Rehabilitate a Monstrous Rapist/Torturer/Murderer?

"The news that this inmate had been transferred from a maximum to a medium-security institution upset many Canadians and I know that many are looking for answers."

"I believe it is in the public interest to have a better understanding of the reasons why this specific decision was made."

"Crimes that continue to have an immeasurable impact on the victims and their families. We want justice to be served. ... We want Canadians to have confidence in our decisions."

"Hearing about this case so intensely over the past several weeks has brought up strong emotions and rightly so." 

"[The correctional system in Canada is based on the rehabilitation of offenders — even if some remain in prison for the rest of their lives — and it has to balance] public safety risks, secure and humane offender treatment, and victims' rights."

"I want to be clear that, at any point, an inmate can be returned to a higher security level, if deemed necessary, to ensure the safety of the public or our institutions."

"The fact that he is at a medium security institution does not negate the fact that he is a psychopath and that he committed horrific and unspeakable crimes."

"Despite being a medium security inmate, he is still assessed as a high risk to the safety of the public. Even after close to 30 years of incarceration he also continues to hold a dangerous offender designation, which was imposed by the court."

Anne Kelly, commissioner, Correctional Service Canada

The head of the Correctional Service of Canada, which runs the prison system, says the service followed the rules around the prison transfer of Paul Bernardo. The commissioner of the agency said Bernardo met the criteria for the transfer. However, a review committee said more could have been done to notify his victims' families. Still from video, CBC

"There were no documented incidents or behavioural concerns [reported by staff]."

"Staff at Millhaven Institution reiterated that the ongoing impediment to the offender's reclassification to medium was his failure to integrate; thus, upon integration, there were no longer grounds to warrant a maximum security classification."

85-page review of decision on moving Paul Bernardo to medium-security

 

The noxiously infamous killer, torturer and rapist Paul Bernardo whose sexual predations made him a notorious and reviled figure in the early 1990s in the area of St.Catharines, Ontario, as a violent psychopath who abducted two teen-age schoolgirls with the knowledge, assent and active participation of his then-wife Karla Homolka held the entire Toronto area in speculative suspension and fear until his identity was revealed and he was taken into custody. 

 

But not until he had frozen the security of a wide community of women, fearful of being his next victim, and not until he had murdered 15-year-old Kristen French and 14-year-old Leslie Mahaffy after torturing and raping them. Following those atrocities up with the rape and murder of his own wife's younger sister Tammy -- again with his wife's active engagement in these unforgivably heinous acts perpetrated on the vulnerable within society.

Now, the commissioner of Correctional Service Canada has announced it was her personal decision, an "exceptional" move, to authorize the release of personal information on the decision to move the serial killer from the maximum security institution where he has spent the last 28 years behind bars to protect the public from his vicious criminal acts of unspeakable dread. Note that the reasons behind the decision to move this monster to a medium-security prison were withheld after a public outcry to 'protect' his 'privacy'.

Paul Bernardo is shown arriving at the courthouse in Toronto on Nov. 3, 1995. He's serving a life sentence for the kidnapping, rape and first-degree murder of two teenaged girls, and has been declared a dangerous offender. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press)

 

For his crimes this malevolent rapist-child killer was sentenced to a an indeterminate life sentence. The review just released by Correctional Service Canada reveals that there were 14 instances when Bernardo's security classification was reviewed between 1999 and 2022; each time -- unbelievably -- noting that he met the criteria to be moved to a medium-security institution. A declaration that is mind-numbingly incredible. In that a lethal predator guilty of three ghastly child murders, of raping 18 women is worthy of release from high-security detention.

That although he is said to have met the criteria to be moved to an infinitely more relaxed prison environment, they were "overriden" in reflection of his personal safety risk that led to his interactions with other maximum-security offenders being carefully restricted and controlled. This focus on humanitarian empathy for the safety of a monstrous psychopath, the sensitivity to his well-being, and to his right to privacy, strikes at the very heart of meting out punishment of life incarceration for crimes too wantonly horrendous for most people to imagine.

The review committee acknowledged the shock experienced by the families of Bernardo's victims when news of his transfer was conveyed to them the very day of his transfer. The committee, states the review, "recognized that news of the transfer, including the nature of notification, caused emotional distress for victims", a rank understatement of reality. However, commissioner Anne Kelly took pains to emphasize that the Canadian correctional system is fundamentally based on the rehabilitation of offenders.

Tone-deaf to the ongoing grief of the families and victims, much less to the public mood on hearing of the 'rehabilitation' and potential release from maximum security of a man far better off dead than to be reintegrated even into prison society for actions that made him acutely unredeemable. Since Canada does not have the death penalty, the alternative is life in prison, but a sentence of life imprisonment in Canada usually equates to two decades locked away from harming the public, at the very most.

Despite the commissioner of Correctional Service Canada mouthing her and the institution she represents wish to ensure that "Canadians have confidence in our decisions", those very decisions disqualify her and the institution she serves from the confidence of the Canadian public. Her declaration that "We want justice to be served" is meaningless in the context of her contentions against the bleak background of the Bernardo incarceration imbroglio.

 

Kristen French, left, was 15 and Leslie Mahaffy was 14 when they were kidnapped, tortured and murdered by Bernardo. He was convicted in 1995. (Handout/The Canadian Press)

"Sentencing is the means by which society communicates its moral values. That equally applies to prison placement."

"Sadistic sexual psychopaths who have not exhibited any remorse, empathy or insight into their unspeakable crimes, after being incarcerated for over 28 years ... should never be transferred to a medium security prison."

Tim Danson, lawyer for Mahaffy and French families