Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

NNSL (Apr 19/99) - A recent report tabled by chief coroner Percy Kinney outlined flaws in the social system that he said led directly to a triple murder/suicide in Kugluktuk one year ago.

Suzie Helen Ayalik is a survivor of a family tragedy and what Kinney called a social services nightmare which came to a head with the horrific death of three of her four children at the hand of her abusive husband, who also took his own life, on March 26, 1998.

Suzie and her 11-year-old son have been left to pick up the pieces of a life shattered by the abuse of a man they trusted and loved and by what Kinney called the neglect of a social system they relied on and cried out to.

Their cries fell upon deaf ears, she said.

"I went to see Social Services several times in '94 and several times afterwards," Suzie recalled.

"The social worker at the time never wrote down when I went to see her and why I went to see her and all this," she explained. "She didn't keep records whatsoever -- although she was supposed to."

Her children were beaten, her nose had been broken, her eyes blackened, she was hit with fists and firewood, and nothing was ever recorded.

"I told her everything that had happened, but she didn't keep records of when I went to see her," Suzie said.

"She'd help me to go pick up my children to go to stay with my relatives for several days or so," she recalled.

Despite the known family abuse, Suzie's social worker signed her husband's --Steven Ayalik -- Firearms Acquisition Certificate.

In an attempt to escape the relationship, Suzie checked in to the Kugluktuk women's shelter, but it was only a temporary refuge for the family, she said.

"They used to have a women's shelter here and I stayed there for about two weeks," Suzie said. "The people at the women's shelter were saying I could only stay there for two weeks or something so I had to go back into that...marriage."

Following a string of convictions against her husband, the court had imposed visitation restrictions on him, but they could not be enforced, Suzie said.

"It's hard in this community, I mean it's so small and you can't walk around town and not see that person, you know," Suzie said. "It was hard to avoid him.

Her 11-year-old son narrowly escaped Steven's drunken rampage. With his father's 12-gauge trained on him, he pushed the muzzle away from his face and ran to his grandmother's house.

Suzie said the boy is doing quite well, all things considered.

"He's doing a lot better than I am, actually," "Fortunately for him he won't be able to remember as much as me."

"(He) hasn't had any counselling since last year," she said. "He's got a lot of things to do and places to go and friends to see and all this to keep him busy, so he won't remember as much as I would."

"For an 11-year-old there's a lot of things he can do," she said.

Following the recent anniversary of the tragedy, Suzie said she's become withdrawn.

"I've been so depressed lately, I don't feel like doing anything or going anywhere," she said.

"Sometimes I garden, but other than that I just want to sleep," she said. "Spring is coming and I don't feel like doing anything."

One of Suzie's main concerns is to prevent a similar tragedy from affecting another family. The widow offered sound advice for the justice minister.

"They should take their FAC away and if they say they're going to need it for hunting like every other person says -- like all the guys here say that," she said. "Some of them rarely go out anyway, but they should have some kind of system in place where the RCMP keep the guns there and when they want to go out, they take them and when they want to come back they just bring them back to the RCMP station."

Changes to the social services system could prevent this tragedy from happening to another family, she said.

"Just keep records how many times a person comes to see a Social Services and see if they could have women sent out to Yellowknife to a women's shelter," she advised.

Deputy Minister for Health and Social Services, Penny Ballantyne, said since the Ayalik tragedy, strict new child welfare legislation has been passed, putting the safety of the children above all else.

Ballantyne said there are no simple solutions to these complex issues.

"In retrospect one would say, 'Well, you know, we should have had her leave; we should have got her out,' but I don't think anybody anticipated that anything this extreme would happen, including the mom, obviously, or she wouldn't have left the kids with dad."

"It was really unexpected and very extreme," she added.

The health and safety of the community is everyone's responsibility, Ballantyne said.

"This is a situation that escalated for a number of years and certainly would have been known not only to the social worker, but also to the families of the community in general," Ballantyne said. "What we learned from this is it takes not just the social worker and the RCMP, but I think also it requires a community level response in terms of general responsibility for children."

"The community has a role in child welfare, it's not just the social worker's job," she added.

Ballantyne said the recommendations made by the coroner are being addressed by her office.

"I really appreciate the very valid points that the chief coroner is making," she said. "He's highlighted these issues in a very constructive way."