 Sereena Abotsway, 29 Drug addicted. Worked in the sex trade. Disappeared August 2001. Once a month, Sereena Abotsway's foster parents would travel from Surrey to downtown Vancouver to visit and buy her dinner. It wasn't a pretty affair. Ms. Abotsway, a drug-addicted prostitute, would order an expensive steak, then struggle to chew it with her few remaining teeth. Five years earlier, she was beaten into a coma by a man she refused to identify. Her foster parents, Bert and Anna Draayers, kept a hospital vigil, and eventually she recovered. But there was no happy ending for the troubled, dark-haired woman who arrived at the Draayers's house at age 4. Last August, when she was 29, she stopped calling home. The Draayers, who had been planning a 30th birthday dinner, feared the worst. Until then, Ms. Abotsway had been calling nearly every day to talk about the dinner. When police arrived at the Draayers's home to tell them Ms. Abotsway had been killed, the family was devastated. Sereena Abotsway, a suspected victim of accused killer Robert "Willie" Pickton, never made it home to celebrate her birthday with the woman whom she had called mom from the age of four. As Pickton -- the Port Coquitlam pig farmer accused of the first-degree murders of Abotsway and Mona Wilson -- made his first fleeting court appearance yesterday, Abotsway's foster mother Anna Draayers said she had no clue for months why the daughter who used to call every day never made it to celebrate her 30th birthday on Aug. 20, 2001. "She was our girl, and we loved her a lot. She phoned daily for 13 years since she left our home at age 17," Draayers said. "She had come home in July and she agreed to come home and celebrate her 30th birthday on Aug. 20 but she never showed up." Anna and Bert Draayers -- who were involved in a highly public battle with the Ministry of Children and Families more than a year ago over the removal of children in their care -- said they suspected something terrible had happened to Abotsway. On Friday, police called on the Draayers' Surrey home to tell them they had evidence Abotsway was dead. Draayers said Sereena came to her home as a troubled four-year-old. "She was sweet and bubbly but she was very disturbed. She gave her teachers a headache and we tried to teach her at home but there was not much you could do. At that time we did not have a name for the condition but it is now known as fetal alcohol syndrome," she added. |
