The coroner who examined her first diagnosed drowning as the cause of her death. But on a later autopsy, it was revealed that Reena had also sustained fractures and head injuries at a tender young age of fourteen. One possible motive that led to Reena’s death was that two of the convicted girls alleged that Reena stole one of the girl’s phonebook and starting calling people just so to spread vicious rumors about her, thus making the girl stub her cigarette on Reena’s forehead. On the other hand, another motive that was seen was that another girl was very angry with Reena because the latter stole her boyfriend.
Such events may have possibly happened, but realizing it had cost another life of a human being is far inconceivable (Wikipedia, 2007). Girl Violence With Reena Virk at the forefront of the media’s headlines and the growing number of concerned general public, there is no doubt that there have been a growing number of people, females in particular, involved in girl violence. For the period of 1980 to 2004, there have been an increasing number of girls in robbery cases, from 1.1 to 2.4 – when 350 cases of girls involved in robbery.
Although 58 percent of the cases from 2003 to 2004 were minor assaults, about 24 percent were significantly involved in major cases (Statistics Canada, 2004d – please cite properly, based on the scanned reference you provided). Despite the fact that Reitsma-Street (1993b –cite from scanned ref) specifically indicated that “street crime and stranger crime by female youth is definitely not a major source of public danger,” Reena’s case signifies that race, physical appearance, and gender still drew considerable attention especially for the women youth.
With Reena Virk in the limelight, the media and various concerned individuals have highlighted the fact that racism and sexism still inarguably exist, even in today’s youth. During the trial of Kelly Marie Ellard, accused of Reena’s murder, the defense steered away from issue of racist-sexist dominant constructs of femininity and instead portrayed Ellard as a “dominant construct of a white, middle-class, heterosexual femininity that was posited as a good, innocent girl” (cite Reena Virk’notes file).
Even though Reena was obviously misunderstood by her peers because of her physical appearance – mainly her Indian race and the public uproar of violence, media reports have failed to emphasize or openly admit that it was racism and sexism that triggered the victim’s death. Thus, Jiwani (1997) was precise in emphasizing that Reena’s murder was an act of erasing a race or culture in the country. Hence, what could have happened to Reena could also have happened to any one in society by virtue of race.
Jiwani further emphasized the fact that (1997): This erasure of race/culture is all the more interesting in light of the medias obsession with culture in the mass killing of the Gakhal and Saran families in Vernon, BC last year. There, despite repeated statements to the contrary by the Coalition of South Asian Women Against Violence, the media continued to emphasize the cultural background of the murdered victims. In Reena Virks story, the coverage makes no mention of her cultural background even though she is clearly South Asian.
Could this absence be due to the fact that she was not killed by one of her own? However, in contrast to the members of the Gakhal and Saran families, Reenas family is identified as being Jehovahs Witnesses. And interestingly, the eulogy delivered by one of the Church elders was used to emphasize Reenas supposedly deviant character. Although the author briefly mentioned the causal relationship of religion at the end of the paragraph, what is interesting to note is the fact that the media was able to portray other murders as caused by racism while Reena Virk’s case as an abused Indian girl was neither mentioned nor given particular attention.
And as concluded by Jiwani in the end of her paper: Reenas erasure in the public world marks her as a double symbol of warning to young South Asian girls - that they had better fit or find other ways of survival if they are to continue to live in the white, patriarchal culture of contemporary Canadian society Definitely, Reena was not the only one that has been hopelessly abused and violated not only in the eyes of her assailants but as well as in the eyes of the media and the general public, who has focused her character as deviant member of the Jehovah’s witness.
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