1 week Ago By Michele Mandel
Article content The initial blow was delivered by a heinous killer. But the cruel torture continues on and on by a system that cares only for the lifer, and not the victims he’s destroyed. Recommended Videos ln the latest outrageous move by the Parole Board of Canada, the families of Paul Bernardo’s victims have just learned they can’t attend or present their impact statements in person at the sex killer’s parole hearing next week at La Macaza Institution in Quebec.
Instead, they can mail them in and watch online. It was even worse for Lisa Freeman. She’s been told there won’t be a parole hearing at all when her father’s axe murderer is up yet again for release — instead, a panel will do an “in-office review” and let her know the results.
Has the PBC lost all humanity? Tim Danson, the longtime lawyer for the families of school girls Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, is demanding an adjournment of Bernardo’s third attempt at parole so they can participate fully in person. “You can’t make this stuff up. People are just outraged,” he said in an interview.
“They’ve got to put this thing off and do it right.” In a stern letter to the heads of the parole board, Corrections Canada and Minister of Public Safety, Danson described how the decision to deny their attendance has devastated the families again. “It was nothing short of gut-wrenching to experience the painful and heartbreaking reaction of Debbie Mahaffy and Donna French when they learned that the PBC was prohibiting them from representing their daughters (and themselves), and denying them the right to confront Paul Bernardo, in person, through the reading of their Victim Impact Statements,” he wrote.
“This was truly a shock to their system. It was bone chilling — an insult so deep and hurtful that, (figuratively speaking), it set victims’ rights back to the stone age,” he continued. “Relegating victims, against their will, to the impersonal, detached coldness of a computer screen is simply cruel.
” The families were given no explanation “other than a bald reference to the PBC being ‘unable to ensure safety and security of all hearing attendees.'” “What does that even mean?” Danson asked in our interview. “It’s unprecedented.
I’ve never seen it in my entire career. There’s something else happening here and we don’t know what it is.” Now he hears they might be backpedalling and will allow the families to deliver their victim impact statements in person but must then leave the room.
But are they supposed to travel 700 km to attend only part of the hearing? It’s beyond insulting. Though not surprising. This is the same system that quietly transferred Bernardo last year to medium security without so much as a warning to his victims.
In his letter, Danson asked what possible safety and security concerns there could be at La Macaza when there were none when they attended Bernardo’s parole hearing at his maximum security prison. “Never were the families advised that in addition to being transferred from a maximum to a medium security facility, Mr. Bernardo would receive an additional benefit of having the victims prohibited from presenting their Victim Impact Statements in person as they did at his first parole hearing.
” Freeman is a less well-known victim of the parole board, but her endless battles date back more than a decade. Last year, the tireless victims’ advocate successfully fought their decision to hold an in-office review for the man who slaughtered her father in 1991. She was able to sit across from Terry Porter at his B.
C. prison and explain to the parole board why the cold-blooded killer should never be free. You’d think that after that tug-of-war, the PBC wouldn’t repeat its mistake.
But Freeman has just been informed again that Porter’s application to continue his day parole and seek full parole will be considered behind closed doors. And not only that — they’ve informed her that they have the authority to remove or vary any current special restriction designed to protect victims, including the condition that he not go to Ontario. “Every time I think there is nothing else they can throw at me, there it is,” said Freeman, who has helped spearhead her Oshawa MP’s private member’s bill, currently in the Senate, that would better protect victims.
“The parole board has lost sight of who is supposed to be punished,” she sighed. “I always say if you’re still standing after the initial crime, the system will bring you to your knees.” mmandel@postmedia.
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