The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Fathers Who Lost Their Daughters

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

Two fathers, Brian Sweeney and Dan Jennings, have been at the forefront to raise awareness about intimate partner violence and how tragedies have a ripple effect on communities. In Sault Ste. Marie, they join Steve Paikin to discuss what it has been like to lose a daughter too early in life and the fight they are on to see something change.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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has been laid out with a picture of her. You know, she was so photogenic, my daughter, that just about everything we've received has been laid out with a picture of her. And she liked to laugh, she loved to smile. It was just the way she was. And my mother and my daughter there, I mean, God bless them, they're together in heaven right now. I mean, God bless them.

They're together in heaven right now. These two pictures are very, very important, and quite often they come along with me when I do have speaking engagements. This picture, I had no way of knowing at the time that would be our last time together. After I moved back to Sault Ste. Marie, one of the first things I did was get Caitlin's name tattooed on my arm.

Anytime I looked at her, I always thought of her. I never thought at that point I'd have to get this redone to show birth and death dates. And it's a constant reminder that she should still be here. Brian, Dan, thank you for doing this. And let me start by saying just how awful it is that we have to be sitting here talking about this. But hopefully, some good's going to come out

of this conversation and others that you've been having. So why don't we start, Brian? Tell me about Angie. Well, she was a fun-loving young woman, you know. She lived life pretty much to the fullest. She was just always there to help friends or anybody in a dilemma, even strangers. If she seen someone that was a stranger having a bad day, she'd walk up and offer a gesture of some kind of kindness because deep down she had a huge heart and she had a big group of friends that were all the same way. It's not the me-me thing, it was about love and care for the family and enjoying life and taking care of her children.

You know what I mean? She did a really good job raising her children and they're very responsible young children. And she just always tried to look at the best in people, you know. And it didn't matter what other people said about anyone. She evaluated people on her own, and nine times out of ten, she always come up with a different conclusion because not everybody knows what's going on in someone's life, right? You know, in this tragedy like this, the number of people that she had touched and reached just blew me out of the water because I never realized she had such a vast network of people that appreciated her just

on a daily basis, you know? That's a lovely thing for a father to find out. It is. Yeah. Okay, Dan, tell us about Caitlin. Well, she was just coming into her prime of life. I like to say she was my millennium baby. She was 22. 22. She died

about six weeks before her 23rd birthday. And unfortunately, I did miss some of a few years with her due to the ugliness of her divorce from her mother. But there was so much of me in her, just like what Brian said with Angie. She the one always wants to help her friends always had a smile on her face she just had a love of learning she was the excuse me the go-to mechanic she was just coming on to her own as a person and fortunately she was snuffed out and she can't say anything anymore that's why I'm here I'm her voice and one thing I want also want to say about Angie I didn't know her even though I'm from here I did not know Angie personally but from all what people said to her throughout the city all her friends and

from Brian there's no question I know her as I do any friend right now. Well, more people are knowing both of your kids, and in part because of those shirts you're wearing right now. Angie's Angels are who? Angie's Angels is a group that we formed probably within two weeks of her tragedy. Myself and my son, my wife, my daughter-in-law. Two of our very best friends are the two spearheaders. In talking with them and with the rest of the family, we were always, we tried to figure out, well you know, in this situation, the voice has to keep speaking and we can't be shy. I've just seen through the years and different tragedies where people just are just silent and quiet and then the word doesn't get out on how things have to

be changed. And we're trying to expand now and get more into educating the young people about this possibility and making people recognize the red flags over it. So we talked about it for probably about a week. And then we said, well, you know, what would Angie do? You know, if it was one of us, what would Angie do? She'd be right there making the most noise, speaking her mind, and bringing the education out there to everybody. So we all decided, you know, like we've got to do this for her. We can't let her name just go be and said once or twice.

Caitlin's Heard. What's that? Well, it originally started very similar to what Brian, because Caitlin died before Angie, and it was just started with Justice for Caitlin. But that wasn't enough. Everybody kind of says justice for what everybody happened. The logo is an ear, and the spelling is a little play on words. Caitlin's heard. And my motto for the group is, Caitlin was not heard when she was alive, but she will be heard now and I will be her voice. She has to be more than just a statistic. We are looking for change. Her voice, she is somebody that should be still here. She should be by my side with this fight, but she's not. But I'm gladly joining this fight with this man here. I look in the eyes of my grandkids, and I want them to see Grandpa did something to help me.

Dan, you said, though, I've seen you quoted as having said, you don't want vengeance, you want justice. Right. How come? Well, I'm glad you brought that up. Because just for what it's worth, I know a lot of people who want a lot of vengeance. Yes. I may be the indifference of opinion, but I don't want more hate to be coming into this world. There's enough of that right now. So, justice, yes. How do you feel about that, Brian?

Well, I agree with Dan 100%. I mean, personally, do I have a rage inside of me that could go beyond anyone's wildest belief? I sure do. Do I think it'd resolve anything? Absolutely not. To me, it's about getting the protection in place for the people that can't speak for themselves. As Dan is speaking for his daughter, as I am speaking for my daughter, these are times that are too late. We're part of a group a group that believe me nobody wants to be a part of and it's sad to say that anybody is is vulnerable to it but to get vengeful is not going to resolve the issue to get justice as he says or change some of these laws and the rules give the police the power they need to get a grip on this because that door has been closed for

decades now we're pushing for a change in these bills and then insisting that that you know our policing agencies our justice system acts accordingly. To me it just seems they're more concerned about the rights of an individual that does a nasty act. Okay, before we go there, and we will focus on that in a second, I think for people to understand what intimate partner violence is, they need to know what happened to your girls. Exactly. And I hate like hell to ask you this, but if you wouldn't mind telling us, how did your daughter die? Well, she was shot in her own home. My granddaughter

was there at the time. Hiding under a bed, I gather. Hiding under the bed, yes. My daughter, that was the last act she made, that she had received a phone call stating that he was coming there with a gun to her house, so she had locked the door. She went upstairs. She closed the bedroom door and put herself up against the door so he couldn't come through in there and told her to get under the bed with your phone don't come out no matter what happens just be quiet and that's exactly what she

did so when when he couldn't burst his way through the door he shot her through the door because he knew she was just on the other side of it. And what did he do after that? Then after that he after that he turned around and he left my daughter's house and and thankfully he didn't look for my granddaughter but he had left my daughter's house and went to his ex-wife's house, who, you know, he had a background of this type of scenario in the past. But then he went to his ex's home and killed his own three children, which were, like, my daughter was with him for almost three years. And, you know, there was a lot of birthdays and family get-togethers and everything. Like. These three kids were like my own other grandchildren that I have. They were a part of the family.

And then after he did that, he turned the gun on himself. I mean, personally, was the man probably in his right mind? I don't believe so. What was the influence at this time? We've got no answers. So that's the horror your family has been through. Tell us about Caitlin's situation. With me reconnecting with her after a number of years,

and the big trigger for her was when my previous wife passed away from cancer. And then that was her motivation to reconnect with me on father's day of 2022 best father's day present any father could have. So we got, got our, got to know each other once again, got to see her. We got to know each other once again, got to see her. And I will never forget the day that I got the call. It was 11.30 that night, July 5th.

And I personally thought when the policeman came, it was concerning my mother who was in a nursing home. But as soon as he said, do you have a daughter named Caitlin in London? And I didn't need him to finish that thought. I know what happened. Now, as I was saying earlier, some people would think it extraordinary that you want justice but not vengeance. And Brian, you did something that I think some people would find quite extraordinary. And that is at at a vigil you hugged the mother of the man who killed your daughter in public and and basically tried to create empathy with her why'd

you do that well I did that because like I said they've been together for almost three years. And she's the other half of my family. They were her grandchildren as well. I wasn't even made aware that they were being harassed or bothered up until the day of the vigil when I went to see them and asked her if they were going to attend. And they said, no, we weren't going to attend because of the outpour of people that were causing them grief and i thought for probably a brief second it didn't take me much longer to come up to a

conclusion that that's just not right because she's suffering a lot and she's in a lot of pain as well so i'd asked her to make a point of being there for me and my son. And I had told her before I get anything said and going that I wanted her to join us on stage. And I just asked everybody to show her the same courtesy and compassion as I've been receiving because she lost the same. She lost a child. She lost three grandchildren and she's a beautiful woman. She was one of my daughter's best friends. They got along great. To me, it just wasn't right that people treated them like that and in a way it hurt me because let's face it, if the shoe was on the other foot, they can't be held responsible or accountable for what Bob did.

To me, I just knew it would help the community a little bit too. You know, if I can show enough love and compassion to the parents of the man that took my daughter, then there's no reason why no one else can't give her forgiveness as well and show her some compassion. This is a hard question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. And that is that I assume it's impossible to lose a child and not at some point, as you go through the chronology of

it all, ask yourself, is there anything I could have done? Is there something I missed? As you think about the time now after the fact, you beat yourself up at all on any of this? At times you can't you there's it's impossible not to and I do know Caitlin was in and out of shelters. I have copies of text messages between her and one of her friends. She was hiding out six weeks before she died. I have survivor's guilt, of course. Her friend also has it even worse. She was there, she knew more of the situation than I did.

And I talked to her about that and said you were there as a friend you did what you could but she had unfortunately made the same decision and she didn't know where else to go and that is the most horrible thing that she couldn't reach out I would have gotten her but she needed someplace else to go which she didn't know where to go. And that's so, it breaks me up all the time. And this is why we are on this fight. There has to be choices for people in that situation. Brian, how about you? As you think back on it, do you think? Well, there were some red flags there that we had caught, and we had brought them to her attention,

because he was, as a narcissist that he was, he was trying to isolate her and divide her from her family, because in his eyes, what he was looking for was his three children and my daughter and him to be a family. and him to be a family. He pressured my grandson into a situation where we had him move in with us just prior to everything happening. Then after my grandson wasn't there, then he started picking on my granddaughter, and then she spent more time with her biological father. And then that, I think that was when she started to see the picture that, you know, it wasn't anything about her. It was all about him and what he wanted. And, yeah, we talked about it quite a bit. Do we beat ourselves up over it every day?

In the end, right, we do. It hurts every day? Not just me. My son has had a terrible go of it. The way things had happened with her that he had given my son reassurance that he would never hurt her and nothing like that would ever happen. It's not something that we can take onto our own selves, but the only way we can get comfort from not having done that is to get some changes made so that nobody else goes through it again. That's what I wanted to pick up on, because you two are suddenly experts at something

you didn't want to be experts in, and that is intimate partner violence, which we are hearing more and more about in fact 95 communities around the province have now passed resolutions saying that it's an epidemic and that something needs to be done you know of course because you're at Queen's Park there are a couple of bills going through the legislature right now there's amendment an amendment to the Criminal Code being considered as well if those changes if that legislation proposed ultimately goes through, what kind of a difference do you think it will make, Dan, in all of this?

Well, for the provincial level, they have to acknowledge that it is a factor in Ontario. So they have to name it before we can deal with it. And that's number one. Name it and track it, right? Because this bill would track it as well. Exactly. The provincial government was so scared for the longest time with the word epidemic. And they're saying it's not a health... This issue is not a health-related term.

I completely disagree with that. Look at all the medical bills. Physical and emotional toll this intimate partner violence does. How can you say how can you say it's not an health issue well they say it's not a communicable disease well that may be true but it's a health issue look how much this hate spreads that's the problem as for the federal level this would help so many so many people in the future because it defines any type of relationship people are with,

present or past, any type of control, emotional abuse. Or coercive behavior. Exactly, physical abuse. And I commend MP Laurel Collins for putting this bill ahead. She actually attended one of our NJ's Angels meeting by Zoom. And I told her directly, if this bill was in place, I have no doubt my daughter would still be here today. And so would mine. I mean, I firmly believe in this bill that Laurel brought forward

because it covers the broad spectrum of this problem as a whole in so many different areas you know that I believe if it gets instituted god knows how many lives it could save and and it shouldn't it shouldn't you shouldn't have to wait until such a tragedy happens or someone ends up in the hospital and almost died. I've had so many people contact me through Angie's Angels telling me stories from 50 years ago they went through this and still nothing has changed. And you know they're still dealing with it as seniors now that they're still troubled by it. And that's why I talk about you know early education and stuff. But we've got to get a grip on it first. And our judicial system has to treat it for what it is.

And the way I look at it right now is if the government is supposed to be here to serve and protect the people of Canada, period, whether it be provincially or federally, it's all the same package. it be provincially or federally, it's all the same package. And if our concerns today are more about lost cars and vehicles, that's materialistic. You can buy another car, you can find them, or you can do whatever, but you can't bring back a life. You can't take away the tragedy that someone goes through for who knows how many years, that they may never get over. Somewhere, the change has to start. I really hate to disappoint anybody, but if they think I'm gonna walk away from this

before I get a change, they're wrong. You're talking to the wrong guy. I think there's a lot of admiration for you guys out there for the courage and the efforts that you're undertaking to get this done. So thank you for spending some time with us here today. I'm glad to. Thank you.