For most people the idea of losing your most precious possession, your son or daughter, at someone else’s hands is unfathomable.
When Debbie and Ed Sands learned their daughter Amy had been shot and killed as an unintended target in a Calgary garage, life as they knew it ended.
Family and friends flocked around the Sands to offer their love and support, but as much as that helped, something was missing.
“Anyone who hasn’t gone this can’t understand,” she said.
It’s a feeling that two Calgary mothers whose son’s were also murdered know well.
Karen Venables 18-year-old son Devin was killed with a single punch in 2002 and Debbie Hogarth’s 18-year-old son Josh was stabbed to death in 2012.
The women met for the first time just over a year ago when a reporter suggested they could start a support group for families of murder victims. Over 14 months the two women worked tirelessly to create a society, form the board of directors and secure government funding. This year they received a $72,000 grant from the government of Alberta’s Victims of Crime Fund. Venables said that will take them through their first year and they will apply again this fall.
One of the seven board members, who set the direction for the society and offer their support, is Foothills resident Rob Laird. He was a close friend of Venables brother and saw how Debbie and the family dealt with Devin’s death.
Laird has also been a part of the justice system as a representative for addicts going through the Calgary drug court and is currently raising funds for 1800 House, an addiction centre that has plans of opening a new men’s addiction treatment facility and turning the existing building into a women’s addiction treatment centre. Laird said as a witness to Venables’ and many other families’ grief over the loss of loved ones he was happy to join the board.
Laird also got in touch with Ed and Debbie Sands to tell them about the group.
Last month the Calgary Homicide Support Society held its first meeting.
Ed and Debbie Sands were in attendance.
“Its for people who have been on the same journey and can help each other along the way,” Debbie said.
The two-hour meeting was facilitated by a psychologist, she said, who helped everyone as they told their stories.
“The discussion was so intense,” she said. “It definitely engages your emotions and feelings.”
Debbie originally hoped the group would be an advocate for changes to the justice system, she said, because of dissatisfaction she felt over her daughter’s accused killer’s eight-year sentence for manslaughter.
“I think it was unfair,” she said. “He took the easy way out by blaming someone and received manslaughter. I don’t feel eight years less three years for two years served is enough for taking someone’s life.”
But, she said this support group has provided a different way to vent her feelings over Amy’s death.
“There is a lot we can all bring each other without focusing on the grief and justice system,” Debbie said. “Its quite comforting.”
She said she left the meeting with a feeling of relief.
“I came away feeling much better,” Debbie said. “It doesn’t change the circumstances at all, but it might just change the way you deal with it.”
That is music to Karen Venables ears. She said providing other families help through the hardest thing they will ever face is a huge reward for all the work she and others have put into forming the society.
“I’m so glad and happy that this can be a support to people,” Venables said, recalling her own dark days 12 years ago when her son was killed. “When Devin died I felt like I was covered in winter blanket.
“It was dark and it was heavy. Now 12 years later it is like a light shawl on my shoulders. Its always there, but its light.”
