The mother of 16-year-old Jannai Dopwell-Bailey, who was stabbed outside his school in October, says she and her family are still struggling to get therapy to process their grief.
The day he died, Monday, Oct. 18, 2021, replays in Charla Dopwell’s mind over and over, and over again.
“Sometimes I can’t focus. Sometimes my mind is just on my son,” the mother said in the family’s apartment in Montreal’s Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood.
She’d just finished working a double shift that afternoon last fall as a patient attendant at a seniors’ home in Côte-Saint-Luc and was thinking about Jannai.
How she’d finally get to spend time with him — the baby of the family — since it was her day off the next day. How it was his birthday in less than a month, and about the surprise she and the family were preparing for him.
And then, she thinks about how the police found her on that bus and delivered the news that turned her and her family’s lives upside down: that Jannai had just been stabbed at the corner of Van Horne and Victoria avenues.
These events swirl in Dopwell’s mind in the morning when she wakes up and at night as she stares, sleepless, at the ceiling.
Dopwell says she has been trying to move forward and cope with the grief but ongoing criminal trials and the bureaucracy required to get government-funded therapy are wearing her down.
“My son is dead. My son is dead, just like that. It’s not easy for someone to go through. It’s not easy to swallow,” Dopwell said.
“I’m thinking about Jannai, Jannai, Jannai. I’m thinking, I’m saying, ‘Oh my God, what a waste. Look what they did to my child.’ Oh my Lord. Sometimes I say, ‘No, this didn’t happen.'”
Two people have been accused of second-degree murder in Jannai’s death, one minor and an 18-year-old. They are expected to stand trial in the coming months.
Weeks after the killing, Dopwell said provincial government officials told her the family could be eligible for compensation through its Indemnisation des victimes d’actes criminels (IVAC) fund, which compensates victims of crimes.
But Dopwell said the process has been gruelling and now appears to have hit a road block. An IVAC representative told her over the phone the agency was looking into whether her son was in a gang after it was mentioned in a French-language newspaper.
“I said, ‘It’s not a gang,’ and she said ‘Yes, the French newspaper said it’s a gang.’ And since then, we haven’t heard anything,” Dopwell said.
A spokesperson from IVAC says the agency does not comment on individual cases, and that the length of time to get any compensation varies from case to case.
Montreal police say Jannai did not have a criminal record and that as far as the force is concerned he was not a member of a street gang.
Media reporting that links Black youth to gangs is nothing new in Quebec, according to Benoit Décary-Secours, an associate professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), whose research has focused on media and police rhetoric around the idea of street gangs.
Décary-Secours’s research found that the concept of gangs in the province first surfaced in newspapers in the 1980s and — though police at first denied their existence in Montreal — it stuck.
The news stories eventually encouraged a style of policing that targets young Black people and other people of colour under the guise of crime prevention, Décary-Secours said.
“No one really knows what a street gang is. Even specialists, such as criminologists who’ve studied the question, struggle to come up with a definition,” he said.
“We see that these inequalities, or how they are perceived in society, has created two types of individuals — individuals who are seen to deserve help … and those who don’t when they are found not to qualify.”
Quebec’s Ministry of Justice refused to comment on Dopwell’s case, but issued a statement saying a newspaper article could establish a “doubt” surrounding the circumstances of a crime.
But it said that to refuse a request for compensation, IVAC “must be able to demonstrate, by a preponderance of evidence, the victim’s participation in an offence or the commission of gross negligence,” the statement said. “Finally, membership in a criminal group cannot, on its own, justify the the refusal of a request.”
Décary-Secours said that because of media’s introduction of the very idea of the existence of criminal groups called “street gangs,” outlets have almost come to be seen as specialists on the matter.
“Social prejudices permeate all layers of society, including media and public institutions and that’s why we need pretty serious mechanisms to be able to create a framework around that,” he said.
WATCH | ‘He’s dead for nothing’ says mother:
Charla Dopwell says she has been struggling to get therapy as she mourns the death of her 16-year-old son, stabbing victim Jannai Dopwell-Bailey. 0:44
Activists and experts on racial profiling pointed out discrepancies in the public reactions surrounding Jannai’s death and the death of another 16-year-old, Thomas Trudel, who was white, just weeks later.
Quebec Premier François Legault and Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante each stopped by a makeshift memorial that was set up for Thomas and mourned the teenager’s loss in public. But neither showed up at an earlier vigil for Jannai, nor did they make any public appearances to show support to his family.
“If my son was white, I would have done get help for the therapy. I would have been getting my therapy. How can they just leave us like that?” Dopwell said.
Charla Dopwell’s home is filled with objects commemorating her son. In the living room, there are candles with Jannai’s image printed on them. Some were given to her by friends of his at the vigil held in his wake, others by her downstairs neighbour, whose son Jannai taught English to.
“He was loved,” Dopwell said shaking her head as she folded a blanket with more photos of him and words that said, “I love you to the moon and back.”
“Everybody loved him.”
For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.
