Killer's mother recalls 'greatest depths of despair'
CBC News | Posted: September 24, 2008 12:24 PM | Last Updated: September 24, 2008
Grandson of native rights activist pleaded guilty to manslaughter
A Nova Scotia woman whose son killed her mother, native rights activist Nora Bernard, says a traditional sentencing circle is an appropriate way to deal with the crime.
Natalie Gloade is struggling to cope with the fact her 24-year-old son, James Douglas Gloade, is the reason her mother is gone.
"I guess I'm still in shock," she told CBC News from her home in Truro, N.S.
"The world doesn't know the little boy that I raised. The man that went into my mom's home on Dec. 26 wasn't the son that I raised."
Nora Bernard, the Mi'kmaq activist who led the decade-long legal fight for compensation for victims of residential schools, was found dead on her kitchen floor in nearby Millbrook on Dec. 27.
Police said she had been stabbed in her upper body.
James Douglas Gloade was charged with first-degree murder, but he pleaded guilty Tuesday to the lesser charge of manslaughter.
He was Bernard's favourite grandchild, Gloade said, describing her first born as a "mama's boy" who loved his grandmother.
"He taught me how to love and also taught me the greatest depths of despair," she said.
Gloade said James was sexually abused and beaten by a relative when he was 12, and she didn't find out until four years later.
He started to self-mutilate and even tried to kill himself, she said. As he got older, he began to self-medicate with a number of drugs, including crack cocaine, meth and OxyContin, and was hearing voices.
"He was abusing it to drown away his pain, I guess, and not deal with the real world," Gloade said, adding her son was on drugs the night her mother was killed.
A few years ago, James was shot in the head by another young man from Millbrook.
Gloade, who hasn't spoken with her son since his arrest, plans to be in Truro provincial court when he's sentenced on Oct. 21.
She hopes her son is sentenced through a native sentencing circle, something some of her sisters vehemently oppose.
"I believe that there's no court in this world or in Canada that would make him more accountable than for him to go up against his peers, and most of all the elders, for him to step up to the plate and admit his guilt," she said.
Pain still haunts mother of killer
Gloade isn't in contact with her siblings. She said they have a right to be angry, and she understands that.
"I can't hate any of them," she said. "I have to just let them go. It could have been any one of our children that had murdered our mother or anybody's child who murdered somebody else that was close to them in their family."
The pain isn't going away anytime soon.
The other day, Gloade visited with her aunt, Bernard's youngest sister. She said they talked about Bernard's legal fight for compensation and how she was the family protector at the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School.
"Every time I have to look at her I realize that it was my son that took her older sister and her protector away from her. It's very difficult."