Paul Bernardo is depicted in a courtroom sketch during Ontario court proceedings via video link in Napanee, Ont., in October, 2018. The first time Bernardo sought parole in 2018, Debbie Mahaffy, mother of one of his victims, called the experience an 'emotional hell.'Greg Banning/The Canadian Press
Every two years, the families of victims of the worst crimes in Canada are made to sit through a cruelest form of theatre. These families will face the offender – virtually, or in person – and maybe read a victim impact statement, perhaps the same one they read only two years earlier. They will have to listen to this person answer questions from members of the parole board: questions about remorse for the offense or lack thereof, about time spent in prison, in therapy, and among other prisoners.
The majority of the time, this ritual will conclude with the offender being sent back to prison. But that’s not much consolation for the families of the victims, who barely have enough time to recover from the traumatic ordeal before they receive another package in the mail or automated phone call. It’s yet another notice from the Parole Board of Canada (PBC), advising them of the next review date for the offender’s conditional release.
This continues indefinitely, until the offender dies, is released, or the family can’t bear it anymore and de-registers as a victim with the PBC. Until then, there is no peace for the family; they cannot move forward, because they keep being pulled back to confront one of the worst moments of their lives.
Notorious killer Paul Bernardo denied parole after victims’ families plead he be kept behind bars
This is an injustice that was too casually dismissed by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v Bissonnette, when the Court deemed a Criminal Code provision that allowed for consecutive periods of parole ineligibility for mass murders unconstitutional. It was too casually dismissed by critics of the Life Means Life Act, proposed by the Conservatives under Stephen Harper, which would have eliminated the possibility of parole for offenders convicted of the most heinous crimes involving first-degree murder. And it is too casually dismissed by defenders of the status quo, who will often argue that the worst of the worst in Canada will never be released on parole anyway, so it really doesn’t matter when or how often offenders are up for parole.
Paul Bernardo, the notorious “Scarborough rapist” who was convicted in 1995 of kidnapping, sexual assault and murder, was scheduled to have his fourth parole hearing in eight years next month. For a reason that has not been disclosed, that hearing has been postponed until January, which gives his victims’ families only slightly more time before they have to again confront the person who murdered their teenage daughters. The first time Mr. Bernardo sought parole back in 2018, Debbie Mahaffy, whose daughter Leslie was kidnapped, tortured, murdered, and dismembered by Mr. Bernardo (with the help of his wife, Karla Homolka), described the experience as “an emotional hell for us.”
“We have to relive Leslie’s horror – our pain and horror, as if it happened yesterday,” she said in her victim impact statement. “The healing we have worked so hard to achieve has been ripped apart.”
Prison officials ‘intervened’ to stop Paul Bernardo from making public statement, documents show
The families of Mr. Bernardo’s victims were granted roughly 23 years of respite from his presence, but are now forced to confront it every two years. Whereas most violent offenders must wait five years before re-applying for parole after a denial, as per section 123 (5.01) of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (CCRA), Mr. Bernardo’s case is different. He is serving an indeterminate sentence as a “dangerous offender,” and as such, he is entitled to reapply for parole every two years. The justification for this discrepancy is rooted in a notion of fairness for those who do not have fixed end dates to their incarceration. In short, because these sentences could theoretically go on forever, those serving them are entitled to ongoing and frequent reviews.
But those ongoing and frequent reviews take time, money, and court resources away from other matters, which seems entirely frivolous in cases like Mr. Bernardo’s. If it is unlikely that he will ever be granted any form of parole, these hearings function simply to rip open the wounds of victims and family members, as well as to satisfy a vague sense of “justice” among those who believe that stretching out the time between parole applications for lifers would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. But subjecting family members to hearings every two years is a form of cruel and unusual punishment in its own right. And unlike Mr. Bernardo and his sadistic contemporaries, victims and their families did absolutely nothing wrong.