Paul Bernardo does not deserve any deliverance. There is something particularly abominable and repellent in the discovery that Bernardo has been quietly moved from maximum security at Millhaven to the medium-security La Macaza. Opinion by RDiManno
It is not an incontrovertible fact that Paul Bernardo is the worst murderer in the annals of Canadian crime.
He was a predator. And while the Scarborough Rapist was going about his vile sex assault crimes, girls and women were terrified of walking home alone, standing at the bus stop alone, going to the mall alone. In the nearly three decades since Bernardo’s trial, people still continue to draw horrible triangulations relative to where they were from the vile couple’s home in Port Dalhousie, from Bernardo’s rape stomping grounds, their recalled tangential brushes with him.
Bernardo was sentenced to life in prison with no parole eligibility for 25 years. But Justice Patrick LeSage additionally designated him a dangerous offender, which means the sentence was indeterminate. He could be kept behind bars for his entire life. From the bench, LeSage turned to the convicted murderer and said: “Mr. Bernardo … You have no right ever to be released. The behavioural restraint that you require is jail. You require it, in my view, for the rest of your natural life.
Yet memories dim, outrage wanes, and the correctional system itself is designed not merely to punish and deter but to rehabilitate and reintegrate. The French and Mahaffy families have attended both parole hearings thus far — the next is scheduled for November — giving heart-wrenching victim impact statements. But Doug French, for one, is 92 years old.
The families are understandably shocked and distressed, added Danson. “Just like the parole hearings, this takes them back to Day One and undoes some of the progress that they’ve made just trying to still deal with the loss of their daughters, which of course never goes away. They’re very, very upset and have asked me to pursue, through the media, for the public to express its own outrage and demand answers to our questions.
The secrecy makes everything worse. Courts are supposed to be open with information available to everyone. That’s a fundamental premise of the judicial system. But courts — and the federal government — have taken the view, citing old case law, that parole hearings are not quasi-judicial proceedings; they’re “inquisitorial and nonadversarial.”
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