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Jack
Hillson | Serena
Nicotine |
Province pays $142K to
family of slain group home operator
CBC, Mar. 14, 2005
SASKATOON - The provincial
goverment will pay $142,500 to the family of a North Battleford
woman killed in 1997 by two teenage girls who were in custody
at her community home.
On Dec. 18, 1997, Helen Montgomery, 58, was struck on the head
with a cast-iron frying pan and then stabbed 15 times with a
kitchen knife.
Her body was discovered the
next morning by her daughter, Valerie Montgomery-Bull.
Serena Nicotine and Catherine
McKenzie, both young offenders, later pleaded guilty to second-degree
murder.
Montgomery's family filed a
lawsuit against the government of Saskatchewan last year.
In the suit, Valerie Montgomery-Bull
said the province knowingly placed her mother in grave danger
by putting Nicotine in her house without giving Montgomery any
training or warning her of Nicotine's potential for violence.
Nicotine was serving a sentence for murder at the time she was
transferred to Montgomery's house.
As part of the settlement,
the province will present an annual community service award in
memory of Helen Montgomery.
"We have conveyed our
profound sympathies and apologies to the Montgomery family,"
Corrections and Public Safety Minister Peter Prebble said Monday
in a news release.
Family moves ahead with
lawsuit
Compensation, apology sought by children of Helen Montgomery
Silas Polkinghorne of The
StarPhoenix, October 5, 2004
The family of Helen Montgomery
is moving ahead with a lawsuit that seeks compensation from the
provincial government for pain and suffering caused by the death
of their mother seven years ago.
Montgomery, a community home
operator in North Battleford, was killed by two youths, Serena
Nicotine and Catherine Mackenzie, in 1997.
The lawsuit was filed in 1998,
but it could not move forward until the criminal trials had concluded,
the family's lawyer, Jack Hillson, said Monday.
Mackenzie and Nicotine are
serving life sentences for second-degree murder.
Hillson did not give a dollar
figure on the amount sought in damages.
Montgomery's children, Valerie
Montgomery-Bull and Colin Lochrie, also want the government to
publicly apologize, to reassure them this will never happen again
and to explain why Social Services sent the two girls to live
in Montgomery's home.
"My mother didn't stand
a chance," Montgomery-Bull said in an interview Monday.
"I don't know how (Nicotine) got released to my mom's home."
Hillson said even prison guards
have said they can't handle Nicotine.
"She shouldn't have been
allowed out," Montgomery-Bull said.
Hillson said the only training
Montgomery received to deal with violent young offenders was
a suicide prevention course.
"This was negligence and
bad judgment in the extreme," he said.
Montgomery-Bull said she wants
some compensation for lost wages and for damages to other aspects
of her life as a result of her mother's death.
"There was nothing that
was the same about my life anymore," she said. She says
she lost her job and had to undergo counselling.
"I need closure,"
she said, adding seven years is "a long time to wait for
closure."
A statement from the family
and Hillson said Premier Lorne Calvert, then social services
minister, met with Montgomery-Bull after the killing, but never
followed up the meeting.
The statement also said Calvert
called for a review of the program that sent Nicotine and Mackenzie
to Montgomery's home, and then cancelled the program.
The province has not compensated
the family for their mother's murder, but the government did
reimburse Montgomery-Bull for some of her mother's funeral expenses,
the statement says.
Hillson hopes an examination
for discovery -- the next step in the lawsuit -- will start next
month and the case will go to trial early in 2005.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2004
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
