ABBOTSFORD, B. C. – A woman convicted in 2018 of a Saskatoon murder alleges she is being abused by guards and held in solitary confinement for a month at a prison in British Columbia.
Shaylin Sutherland-Kayseas, now 24, says she is having auditory and visual hallucinations, her mental health is deteriorating, and is suicidal.
“I have been struggling with hallucinations, I’m seeing stuff, and I’m hearing stuff and sometimes it tells me to hurt myself so I self-harm and I feel suicidal,” said Sutherland-Kayseas.
She alleges that guards are deliberately tormenting her.
“The guard wouldn’t stop so I put my hands over my ears and I was screaming ‘stop, please stop,’ because I was already hearing enough from the voices in my head and she wouldn’t stop so I was screaming and covering my ears so it would stop. It wouldn’t stop so I started hitting myself and punching myself out because I couldn’t get this shit out of my head and seeing stuff and having this guard not stopping hammering at me. It was too much to handle. When I was doing that, she was laughing at me.”
She said she was hitting herself in the head because she wanted to make her head “explode” to make the voices and hallucinations stop.
“I have been having bad hallucinations. I was crying and screaming and curled up in a ball because they wouldn’t stop. My mental health is deteriorating and I’m suicidal and I self-harm already.”
Sometimes she can’t sleep three to four days straight because of the hallucinations, she said.
“It’s not from (street) drugs. I was hallucinating so bad and I was scared in my room. I had to put a Rosary in my room because these things were moving around in my room saying things to me to harm myself. I would stay up 72 hours and I would be crying.”
She also alleges the guards are trying to find excuses to keep her in solitary confinement rather than placing her somewhere to get the help she needs.
“They want to break me down and get me to react negatively so they can keep me in seg and forget about me.”
On Wednesday, SASKTODAY.ca spoke with the deputy-warden of Fraser Valley Institution in Abbotsford, B. C. about Shaylin Sutherland-Kayseas’ allegations she is being held too long in solitary confinement and that she is being abused by guards. The deputy-warden said she would look into the situation. At the time of publication, SASKTODAY.ca hasn’t been provided an update.
Solitary confinement is torture
Prolonged and indefinite solitary confinement is prohibited under the United Nations Nelson Mandela Rules on the treatment of prisoners, which describes it as torture. Ontario placed a cap on solitary confinement in prisons, saying inmates can't be isolated for more than 15 days because that amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
The late David Milgaard who was the victim of Canada's most notorious miscarriages of justice, described solitary confinement as torture. In 1969, Milgaard was arrested when he was only 16. In 1970, at the age of 17, he was wrongfully convicted of raping and murdering Saskatoon nurse Gail Miller and sent to Canada’s toughest prisons for life. He spent almost 23 years behind bars before he was released in 1992 and exonerated by DNA evidence in 1997.
In September 2021, Milgaard told SASKTODAY.ca that the worst time for him in prison was when he was put into solitary confinement for extended periods of time.
"For me what happened, I just started to lose it. I didn’t realize what was even taking place after awhile," he said. “You are just locked up and they throw away the key. You are in a horrible situation. This is very unhealthy for any human being. They just use it as a way to control people. For whatever reason they believe (you) are not conducive to the running of the institution they think that you are causing the powers that be problems in the institution, they just say, ‘off with you. Way you go. You’re in solitary confinement. See how you like that for awhile buddy.’
“You actually go crazy after awhile. If you do and don't behave you are beaten. When you fight back, they just continue to keep you there. There is no way any human being can survive that without going crazy.”
Sutherland-Kayseas sisters both in prison for murder
Shaylin Sutherland-Kayseas is at Fraser Valley Institution in Abbotsford, B. C. for a 2016 murder in Saskatoon. Her older sister, Sharise Sutherland-Kayseas is in prison in Edmonton, Alta., after being convicted in two separate murders in Northern Saskatchewan.
Their mother, Binesi Ogichidaa, says she would like to see both her daughters, Shaylin Sutherland-Kayseas and Sharise Sutherland-Kayseas, transferred to Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ont., to be closer to family.
Ogichidaa said she also wants to see her daughter treated better in the B. C. prison.
“I want her to be shown humanity by the correctional officers, for them to stop teasing, belittling, and tormenting her, treating her inhumanely.
“Although she is in prison – and in prison for a murder – she’s still a human being. Are they not there to correct and rehabilitate all prisoners? Those prisoners are in their care. My daughter is suicidal. She was banging her head against the wall, cutting and doing self-harm. She was talking about her head exploding and wanting the voices to stop.
“Her mental health is deteriorating. She obviously has mental health issues and she has a lot of inter-generational trauma.”
Being in segregation and solitary confinement is only worsening her daughter’s mental health and she can’t heal, she said.
Ogichidaa alleges that the guards threaten and punish her daughter.
“They are doing it because she is First Nations. She is Indigenous. A dog’s life is worth more than ours.”
Ogichidaa is a survivor of residential school. She said the inter-generational trauma catapulted her into a life of drugs, alcohol, crime, gangs, and violence, and that she didn’t know how to be a mother, which her daughters are now suffering the consequences.
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