I hesitated to use the word "rape", but it is the most accurate word I could think of to describe how Dawn McSweeney and her self-proclaimed "partners in crime" stripped my entire family bare of everything we possessed, all my life's most precious belongings, the children's and grandchildren's designated inheritance - and even of each other.
It wasn't accomplished in one fell swoop. My then teenage niece, Dawn McSweeney, worked her schemes on my aged mother over a period of time.
Dawn hated me from the time she was a child because I questioned her behaviour back then - her vulgarity toward her parents, her violence, her arrogance. The first time I was exposed to it was after my darling husband died in 1992. It was then that I started spending nights at my sister Debbie's house. I was grieving for my husband and alone and Debbie and her husband Ed did not sleep at night. So we spent the nights talking. And Dawn, a young girl at the time, and her baby sister - whom I shall not name, did not sleep either.
So it was then that I was witness to Dawn's behaviour, and it was then that I protested, and it was then that Debbie and Ed told me to mind my own business. and it was then that Dawn first let it be known how much she hated me.
I had almost nothing to do with Dawn for years. I might have seen her in passing. In the summer of 1996, Dawn demonstrated her hatred for me again when friends who had helped me when I first fell ill in 1993 came to the house for a short visit.
It was that summer when my mother's attitude toward me became strange. She would sit in her big armchair glaring at me, not saying anything, but glaring at me. I didn't know why, but it hurt. I could not have foreseen that this was a harbinger of a nightmare that would befall our family in a few short months.
I was aware that summer, that Dawn McSweeney was stirring up some kind of trouble. Since my friends stopped by that summer, there was reason to believe Dawn was up to something. But what? I had no idea. But it was then that Dawn told my mother, in my presence that my friends who professed to love me, really hated me.
Dawn had invited the two teenagers outside - ostensibly for teen talk - while the adults sat in the living room chatting. When the family left, Dawn told my mother that the kids couldn't stand me. In fact, she said, they "despised" me. They only pretended to love me, "for fun".
Incidentally, we are still friends all these years later. The son, Robbie just got married in August, 2010.
It was after that visit that my mother's attitude toward me changed. My mother had pleaded me to "come home" two years earlier when she learned I was sick. After Dawn's intervention that summer, it was made clear that I was no longer wanted.
At the beginning of October, 1996, when Dawn and Alex suddenly moved in and took over, I felt the sky falling down on me.
I don't think Dawn could have foreseen how her plan to rob me and displace me would evolve into the full-scale destruction of the entire family. She set out to force me out of my parents' home and assume my position in the family. I was very close to my father all my life. The first born.
Based on her history, I had no doubt that Dawn coveted and that she would pilfer and I begged my mother to keep her out of my rooms.. But my mother turned on me saying, "Dawn doesn't need your jewellery. She has her own jewellery. She has better jewellery than you."
On October 5, 1996, I did a new, detailed inventory of all my belongings, anticipating that Dawn would steal. What I could not have foreseen in any rational expectation was that a Montreal Police officer would turn over all my life's belongings to her. She could not have foreseen that either. What a coup !
Christ was the key Dawn McSweeney used to open the door to 4995 Prince of Wales and make herself at home. Knowing how hurt my mother was by my decision to be baptized, Dawn used my mother's fear to ingratiate herself and make herself and her boyfriend, Alex Lavergne, the heroes coming to my mother's rescue from the enemy within the house - the betrayer of the faith and the family.
What I did not know at the time and did not find out until about four years later was that money had been stolen from my mother sometime before Dawn and Alex actually moved in at the beginning of October. Dawn and Debbie always had complete access in the house. No one else ever did, not since we were teenagers.
I had access around the house while I lived there from early in 1994 until I was attacked on October 7, 1996. But my mother had a locked closet. I never gave much thought to what might be there. Perhaps precious old family photographs, memorabilia, now that I think about it.
Our family home was full of memories for me. I had lived there from the time I was to turn sixteen until I my first marriage. My mother never threw anything out, so many of our childhood things were still about. My sleigh still hung in the garage and there were photographs of the family from the time I was about three years old on the living room wall. I confess that one evening, I was overcome by nostalgia and I peeked into one of the bureau drawers in my bedroom. It was full of precious old 45 rpm records. I didn't touch them. I closed the drawer and I vowed I would never snoop again.
For the two years I lived with my parents, I didn't go anywhere. I was sick, under treatment for cancer. I never went out of the house except to church - and to the hospital - My father did the shopping. I didn't even know the price of a loaf of bread at the time. I was so out of touch. I didn't have any money and I didn't spend any money. My only income was my welfare check. I offered my father money to help defray the cost of my food, but he twice refused me saying that it would confuse his income taxes. I felt he was just being the loving father I had always known.
So I was shocked and deeply hurt when my father suddenly told me one day that it was time for me to leave. This was after my friends from Ontario had visited in the summer of 1996.
I started looking for a place of my own,. I would go out almost every day and look at apartments, but being ill and having so little money, I could not find a place where I could tolerate the dirt and the smell. If I had stolen money, I could have found a reasonable apartment.
I was targeted for a crime I did not even know had happened. Was I ever out of the loop ! I didn't have a clue about what was going on except I knew in my bones that Dawn was out to do me harm.
Why would my mother think I was the one who had robbed her? She had always professed and demonstrated her love for me. She wrote me love notes, bought me gifts. There could only be one reason. In the years after the robbery, the pieces started falling into place. My mother was persuaded that I was the one who took her money.
How could I have defended myself when I didn't know that money had been stolen or even that there was money hidden in the house ? The subject was never mentioned to me until the moment my mother attacked me on October 7, 1996. And when that happened, I was in a state of total shock. Shaking and breathless shock. I didn't realize what my mother was yelling about. I thought she had lost her mind. And the police whisked me away before I could recover my equilibrium.
Perhaps that was what had prompted the comments months earlier when my mother had mentioned in the course of some ordinary conversation that, if I ever won the lottery, I would give all the money to my church.
In retrospect, I can see where she thought I would have spent her stolen money. I can't imagine anyone giving stolen money to a church. But my mother saw evil in me and in the church. And she feared it.
When I was attacked, I managed to call 911. The police I called to save me - helped the thief instead. The officer "helped" me out into the street - physically - and warned me in front of my assailant that I must never return to the house for any reason.
I appealed to the police again and again to go to the house and see that all my belongings were there, clearly marked with my name and inventory numbers. There was as detailed inventory, insurance papers, appraisals, photographs, receipts.
But the police told me that my mother promised everything would be returned to me if I would just be patient. And Debbie told me that she would return all my things, but if I tried to get them any other way, I would be guilty of killing my parents.
In March, 1997, Dawn McSweeney returned everything she didn't want. She kept all the personal treasures of my life. Everything I had worked for all my life, everything my darling husband left me, every gift I had received, even my most sentimental things - my wedding portrait, my husband's trademark grey fedora, his rings, his badge.
It was then, in March, 1997, that the Montreal Police told me they would open a file. There was then what appeared to be a serious investigation and I felt that, at last, I would get back my precious belongings. But after taking away a box and a suitcase that Dawn had returned - empty - except for all the empty little velvet and cardboard jewellery boxes - the detectives told me there were "no fingerprints". They did not say that there were smeared prints, unrecognizable prints. They stressed that there were "no fingerprints". Impossible - since Dawn and Debbie and the friends who picked up the boxes and cases and I had all handled them. "Case closed."
As a result of the failure of the Montreal Police to launch a serious investigation from day one, in 2005, the "partners in crime" made a will in the name of my 92 year old mother who had been handicapped mentally and physically for decades. When she died in 2007, everything my father had laboured for all his life went to Debbie McSweeney, Dawn McSweeney, and a stranger named Kenneth Gregoire Prud'homme.
Debbie and Dawn and their partners had kept my mother in total isolation from everyone in the family for almost a decade. But the Montreal Police refused to investigate. When my mother died, the thieves completed the job, The partners in crime stripped the entire family bare.
My father had denied himself everything. He didn't buy new clothes. I'm sure he wore the same shoes for decades. He didn't go to the movies since I was a child. He didn't go to restaurants. He didn't gamble or drink. He didn't even smoke cigarettes anymore. My parents didn't go on vacation since the 1950's. Whatever my father earned he saved. And he maintained the family home And Dawn McSweeney and her partners in crime stole all of it.
And still the Montreal Police refuse to take any action against these criminals.
Because of my mother's fear and despair over my Christianity, the fruits of the lives of a dysfunctional but loving Jewish family were wiped out by the machinations of a malicious teenager - aided and abetted by the Montreal Police, and supported by the negligence and irresponsibility - and corruption? of members of the Montreal, Quebec and Canadian governments, who choose to look the other way. These crimes are not in anyone's jurisdiction and no one is responsible and no one has done anything wrong.
Like the Nazis, Dawn and her partners in crime stole the life's treasures of the whole family and tore us apart. The robbery shattered our family. I am the only one willing to speak out openly about what took place. My brother Stephen and my sister Sheila - who were among all the children and grandchildren removed as my father's chosen heirs - have no stomach for this battle for justice. I am not even supposed to mention their names. They are angry with me for speaking about these crimes publicly, even though they have lost their inheritances and their children's inheritances to these thieves.
I stand alone. A Jewish-Christian determined to do what is right.
Justice, only justice shalt thou pursue - Deuteronomy 16:20
Expose the deeds of Darkness - Ephesians 5:11
No peace without justice - Luke 18: 1-8
