Not since Homeland Security and Rendition.
The kind of supervision she’s under is irrelevant. She shouldn’t be with any female children at all. I’m don’t know what double jeopardy has to do with this.
The police and prosecutors thought Bernardo was the main player, and that Homolka was a girlfriend/wife who was dragged into it by him. To ensure Bernardo’s conviction, the prosecutors cut a deal with the Homolka for her to to help them convict him of murder while only convicting her of the manslaughter. They can not now go back and try her for murder.
Right, and I’m not suggesting that she should be. I’m just saying she shouldn’t be allowed to raise her children, not that she should be re-tried and imprisoned.
Child protection tends to try to help children by helping families, rather than hurting children by breaking up families. For the most part, this approach works when dealing with dysfunctional families, but when weighed against normal families it seems insufficient.
For myself, I stopped representing parents in child protection cases as soon as I could in my career, and I note that although there are more than enough lawyers to go around in my district, there is a dearth of lawyers willing to represent parents in child protection cases. You don’t have to look too hard to see why.
You don’t have to be convicted of a crime to have custody of your children taken away. You can just be an unfit parent. I’m gonna say that textbook psychopathic sexual sadists aren’t good parents.
She might be able to get a slap on the wrist for the murder and rape charges because of the no-backsies promise, but that doesn’t mean child protection services has to pretend the tapes don’t exist.
The tapes don’t exist.
I am astounded that she has custody of children. A sexual sadist who murdered her own sister and other young girls, it makes no sense to me that her children were not taken from her at birth. If that wouldn’t qualify as being in their best interests, then I hardly know what would,
In addition to feeling sorry for the victims and their families and friends, I also feel very sorry for the people who have found out that this is their neighbor. In addition to the horror of being near this monster, just imagine trying to sell to get out.
I don’t have kids but if I did, I would not knowingly let them anywhere near her. I agree with those who say that what’s broken in a being like that can’t be fixed.
And her kids let her have access to other places full of children and teenagers. Even if she doesn’t actually molest her own children, she may very well use them as bait to get hold of other kids.
Thank you. That’s why my first post in this thread asked if she was with her kids.
She’s not a fit keeper for an ant farm.
Generally, as I understand it, when prosecutors cut deals like that, a condition of the deal is that the perp they are dealing with must be complete honest and forthcoming and tell all. In return for immunity against prosecution (in whole or in part), they perp must waive his right to remain silent. If the perp is found to have lied, then the deal is off.
IANAL, but if she lied and hid evidence (that video in the wall) and didn’t tell the police about it, then she might have still be subject to further prosecution. (This all should have been settled before they went and destroyed that tape.)
Will the Good Citizens of your community form vigilante mobs and come after her en masse, torches a-flaming, clubs a-swinging, and pitchforks a-stabbing?
The question “Where will she be able to live?” might be a real question. She may be hounded out of one community after another, until she ends up living in a cabin in a remote forest in the Yukon.
This is about what happened to Larry Singleton. Anybody remember him? He abducted and raped a teen girl, then chopped off her arms with an axe and left her in a ditch to bleed to death (1978). But she was found and rescued and recovered, and Singleton was convicted and sentenced to 14 years.
He got paroled after just 7 years or so, with lots of time off for good behavior in prison. But the prison officials couldn’t find a community to place him where he would be safe. They tried repeatedly to choose places to put him, keeping it secret – but every time, the local police and sheriffs said they couldn’t guarantee his safety, and every time, the word leaked out, and every time, there was vocal unrest in each community where they proposed to put him.
Eventually, he was given a cabin in some remote corner of the San Quentin Prison grounds, and forced to serve out his parole there. (I don’t know what became of him after that.)
Here’s an article from the time, saying he might go live in Florida: Parole Over, Rapist May Come To Florida. I don’t know what happened after that.
ETA: Okay, I check out his Wiki page. Everybody has a Wiki page. So much for good behavior.
You appear to be nutpicking. Biron apparently apologized 2 weeks after his statement.
Initial Reporting:
http://canadiancrc.com/Newspaper_Articles/CTV_Senator_Michel_Biron_attending_Karla_Homolka-Teale_Court_Hearing_10JUN05.aspx
I see no evidence that Biron represents anybody other than himself on this issue. Liberal Party member Art Eggleton thought his behavior was inexplicable. That said, this is the first I’ve learned of this Canadian topic, so feel free to correct me on my take.
OMG! Why didn’t someone in the Ontario Attorney General’s office think of this! To the Bat-Cave!
[/sarcasm]
Of course this issue was considered, before the tapes were destroyed. In fact, the Attorney General for Ontario referred the issue of the plea bargain to a retired Justice of the Ontario Court of Appeal for a thorough review, including asking that very question: Could the Crown now prosecute Homolka, after the tapes came to light?
Justice Galligan (retired) gave a very firm “no” to that question.
[QUOTE=Galligan Report, pages 203-204]
Having concluded, for reasons expressed earlier, that the resolution agreement of May 14, 1993, was an appropriate one in all of the circumstances, and having regard to the fact that it was entered into with the full knowledge and assent of the Attorney General herself and her most senior legal advisors, it is my view that this is not one of those “very rare” cases where the Crown would be entitled to repudiate the resolution agreement. Moreover, as pointed out above, it is not feasible to do so because Section 610(2) of the Criminal Code is an absolute bar against proceeding against Karla Homolka for murder.
[/QUOTE]
(my emphasis)
‘Liberal’ in the sense I was using ( small L ) has nothing to do with political parties.
Besides which, I never believe politician’s apologies.
I completely understand you. I won the paediatric nursing award in my 3rd semester in nursing school. I had an extensive resume of working with kids from George Jeffries’ children’s treatment centre. I was expected to pick a placement in Paediatrics or public health screening in my final year, and probably would have landed a career move job.
After one paeds rotation, I wanted nothing to do with that field at all. in 8 weeks, very few of my patients were not there as a result of abuse, neglect, abandonment, or the ill effects of poor children having children and other bad judgements. If you were practicing in Thunder Bay in the mid nineties the names of some of the parents were probably known to you. (I wouldn’t say them even if I could remember them) The youngest mother I met was 12. My youngest son is twelve and girls might be interesting but they definitely still have cooties, for which I am grateful.
Also, and more on thread topic:
My “lame claim to fame” is I (had) a friend who has a friend who was incarcerated with Homolka. (and pregnant while incarcerated) Ms Homolka knitted a baby blanket for her prison buddy. Prison buddy lent the baby blanket to my friend for her daughter. My youngest son is 4 months older than my friend’s daughter.
I held the blanket once, but dropped it as soon as friend said “Oh that’s the outfit “friend” lent me, the one that was made by …”
I said, “don’t even say that name around our babies”. Ugh.
Leslie Van Houten is at least well past child-bearing age.
Since the question seems to be asking what I would do, I would enroll my son in a private Jewish school. That should keep him from ending up over at the house of the serial killer, because he got assigned to partner with her child on a project. The only Jewish serial killer I can think of off-hand is David Berkowitz, and he not only is still in prison, but I understand has become a born again Christian. I suppose Homolka could be Jewish, but it sounds from the articles like her children are in public school, and at any rate, if she were a practicing Jew, I’m sure we’d hear all about it.
I don’t as a rule favor personal solutions-- you know “I don’t have to outrun the lion, I just have to outrun you,” kind of thing; that’s the sort of “me and mine” thinking anti-vaxxers subscribe to, and it’s not good Judaism. However, in this particular situation, I don’t see a good way to protect my son that protects everyone. I have been sitting here trying to think of something, and nothing short of removing the children from the home protects everyone.
I would like to note for the record I don’t believe in the “Bad Seed” theory of criminality. I don’t think that Homolka’s children are dangerous because of their genetic heritage. While I would not let my son go over to Homolka’s house, her children would be welcome at ours.
Having been in prison, or even having killed someone should not automatically preclude someone from being a parent, though. I went to high school with someone who killed her uncle after he had been molesting her for years. Because she ambushed him and shot him, rather than killing him when he was actively threatening her, she ended up going to prison, but while she was there, “battered women’s syndrome” became a viable defense, and she ended up getting early release based on good behavior and the idea that if that defense had existed at the time, she probably would have been found no guilty. Anyway she went on to have three children, and to be a fairly successful adult, who seemed to be a decent parent. I ran into her once when her children were little, and they were all clean, polite and very well-behaved, and another time when they were older, and the oldest was working hard to keep her grades up because she wanted to go to college.
Now, I understand killing the uncle who molested you is nothing like Homolka’s crimes, but where we draw the line is a problem. We can’t say “Anyone convicted of murder.” Maybe we could say “Anyone convicted of first degree murder,” or “anyone convicted of murder with special circumstances,” which rape and torture are, or “anyone convicted of child-murder,” specifying that that means only willful murder and felony child abuse, because people who kill their children through stupidity do go to prison, but often do learn their lessons. I wouldn’t be so blase about the last one, except there aren’t just foster homes at the ready, and sometimes CPS working with the real parents to educate them is a better solution than removing the children. You can fix ignorance, but you can’t fix evil. Fortunately, evil is rarer.
And it’s important to remember she opted to serve the whole sentence, refusing to apply for parole once elligible. Which means there was much less opportunity to restrict or oversee her actions/movements once she was released.