Faith and forgiveness: Slain woman’s family sees killer as a victim, too | 24CA News
Outside the Ottawa Courthouse final weekend, Lyle Young mentioned the verdict sending his spouse’s killer to jail for not less than 25 years was the correct determination — but additionally bittersweet.
“My wife is no longer here,” Young mentioned of Elisabeth Salm, the 59-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted and brutally crushed on May 24, 2018, by Tyler Hikoalok, then 18. Salm died in hospital the next day.
Salm was volunteering as a librarian on the Christian Science Reading Room in downtown Ottawa when Hikoalok, now 22, walked in that morning. A jury discovered him responsible of first-degree homicide on Sunday.
Another Indigenous man, although a harmful offender, shall be spending life in jail.– Lyle Young, Elisabeth Salm’s widower
“Further,” Young’s ready assertion went on, “another Indigenous man, though a dangerous offender, will be spending life in prison.”
Mundie Salm, one of many slain girl’s sisters, additionally spoke concerning the household’s blended feelings following the jury’s determination.
While the decision despatched a transparent message that violence in opposition to ladies is not going to be tolerated, “we also don’t like the fact that we’re sending another Indigenous person for further incarceration,” Salm mentioned.
“This trial took place against the backdrop of continuing trauma, suicides and mental health issues in Inuit and other Indigenous societies,” she mentioned. “We need to get better at truth and reconciliation.”
Mundie Salm mentioned she and her siblings have “mixed emotions” after the decision, which can ship “another Indigenous person” to jail.
The household, drained after a authorized odyssey that stretched greater than 4 and a half years, left issues there, noting that every little thing else that they had needed to say was contained within the remarks they’d made earlier in courtroom.
Ottawa a ‘colder, bleaker place’
Those sufferer impression statements, delivered by Young, Mundie Salm and Elisabeth Salm’s three different siblings as Hikoalok at occasions quietly wept in his prisoner’s field, took an hour to ship and ran the gamut of feelings.
The household talked concerning the shock of studying concerning the “barbaric” sexual assault and the “gut-wrenching moment” when Hikoalok’s age grew to become recognized.
“The same as my eldest son,” Mundie Salm recalled.
They talked concerning the nervousness that accompanied every of the trial’s a number of delays, and about Salm’s persona as a socially acutely aware nature lover being misplaced amid the “sickening, clinical and impersonal descriptions” of her accidents.
They regretted how Ottawa, the place the far-flung household sometimes held its reunions at Salm and Young’s dwelling, felt like “a colder, bleaker place” following the assault.
Mundie Salm expressed frustration at what she noticed as an absence of regret from Hikoalok, who testified that he didn’t keep in mind the assault as a result of an alcohol-induced blackout.
But in some moments, Salm’s household additionally voiced their consciousness of the systemic challenges dealing with Indigenous offenders like Hikoalok.
“Our family had, with this act, suddenly become directly connected to the tragic fallout of Canada’s violent colonial history,” Mundie Salm mentioned. “There was a lot more to this story and I desperately wanted to understand.”
Statements confirmed compassion, lawyer says
Hikoalok is an Inuk from Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, who got here from an unstable dwelling, suffered violence as a baby and have become recognized to police for sexual improprieties whereas he was nonetheless a youth, the trial heard.
The case revealed few different particulars about his background, although a psychiatrist testified that Hikoalok reveals mind abnormalities that might be as a result of fetal alcohol spectrum dysfunction.
“He’s quiet, not much to say, a little bit reserved, but still trying to process what just happened,” mentioned Hikoalok’s lawyer Michael Smith on the finish of the trial.
Naomi Sayers, an Anishinaabe lawyer based mostly in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., mentioned a number of of her shoppers wrestle with comparable psychological well being points and require a trauma-informed and “really personalized” strategy.
“Law school doesn’t prepare you for this,” she mentioned.
Sayers mentioned the Salm household’s statements had her confused given their “compassion” for Hikoalok.
She mentioned she believes the statements are reflective of a rising consciousness amongst non-Indigenous Canadians of the systemic limitations dealing with Indigenous individuals and the trauma wrought by methods like Canada’s residential faculties.
“I think it shows empathy and I think it shows … they understand the difficulty being faced here,” Sayers mentioned.
Naomi Sayers, an Indigenous lawyer and observer of the Tyler Hikoalok homicide trial mentioned the statements made by Elizabeth Salm’s relations present that they acknowledge the difficulties confronted by Canada’s Indigenous inhabitants, which is disproportionally represented within the nation’s legal justice system.
Hoping for ‘regret and reform’
Luc-Anne Salm, the sufferer’s different sister, handed out yellow carnations to courtroom attendees. During her sufferer impression assertion, she held one of many flowers as she approached the prisoner’s field and regarded Hikoalok within the face.
“They represented the qualities that Elisabeth expressed, like warmth and sunshine. A bright spirit,” she mentioned later when requested concerning the significance of the flowers.
Elisabeth Salm’s husband Lyle Young was the final member of the family to present a press release. A longtime Christian Science practitioner, Young spoke for a half hour within the measured cadence of a priest.
Young regarded again on his marriage to Salm since 1990, and on the “Kafkaesque” second when he gave police permission to take proof from her physique and endured the surreal expertise of being questioned himself.
“If I had been a police officer, I wouldn’t have yet excluded myself as a suspect,” he acknowledged.
Despite the “heinous crime,” Lyle refused to present in to bitterness and drew as a substitute on his religion, he mentioned.
“Why should I let someone else’s incapacity to control their impulses control me and take away my joy? Why should I let a poky criminal justice system take me hostage and rob me of my peace?”
Young then addressed Hikoalok instantly, expressing hope that the 22-year-old would possibly higher himself throughout his lengthy incarceration.
“Which of us can affect the other more?” Young requested. “You affecting me by killing my wife? Or my effect on you, through practising forgiveness, strongly coupled with an insistence on and support of self-awareness, remorse and reform?”
A missed alternative
Sara Mainville, an Anishinaabe lawyer based mostly in Toronto, mentioned “prison is not a place of healing” and that, regardless of some progress made in tailoring corrections packages to Indigenous cultures, the tempo of change stays too sluggish.
“I have a 17-year-old myself and I just wish that … real action was happening in a much quicker pace with a lot more investment in systemic reforms so that [Hikoalok] had a healing place to go to as opposed to a prison,” Mainville mentioned.
Since Hikoalok’s first-degree homicide verdict robotically triggered a life sentence with out the opportunity of parole for 25 years, no sentencing arguments had been made. No Gladue report was issued within the case both.
The Gladue precept states that judges ought to contemplate an Indigenous offender’s historical past in sentencing, bearing in mind private expertise with residential faculties, the foster care system, and bodily or sexual abuse.
Mainville mentioned the absence of a Gladue report in Hikoalok’s file is unlucky.
“It’s important for society to know more about his story to understand what happened,” she mentioned. “It’s sort of like a cautionary tale, so it doesn’t happen again.”
