Bearing Witness by Mary Fairhurst Breen - BLOG
Sophie Breen
Today, my daughter Emma and I witnessed the sentencing hearing of the young man who sold my daughter Sophie the fentanyl that killed her 2 years and 8 months ago, also on a Tuesday.
We reheard details of that day. Her text trail with this man, a friend of hers. Her fiancé's excruciating attempt to revive her, probably an hour or more after she died. His pain, our pain, entered as testimony. Emma and I had prepared victim impact statements, which were read in court. I looked the young man in the eye. We were both crying.
Glad seems like an inappropriate word to use to describe any of this, but I can't think of a better one. I am glad to have said my piece. I am glad to have been seen. I am glad to have heard all the ways in which this man has turned his life around since March 2020. He was addicted to drugs then; he is not now. He told the truth the minute he was arrested and I witnessed his remorse today.
Many mothers' children have been sold poison by callous drug dealers. Many mothers have been treated very badly by the justice system, their children's lives dismissed as meaningless because they used drugs. We are a bunch of furious mothers.
Emma and I both said in our victim impact statements that to imprison the man who appeared in court today would do him a great deal of harm, without doing any good to anyone else. The crown wants 3 years, entirely as a symbol of the devastation caused by fentanyl. Of course it's devastating. We're up to 21 opioid deaths per day in Canada, a 91% increase since the pandemic began.
The devastation continues unabated because the public is indifferent and governments cling irrationally to failed policies like prohibition. That's where our fury is directed.
If anyone wants copies of our victim impact statements, I can send them to you via EMAIL