Alberta judge calls for changes after man kills wife days after leaving mental health centre

WARNING: This story contains discussions of suicide. 

An Alberta judge is making 14 recommendations for RCMP and the provincial government after scrutinizing the case of a young mother who was killed by her husband, less than two weeks after he was discharged from a mental health centre. 

Brett Fenton stabbed and strangled his wife, Jesslyn Fenton, 25, to death on Nov. 2, 2018, in their Galahad, Alta., home, about 150 kilometres east of Red Deer. 

Originally charged with first-degree murder, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison in 2020.

Justice William Andreassen with the Alberta Court of Justice concluded in a fatality inquiry report publicly released Thursday that more robust discharge policies, mandatory training for police and recruiting psychiatrists who live in the communities where they work could prevent similar deaths. 

According to the report, Fenton grew up in Grande Prairie, worked for a grain handling company and had "a significant mental health history."

He told therapists and psychiatrists that his adoptive parents emotionally and physically abused him, he was incontinent until he was about 12 and he wore diapers into his elementary school years and during his teens. He also told the professionals that wearing diapers calmed and sexually aroused him. 

The couple met in their early 20s and got married in 2015.

On Aug. 26, 2017, Fenton told his social worker, whom the couple had been seeing for therapy, he had had suicidal thoughts. 

The social worker encouraged him to go to the hospital in Grande Prairie. She called the hospital and told nursing staff his diaper fetish was causing great anxiety and that he had talked about suicide.

Fenton told a psychiatrist at the hospital the next day that he had anger problems, financial instability, wore diapers to calm himself, and was upset that his wife had been paying less attention to him since their daughter was born and treating his fetish as a nuisance.

The psychiatrist prescribed an anti-psychotic drug and referred him to another psychiatrist, who followed up with him in October and November that fall and changed his prescription to an anti-depressant.

Since their social worker had reduced her private practice, the couple, together and individually, discussed Fenton's diaper-wearing with a psychologist between December 2017 and July 2018.

Fenton disclosed to her that he had contemplated suicide on June 10, 2018, and was worried he might feel an urge again to harm himself or his family.