquiry will conclude before the funding runs out. A recent B.C. provincial commission of inquiry into the salmon fishery ran well beyond its terms of reference in this same courtroom; fish warrant deadline extensions, but human beings apparently do not.

  Shortly after my first stint, the inquiry’s pace began to speed up and limit opportunity for the lawyers’ questioning. Now, police officers in decision-making positions sit on panels with two and three cohorts, their time for giving evidence short and the lawyers’ opportunity for cross-examination even shorter. Police managers and decision-makers with far more to explain than me are able to hide on three- and four-person panel discussions, the ever-ticking clock their friend, whereas I’m returned here without any cover, willing the days to end. In some ways, I prefer this, because I have nothing to hide, but I have lost sight of what’s best for me as a person, not as a witness.

  More and more frequently, I hear lawyers express their inability to exercise their mandate on behalf of their clients because of the ridiculous time constraints imposed on their cross-examinations. Names arise of numerous police officers inexplicably not called to testify about their roles in the file. I am baffled, but lately, that is not new for me.

  My mind keeps wandering as I sit here; last time, I was sharp, focused, and listened intently to every word said to and about me, not wanting to miss a thing or give anyone an opportunity to unfairly judge or assess my job performance. I felt clear about what my responsibilities were and where my own many culpabilities lay, as well as what was not my fault and what I wanted answers for. Now, I’m all about survival, but I know I’m not doing a very good job of it.

  AS MY APRIL 4, 2012, testimony continues, Cameron Ward, the lawyer for the missing and murdered women’s families, is reading long passages of text aloud so that they will form part of the record, because the commissioner has refused to have the “document”—my manuscript—entered as an exhibit. I suppose I should be grateful, for this will allow me theoretically to publish one day and not have any supposed thunder stolen, but this process makes me cringe. I wonder how many other writers have had to defend their work in a similarly inquisitorial forum. I tune out, because listening is excruciating.

  “That damned book,” as my partner has occasionally referred to it, has caused me nothing but grief. How can I explain that I see it as both my undoing and my salvation? From those dark days in the autumn of 1999, I knew I had to write it. The circumstances of the case compelled me to write it. I began composing it in my head whenever the investigation became too bizarre to make sense of. My identity as a writer provided safe harbor when the rough waves of policing showed no sign of subsiding. Writing was home to me; policing an on-location acting job.

  Throughout my policing career, I felt like an imposter—as a queer person, as a female, as left of center, as a writer, as someone who questioned the police culture and the system. I was different, and never before had I felt that as intensely as when the Pickton case broke. Far stronger than my sense of being a cop and detective was my need to be a truth teller—a need that simmered just below the surface throughout Project Amelia but that could not be expressed for so many reasons, most relating to job security and the culture I toiled within.

  Now that need was replaced by a loud screaming voice inside my head that told me I had to tell this story, my story, their story. It was not a desire; it was a compulsion, and I briefly tried to fight it, knowing there was nothing I wanted more than to just forget this whole damn thing. But as a writer, I saw no choice. As a human being, I bore a responsibility. As a police officer, I felt a duty. Sitting here in the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry hearing room, I think of the media accounts I’ve read of my pending testimony, of those reporters wondering how I could possibly cite burnout and breakdown and at the same time have the energy and ability to write a book. Some of the lawyers in the inquiry pursue this line of questioning, asking me how I could possibly write a book if I was so shattered by my work on this file. I struggle to articulate that writing the manuscript both tortured and soothed me. Writing was never an effort for me, but reliving the investigation was another matter.

  Am I obligated to share the details of the horrific nightmares that woke me every morning at 4:00 AM in those first months after the Pickton farm search, plus several sleepless years before and after? That I’d sit in front of my computer obsessively pounding out the details of the investigation until I went to work at 6:00 every morning? That overwhelming anxiety is a powerful motor driving you forward, unlike depression, which presses down on your head and pulls at your heels like a ball and chain? Anxiety made me very productive, but its effects don’t last forever, as I would discover. I wrote like a person possessed because I felt my life depended on it.

  They wonder how I could quit the investigation and then write and consult for Da Vinci’s Inquest. How has this commission of inquiry become about me? Why are the brightest lights of scrutiny glaring into my eyes when so many others are much more deserving of audit? Because I had dared to put myself out there. Why should I have to publicly point out that my trauma has never been about the actual events on that farm, tragic and deplorable as they were, but is rooted in the lack of support for our investigation from the VPD and the RCMP? Why do I feel the need to explain myself and be known?

  My trauma was about knowing horrible things were happening out there on that farm and not being able to convince the right people to act on it. My trauma was about lack of operational and investigative support. My trauma was about failing my oath and knowing I could never again trust that our policing institutions had the best interests and safety of the public at heart. I knew when I signed up for the VPD and set my sights on a career as a homicide detective that I would see terrible, terrible things. I felt prepared for that as well as anyone could be. I wasn’t prepared for spin and deflection of our responsibilities.

  My trauma was about taking an oath to do a dirty job and finding the tools to do that job were withheld from me. Indeed, the very obligation to do that job was questioned by the people in p
lace to provide those tools. How could I continue when I had no confidence the same thing wouldn’t happen again on other cases where other people would die from our inaction? Why did I work at the VPD and do the job I was paid for when that job wasn’t supported? When my findings weren’t listened to? What was the point of even being here if our inaction was allowing people to die?

  I exhale loudly as Commissioner Oppal calls it a day and asks that I return again tomorrow. My mind has wandered throughout the day’s proceedings, and I fear I’ve missed questions or sat there mute while lawyers and participants awaited answers from me. I scan the room and feel calmer when no one eyes me strangely. Apparently, I’ve performed adequately. As I gather my materials, commission counsel Art Vertlieb approaches me.

  “All of these lawyers are watching us,” he says quietly, a benign expression on his face, “so I know you’ll understand—because you are a very sharp person—I can’t be seen to be too friendly with you.” His eyes bore into mine. He begins to wax eloquent, making various observations about my keen mind, and I feel the color rising in my cheeks.

  I’m used to Art by now and I like him; his exclamation of “You are a most fascinating person!” and other over-the-top praise took me by surprise the first time we met in the commission office as I prepared my evidence. Usually, I laugh and say something along the lines of “Thanks, Art, you’re killing me,” but today I stare at him, mouth agape, a little unsure of how to play my part in this pantomime he is initiating.

  I’m not sure if I should nod or try to look as though we aren’t speaking and he isn’t heaping superfluous compliments on me for my work as a witness. I do my best to look unaffected by his words or the feeling we are doing something wrong, and eventually, he bids me good-bye. I am overcome with sadness that the legal system makes Art feel he has to mask his desire to say something kind to me from his colleagues.

  I stand there for a few seconds, feeling a little bit stunned. I am acutely aware—as I have been throughout the almost fourteen years since I began this file—that I belong nowhere. I am a person without portfolio, an orphan of the justice system, an outsider within. Among the police, I feel like a giraffe grazing with zebras; I am mistrusted by the families and the activists advocating for them, separate and distinct from the lawyers, and unable to trust the media, of which I used to be a part.

  Elizabeth Hunt, one of two new lawyers assigned to represent Indigenous interests, asks to speak with me. This is the first week back after the commissioner suspended testimony for three weeks to give Elizabeth and her co-counsel, Suzette Narbonne, time to get up to speed with the file after Robyn Gervais resigned in protest of what she believed was a lack of inclusion of Indigenous interests throughout the proceedings.

  I’d felt a powerful connection to Robyn’s mandate, and I’d emailed her when she left the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry to tell her so. Her experience advocating and probing the reasons for the deaths and disappearances of so many women—many of them Indigenous—and feeling like a useless token resonated strongly with me, as did her sense that the only way to bring attention to that problem was to resign in protest. She responded to my email, even though both of us acknowledged that we shouldn’t be communicating during a legal proceeding. We agreed that this wasn’t much of a legal proceeding, however, as no one else seemed to be following any rules or legal decorum, and if there weren’t enough police to assign to find missing human beings, there sure as hell weren’t police to investigate our innocuous breach.

  Elizabeth asks me if I’m comfortable speaking on the stand tomorrow about my experience as a lesbian and a minority in the VPD. Sure, no problem. We speak for a few minutes. Dave Crossin approaches me as she walks away.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “What did she want?” I tell him what she asked of me for the next day. He frowns. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

  “I’m okay with it,” I answer, thinking it’s a good thing to be forthcoming about my experiences, to shed some light on the VPD and what it’s like as an insider, as if I am one. “I’m happy to do it.”

  “You don’t have to do this. I would advise against it as your counsel,” Dave continues.

  “I know,” I reply. “Thanks.” I know he’s just doing his job, just looking out for me, but after today’s testimony in which we have strayed into all sorts of questions about my personal thoughts and perceptions of the investigation, I have completely lost sight of my purpose here. If today was a distraction and red herring, I worry I have unwittingly ensured tomorrow will wander completely from any relevance.

  25

  Testifying for the Last Time

  • • •

  “Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.”

  EDMUND BURKE

  THE DAY BEGINS with lawyer for Indigenous interests Suzette Narbonne cross-examining me. Tomorrow is Good Friday, and today is my last day of testimony no matter what, because the inquiry has to move on. I hate that I am taking up time that could be used to question other police officers.

  Listening to Narbonne, I realize how important it has been to me that the unique needs of the Indigenous community—and the extent to which the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples have been wronged historically and currently—be properly acknowledged by this inquiry, by the police, and by Canadian society. Sitting here, I wonder how I have come to this position, but I can’t help thinking back to my time growing up in Calgary, hearing and even telling “Indian” jokes, accepting this racism and colonialism as “the way it is.”

  I remember working in rural Alberta as a reporter and suddenly understanding with a jolt how manifestly wrong our treatment of Indigenous people has been. Not all the missing women were Indigenous, but as I look out into the courtroom, I see so many Indigenous people who are not blood relatives of a missing woman but are here simply to be here, to bear witness. To bear witness to colonization and genocide. I decide I will no longer participate in anything that supports this dismissal of human beings.

  I feel my throat choking at the realization that I am injured from bearing witness to human suffering for a living. I am damaged, yet still occupy a place of entitlement. I feel my weakness, comparing myself and the other police and lawyers paid to be here with these warriors who observe us day after day from beyond the inner circle of the court. Who among us would be here on their own time? I feel ashamed to realize that my fight—while brutal and exhausting—spans so little time and struggle in comparison with the battles of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples in our country. I’ve always thought of myself as a fighter, but am I? My privilege burns like a scarlet letter.

  This entire experience has eroded my strength. How will I ever regain it? Is that what the psychologists were talking about when they told me I had PTSD? I had dismissed those observations then because I couldn’t connect it to my life, but suddenly, sitting here, I can. The nightmares, the panic attacks, the anxiety, the headaches, the obsessive-compulsive behaviors, the twisted visions—this is what they were talking about. As Elizabeth Hunt begins her cross-examination, I realize that I haven’t been listening. I give myself a stern talking to. I will not let this file break me again. I fought back once. I can do it again. I will do it again.

  And so it goes. Several lawyers question me briefly, and I appreciate their seeming lack of desire to take me to task about the manuscript. Ravi Hira, counsel for retired Coquitlam RCMP inspector Earl Moulton, takes me through an interesting cross-examination in which he asks me if I am aware of a second meeting between the police and then–attorney general Ujjal Dosanjh—a meeting I did not attend and not the same meeting where I gave a presentation about the missing women investigation to elected officials, as I described in the manuscript.

  I am gobsmacked and testify that I have absolutely no knowledge of this second meeting. This informatio
n floats out into the inquiry waters, but nothing seems to come of it, and I am unable to ascertain any more information about what went down. To this day, I am not privy to the details of the meeting or to who else was in attendance. Another behind-the-scenes mystery I can’t solve. Another secret in my own investigation.

  The day ends for me, and I walk away from Courtroom 801 for the last time.

  26

  Losing My Grip, Again

  • • •

  “When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”

  FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

  ON APRIL 12, 2012, disgusted with what I am witnessing, I tell myself I am watching the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry live feed in my office for the last time. But in the following weeks, I find I can’t tear myself away. Before giving my own testimony, I found it easy to look away and do some work rather than remain glued to the desktop, but since the end of January, as I watch the testimony spin more and more out of control and into farce, I can’t stop.

  The week of April 9 was to be devoted to the 1998 decision of the Criminal Justice Branch to stay the attempted murder and forcible confinement charges against Pickton for his alleged attack on Vancouver sex worker Anderson. Anderson was scheduled to testify at the inquiry on Monday, April 9, 2012, with assurances that there were strict measures in place to ensure her privacy. She was living clean and sober with her family and remained terrified of Robert Pickton and traumatized by the events of March 1997 that had left her nearly dead.