Victim Impact Statement on the loss of Abbie Speir
Delivered in memory of Abbie Speir at the Court of Queen's Bench in Regina, Saskatchewan on July 23, 2020, at the Sentencing Hearing for Kevin Obina Okafor.
So often, in the days since you took Abbie’s life, Kevin, people have said that they cannot imagine what it is like to go through this. But they describe exactly the nature of your offence: you took murder out of the realm of the imaginary and made it our collective, actual and terrible reality: our reality and yours.
In the winter of 2012, Abbie left her marriage and brought youinto our lives. It was a difficult time for us as we adjusted to the loss ofher marriage. But Dad has always said we do not get to choose who our peoplelove. She chose you, so we set our hearts to welcoming you and moving into anew world and a new family with you.
Abbie had a huge heart. She saw the best in people even whileshe teased us about our hang-ups and wouldn’t let us get away with excuses. Shehad a rare combination of an honest view of people’s humanity and anunconditional love for people as they were. When we were talking about ourlives and relationships one evening, she told me that you had a hard life andthat it gave you hard edges but that you also had a big heart.
We saw your heart, Kevin, in the ways you flew kites with ourkids, your big laugh, your generous gifts, and your face as you cast a fishingline. As a part of our family, you became a father and an uncle, and sat amongthe brothers and sons-in-law. We also saw you struggle, and we opened ourhearts to love you because Abbie loved you. And the two of you created the mostbeautiful people in your daughters. You appear in four years of photos as amember of our family. This is part of the particular wound and pain andcomplication of domestic violence: that someone we have loved destroys someonewe love. The threat did not come from outside of our family but from withinit.
When I hugged her the very last time, she was trying to get awayfrom the hard edges, the broken parts of you that were hurting her, but she wasstill defending you. On the night of April 20, 2017, I sat with two friendsworrying for Abbie. I whispered to them that I was afraid that something wasgoing to happen to her before she could get out: it was 9:15 and she wasalready dead.
I shook through 7 days of not being able to see and hold herbattered body. I held her children and yours while they cried for their mamaand I could not bring them to her. My tears fell alongside theirs as we allached for her. My children lost their innocence as I told them that you hurtAuntie Abbie so bad that she died. My children were initiated far too soon to aworld where people who love you can not only hurt you, but also kill you. Afterher aunt left her uncle, my oldest daughter asked me when I was going to leaveher dad; the night before Abbie’s funeral, I sat on a bed while that same girlasked me through her tears if the same thing could happen in our house. Iburied my miscarried daughter, Claire, in a tiny urn in Abbie’s grave. We tellstories about her to our children and to yours instead of wrapping our armsaround Abbie and knowing her still. Every year for the last three, and for therest of my life, I celebrate the birthday I shared with my twin sister andwonder at what she would have taught me if only this year had been given toher. I have spent hours and days and weeks in counselling to deal with griefand anger, all while I continue to do my best as a daughter, sister, partner,parent, employee, and neighbour. So much of the energy that should have beenspent on living and loving freely has been redirected to surviving and healing fromviolent trauma. You made that choice for me and for all of us.
Every day since Abbie died, I discover new losses that I didn’tsee coming. When our youngest son was born, I picked up the phone to call heronly to remember she can’t answer, and then grieved all over again that he willnever get his nickname from her. When the pandemic hit, I craved hearing hersarcastic wisdom on our shared work in healthcare. As I looked at the lines inmy face while I was writing these words, it hit me that I have also lost thechance to see the age lines in hers. Abbie pushed me out of my comfort zone,helped me to see my own beauty, and taught me to laugh at myself. Her lossmeans learning to do these things without her, while I ache to know what eachseason would have been like with her. For the rest of my life, I will grievethe losses still yet to come.
Murder means that we have not been able to move through thegrieving process in the days, weeks and months that followed Abbie’s death. Wehave been suspended in a space between the news of her death and full knowledgeabout what happen to her. Our family has honoured the instructions not to speakto each other about our respective experiences on the night Abbie died,recognizing that doing so might have jeopardized the legal process. As aresult, I have been unable to speak to my parents and siblings about thehardest parts of our collective trauma and grief. The silent injustice of ourexperience as victims has been suffocating. I have been trapped in the waiting,haunted by my imagination of her suffering, pulled back into the trauma everytime you walked back into a courtroom. My heart has been broken as I watched mydad and sister struggle to testify in court. We have been waiting for today,for 1190 days, to hear the sequence of events that transpired that night.
It is so very clear to me that this is a legal system, and not ajustice system. No resolution or sentence is capable of bringing about justicefor the loss of Abbie’s vibrant and beautiful life. And I need, so desperately,for my sister’s violent death to be one part of my history instead of my constantand present reality.
Because it seems like it would be easier to hate you, it hasbeen particularly painful to realize that in addition to losing Abbie, we havealso lost all the best parts of you. I feel this especially when I push yourdaughters on the swings or have the privilege of combing and braiding theirhair after a bath. That night, [Abbie’s children] not only lost their mother,they also lost their father. Though they do not want for the love of a motherand father now, they have lost their biological parents’ presence in theirlives.
I have always believed that hurting people hurt people. I cannotimagine the size and shape and colour of the hurt that would lead you to exactpain on Abbie until she bled out on the floor in front of you, taking amother’s love from her children, and leaving a gaping hole in the hearts of allof us who knew and loved her. We do not get to choose so much of what lifebrings to us, but we do get to choose how we respond. I believe that everysingle one of us is capable of responding to our own pain by doing the sort ofthing you have done. And I believe it is each human being’s responsibility dealwith our pain so that we do not pass it on to others. Instead of dealing withyour own pain, you exacted it on Abbie, on our family, and on me. But I alsobelieve that the measure of a person is not the sum of their worst actions. Youare living and so you get to keep choosing.
It is my hope that this guilty plea is a sign of the beginningof your healing process.
It would make too light of the work of forgiveness to say that Ihave forgiven you. I will spend my whole life working to actively forgive you:because you have stolen a lifetime of moments with Abbie that I cannot grieveuntil they arrive, because there is still so much of what happened that we havenot been permitted to know so that you would get a fair trial; and mostlybecause I refuse to be locked inside the destructive prison of hatred. Theworld has more than enough hatred and violence already. Fostering hateimprisons the one who chooses it, so I choose to pursue forgiving you mostlyfor me and for our family. I will notcooperate with the violence you chose the night Abbie died. I will not allowyou to do any more damage to our family than has already been done. We aredoing the work to have more healing, more peace, more love in our family inspite of Abbie’s death.
Even if and when we have finished the work of forgiveness, itwill not set you free unless you do your own healing work. It is my greatesthope that someday you will be healed enough to not be a danger to the rest ofus living in the world. For most, prison is a place that threatens to hardenyou further and that grieves me too. In spite of this, I wish you healing. Ihope that you will have the grace to fully see and take responsibility for whatyou have done and what you have failed to do. In the years before you, I hopeyou will become the man that Abbie believed you could be. I hope that therewill come a day that you know deeply the grace of being loved and forgiven.
Go gently, Kevin. One awful night you chose Abbie’s death. But life and death is still set before you even now; I pray that, somehow, you will choose life.