Community searches for healing after not-guilty verdict in death of Tina Fontaine

The keynote speaker at an event Friday says she hopes the experience will help female victims of violence heal and take the next steps after Raymond Cormier was found not guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Tina Fontaine.

Sadie Phoenix Lavoie is speaking at Heart Medicine: Women Standing Together Against Violence at Circle of Life Thunderbird house, where the audience is women and women-identified only.

"What happened with Tina Fontaine gives us a lot of uncertainty of what's next, what's in store," said Phoenix Lavoie. "So we need to come together … to have that discussion about what are we going to do about this situation."

Watching Raymond Cormier be found not guilty in Tina's death was hard on the community, she said.

"It's a problem because who is going to feel motivated after this?" she asked.

"He was engaged [in Tina's life] and … still has some responsibility."

Phoenix Lavoie said she was a sexual assault victim as a young woman and reported the assault to police and tried to press charges, but they were ultimately dropped.

The experience left her without faith in the criminal justice system, she said.

"Because they dismissed it doesn't mean that I don't still have to deal with it," she said.

"And so my way of healing was to be fully engaged in the community and try and uplift other women and find closure from that."

Having a female-only audience was essential to hasten the discussion, said Phoenix Lavoie, by preventing questioning of the validity of the audience's experiences with gender-based violence.

"So it's allowing us to get past that shame or uncertainty or feelings of being invalidated of what we're going through and moving past that and getting towards what needs to be done."

Women are still going to stand up and demand justice, she said.

"The exploitation is very historic as much as it is current, and we have to take into consideration [how] racism, classism [has] impacted us, intergenerationally, and what needs to be done in terms of how we're engaged with other men in our community."

The event runs until 4 p.m. Friday.