Timely Input - Sharon Rosenfeldt

What could possibly be more soul-destroying, utterly devastating, than to live through the tragic event of learning that your beloved child would not be returning home from a casual trip to a local shop. En route to fulfilling a request made by his mother an atrocity occurred. A young boy just turned sixteen was accosted by a malevolently sadistic psychopath, abducted, tortured, raped and murdered.

And the concerned parents, fearful at the inexplicable absence of their child who should have returned much earlier, informed by the police to whom they turned, that his absence did not represent any kind of emergency. Their hearts constricted with concern over their son's absence, and they were unable to call upon the very public service agency whose professional job it is to ensure safety and security.

Gary and Sharon Rosenfeldt, parents of Daryn Johnsrude, who became one of the tragic victims of the dread monster Clifford Olson, were never treated respectfully, helpfully and with even a bare modicum of compassion. Nor, for that matter, were police forthcoming with the other parents of the other abducted and murdered children. They watched, from the sidelines, as justice dealt with Olson.

Their disbelief and horror on learning that a deal had been reached to pay Olson's wife $10,000 for each of the murdered children Olson's instructions led them to, simply magnified the assault on their anguished sensibilities. And Gary and Sharon Rosenfeldt helped to mount a campaign for victims' rights, co-founding an action group that relentlessly lobbied government for change.

Victims of Violence was formed in 1984, and because of the strenuous lobbying of the group changes began to occur. Victim/witness programs were established across the country. Attention began to be paid to the victims of crime where previously it was exclusively the violators who were served even while they were being judged and incarcerated.

Criminal justice reform like the Safe Streets and Communities Act recently tabled in Parliament has the complete support of Sharon Rosenfeldt. She wrote:

"It is worrisome that some people have focused on the cost of crime, particularly as it relates to offenders and prisons, without considering the cost for victims. The cost of violent and serious crime is not only taxpayers' dollars, but the loss of human life, loss of dignity, loss of law and order, and loss of faith in the criminal justice system.

It it is thanks to the courage and perseverance in the face of extreme adversity on the part of Sharon Rosenfeldt and her now-deceased husband Gary, battling the faceless, unconcerned bureaucracy of the criminal justice system, that changes were effected, benefiting society as a whole.