Pickton compensation is blood money for SK victim’s family

Bridget Perrier, the girls’ stepmom who raised them from a young age, said the compensation is blood money.

“It's not going to replace the fact that the media went at her mother and all the other women and portrayed them as drug-addicted women that didn't deserve to live. The media portrayed the victims in the most harmful way. There were children involved. A lot of these women were mothers and that wasn't honoured.”

Perrier said they would like to see a national inquiry into missing and murdered women in Canada.

“See everyone is worried about a plane that disappeared? Let’s look at the 854 women that have disappeared,” Perrier said in a phone call from Toronto.

A $4.9 million compensation fund has also been set up for the children whose mothers vanished from Vancouver during Pickton’s reign. Of the 67 missing and murdered women mentioned in a 2012 public inquiry report into the botched Pickton investigation, 98 children will be eligible for payment.

Perrier still remembers the day she first met Angel, who was about five years old at the time. Angel and her younger sister would play with Perrier’s hair and tell her that it was similar to Brenda’s .

“It was heartbreaking. I raised a little girl without her mom,” Perrier recalled.

At eight years old, Angel learned her mother Brenda was dead. At the missing women inquiry, Angel recalled the day in 2002 when police investigators told her they may have found her mother’s remains on Pickton’s pig farm.

“It was really hard for Angel. We lived in a very, kind of upper-class area of Toronto. Kids weren’t allowed to play with her due to who her birth mother was,” Perrier said.

Brenda was described by Perrier as a guardian angel who always protected the vulnerable. Brenda was a hairdresser who loved music, especially jazz. Brenda struggled with addiction and disappeared from Vancouver’s east side in 1999.

“I know that Brenda's legacy lives on in her daughter and watching that legacy get spread by Angel's mouth is very empowering. I'm very proud of my daughter,” Perrier said, adding Angel has become a strong advocate and inspirational speaker despite the tragedy.

While there are mixed feelings about the compensation after the police failures in the Pickton investigation, many families are disappointed with the settlement.

“How do you put a price tag on somebody’s mother?” she questioned.

Perrier is urging people to ask their MPs for a national inquiry and that prostitution laws follow the Nordic model, which decriminalizes people who sell sex and punishes the pimps and johns.

Perrier said they can never forgive the Vancouver police, who failed to do their job and protect their citizens.

“We would like to see those officers involved in the case put their pensions into the orphans’ mouths. That’s what we would like to see. We would like to see all of those police officers that failed to even figure out what was going on to do something for these kids,” she said.

Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu has repeatedly apologized for his force's failure to stop Pickton's killing spree.

On Tuesday, he again said he was sorry and will always regret that Pickton wasn't caught sooner.

“I regret every life that was lost and those murders we failed to prevent,” Chu said, adding there's no real compensation for those who lost their mothers so tragically.

The federal government and the RCMP will contribute 40 per cent towards the fund, B.C. will also provide 40 per cent of the money, and the remaining 20 per cent will come from the City of Vancouver.

-with files from Canadian Press

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by Karin Yeske

Pickton compensation is blood money for SK victim’s family

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