A man working at the government-run group home where Traevon Chalifoux-Desjarlais died in Abbotsford, B.C, didn't show up to testify at the inquest into the teen's death.Rafal Gerszak/The Globe and Mail
A man working at the Vancouver-area group home when a Cree foster teen went missing before killing himself in his bedroom closet two years ago appears to have disappeared and did not show up to testify at the coroner’s inquest into the death.
Counsel for Rees Family Services Inc., a company that ran group home in Abbotsford, B.C., and a handful of other facilities in the Fraser Valley, told the inquest Friday that Geoffrey Holley had left the firm, disconnected his cellphone, discontinued the rental of a local P.O. box he had been using and may now be somewhere in Europe. The inquest into the suicide of Traevon Desjarlais-Chalifoux in September, 2020, heard that a summons sent to one of Mr. Holley’s e-mail addresses never garnered a response.
The inquest did hear a recording of an Abbotsford police officer interviewing Mr. Holley for a dozen minutes shortly after she and her colleague entered the bungalow on Sept. 18 and did what he and two of his colleagues failed to do over a number of days: search Mr. Desjarlais-Chalifoux’s room thoroughly enough to find three brief suicide notes near his bedside table and his body in the closet.
In the clip, Mr. Holley is heard telling the constable that he and his colleague Brett Claxton had a three-day shift over the previous weekend, with him last seeing the 17-year-old on the evening of Saturday, Sept. 12. Lawyers then told the inquest that Mr. Holley clarified to the officer later that he had actually last seen Mr. Desjarlais-Chalifoux a day prior on the evening of Friday, Sept. 11.
“He seemed in a more talkative mood,” the inquest heard Mr. Holley say.
On the morning of Sunday, Sept. 13, Mr. Holley tells the officer in the recording, he and Mr. Claxton saw the back door open and figured the teen had left the house. He says that was not uncommon something he did more than a dozen times in the 15 months he was living there.
“It’s not rare for them to go missing for a night or two and show up when they get hungry.”
The inquest’s five jurors are tasked with determining when and how Mr. Desjarlais-Chalifoux died, and with making recommendations for systemic changes that could prevent other foster children from dying in similar circumstances.
On Thursday, the inquest heard from Mr. Holley’s two colleagues at the group home: Murray McMaster, a former cook and plumbing wholesaler, and Mr. Claxton, a former soldier and landscaper. Both these middle-aged white men told the jurors their employer, Rees, gave little to no training in how to care for Indigenous teens despite the majority of people cycling through their facility over the years being First Nations.
The inquest was called this spring after a Globe and Mail investigation into the death of the teen, whose body was discovered in his bedroom closet four days after he was reported missing. The Globe investigation found deficiencies at Rees as well as the organization that contracted its services, Xyolhemeylh, which is one of 24 Indigenous Child and Family Service agencies charged with providing foster care to First Nations, Métis and Inuit children and youth in British Columbia. The Globe found that Xyolhemeylh, also known as the Fraser Valley Aboriginal Children and Family Services Society, failed to ensure Indigenous children in its care were safe in group homes.
The Globe interviewed former employees of Rees who said the hiring process was not rigorous and that these homes attracted the “most troubled kids” in the foster-care system. In the past decade, the B.C. government has paid company owner Richard Rees between $875,000 and $1-million a year, records show. (Mr. Rees, who was contracted by Xyolhemeylh to house Mr. Desjarlais-Chalifoux, ignored multiple e-mails and hand-delivered letters requesting comment during The Globe’s investigation.)
On Friday, the inquest into Mr. Desjarlais-Chalifoux’s death heard that Constable Christian Drabosenig, who was with the Abbotsford Police Department at the time of the death but has now moved to the RCMP, said colleagues in the major crimes unit were immediately called to rule out foul play.