If Bernardo were released, he would be subject to the Canada Parole Board’s supervision and direction for the rest of his life, because he would still be subject to his life sentence.
The Board could put restrictions on his contact with youth. If he breached those conditions, the Board could send him right back to federal penitentiary.
Homolka served every day of her sentence and never sought parole, so the Parole Board has never had any jurisdiction over her.
Depends on what kind of society you want to live in. she served her sentence completely, instead of opting for parole and we can’t tell people where they can and cannot live, other wise exile her to baffin island and let her molest polar bears.
I think its more telling that she stayed off the radar for so long before popping up for a mundane reason like this. If she has not already, this woman is going to re offend.
Do you mean “not” going to reoffend? Because that’s my position. She has to live somewhere, and she was not allowed to supervise children by herself, only when other supervision was present.
Sorry, but I firmly believe that she was terribly emotionally abused so much by Bernardo that she didn’t know what the hell was right or wrong.
Bernardo will never get out.
Yes, it’s completely reprehensible what she did, but she served her time, has kids, and has to try to make things as normal for them as possible.
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Yeah, I get that she served her mandated time and blah blah, I also said that we can’t compel where a person lives or cannot live, its just not us as a society. But that woman will reoffend, and she is smarter now.
She was given a 12 year sentence for manslaughter, which was a fairly severe sentence under Canada’s criminal law.
She served it to the last day and didn’t commit any further offences. Once she’d served her full sentence, she had to be released.
Child protection is largely a complaints-driven process. Child Protection Services don’t have a general power of oversight over all families. They get involved when there is an allegation that a child is “in need of protection”, the usual statutory phrase. That in turn is focused on current risks to the child, whether the parents can provide the necessities of life, and so on.
In this case, Homolka appears to have got married and had her first child after she was released from prison at the end of her sentence. Since she served her sentence in full, no court or parole board had any supervisory jurisdiction over her.
It doesn’t sound as if anyone had any concerns about how that child was being raised, so no child protection involvement. (The hospital staff may not have even known her history, since she was living in Quebec, not Ontario, and using her husband’s name.)
She and her husband then moved to the Caribbean for several years, where she had kids # 2 and 3. At some point they came back to Canada and appear to have been living a normal suburban life, as far as anyone can tell.
So you have a situation where you’ve got a classic nuclear family: mom, dad, three kids. Stable home life, kids going to school. Nothing in there triggers child protection’s statutory powers.
Except Mom is a friggin’ sexual predator who was involved in the rape and murder of her own sister and at least two other young girls! But that was 25 years ago and she’s not committed any offences in those 25 years. She’s served her prison sentence in full.
It is a very unusual set of facts, one that doesn’t match normal profiles, on which child protection laws are based.
I will point out one fact. She didn’t get away with what she did the first time. She got caught and I have to say, the way the girls bodies were left (one was in a ditch), I almost think she expected/wanted to get caught.
Now everyone knows who she is. She couldn’t get away with jaywalking. I don’t think she’s stupid and she certainly understands self preservation.
It seems like she’s been trying to live a normal life. I don’t know if she sees a therapist or what her support system is, but something has been keeping her out of trouble.
If we start taking apart functional families because of what the parents did long before the kids were born, where does it stop? What would be the point of letting anyone out of prison if they didn’t have a chance of a normal life?
We have another case here in BC, Kelly Ellard. She drowned a girl when they where both teens. Now she has a baby son. She’s still in prison but in a program that allows her to keep the baby. (Conjugal visit, if you were wondering).
She has said that her baby is the best thing that’s ever happened and that having her own child made her finally understand the pact of what she did. She “gets” it.
Isn’t it just possible that motherhood, with its hormonal and attitudinal changes, has made Karla less of a threat? At least she’s has a reason to stay out of jail.
None of which means that other parents are obligated to let her hang around an elementary school.
It may be possible that she’s not longer a threat, but she’s lost her privilege of working with children forever. Too bad for her kids, because they didn’t do anything, but the risk to society is to great.
Out of [morbid] curiosity, what’s going to happen to the baby when he gets to be two or three? He can’t stay in prison with his mother forever, and it seems like separation from her is going to be much more traumatic for the child at three than it would be at birth.
Is he seriously going to go to preschool somewhere during the day, and go home to prison at night? How is he going to go to a friend’s house after school?
There’s [del]an app[/del] a policy for that!
I think they’re in a private visit cottage but I’m just going by memory. The kid Is still under a year, I think, and I don’t know how much longer Kelly is in for.
If she’s as much the remorseless sociopath as she seems, probably not. She just wouldn’t have the wiring to give a damn about anyone but Karla.
While its certainly possible she’ll always be a sociopath, she seems to be able to maintain some control. She’s been a mother for quite a while. She must have some feeling for her kids if she’s willing to help out at the school. She must have known someone would recognize her. I know sociopaths can “fake normal” but we’re talking more than one kid and a very long time.
I hope to god you’re right. Unfortunately, I don’t have that kind of optimism.
I do.
I’m originally from Toronto, and was living in the city when all the crimes and court matters went down. I’m of the opinion that Karla got sucked into Paul’s personality. She was in her early twenties, and who, at that age, makes good choices? Not just choosing Paul, but what he suggested they do? Thinking back to my own early-twenties days, I knew more than a few guys who had girlfriends who would do whatever the guy asked. Conversely, I knew more than a few guys who would stand on their heads and spit quarters, if that was what their girlfriends wanted. Young love, and all.
Paul was weird, by all accounts. One of my buddies (who I will call Bob), whom I’ve known for years, grew up in the same Scarborough (Toronto) neighbourhood as Paul, and knew him when they were kids. Bob played road hockey with Paul and the other neighbourhood kids, and said that Paul was weird. Oh, Paul could play road hockey, but as Bob said, “He just wasn’t right.” Still, according to Bob, Paul was nice enough that they kept inviting him to road hockey games.
In later years, I discovered that my (now ex) wife had a friend, who I will call Cathy. Cathy dated Paul once, and said that while he was creepy on their date, he had a certain charm–if he hadn’t, she never would have agreed to their date. (I should note that Cathy never dated him again; he turned out to be very creepy over dinner.)
So, Paul is a nice guy with a certain charm. And along comes Karla, in her late teens and early twenties, impressionable, and who is captivated by him. Instead of asking her to stand on her head and spit quarters–which she would probably have done, at that age–he asks her to do, shall we say, other things. And she does. And in the end, and to make a long story short, she realizes her error and pays the price.
My own feeling–and that is all it is–is that Karla looks back now, from the age of 47 years, and says, “What the @#$% was I thinking? I was young and stupid!” She’s got her own kids now, and she can realize what the parents of her victims went through, should anything happen to those kids.
I think we’re pretty safe from Karla. I don’t think we’re safe from Paul, so it’s probably better that he stay where he is–locked away forever.
On what do you base all that? How do you know she wasn’t the one driving him to do all these evil acts? Do you have a specific reason based on something you know about this case, or is it just because he’s the man and she’s the woman? Because he was “weird”? Who’s to say say she wasn’t “weird” as well?
Would you excuse a man for raping, torturing and murdering multiple girls because he was in love with a psychopathic woman and he got some good sex out of the deal? I never see people going to these lengths to forgive or excuse men who commit even moderate sex crimes. Are all sex-crimes forgivable in your book? Pedophiles tend to think they’re in love with their victims, so does a lone pedophile (and child-murderer?) get forgiven for being “young and in love”?
Fetlife, duh.
That’s a nice story and a generous view. Unfortunately NOT supported by the videos tapes discovered after they’d given her immunity.
Yours is the story her legal team promoted, and the one most people find easier to believe. But the actual evidence, her own words and actions on video, indicate the much more disturbing to recognize, that a young, pretty, white girl, from a good home, in the heart of suburbia was the Evil driving these events. Yes, he WAS a weirdo, and a little different by all accounts. But it was getting together with her that tipped him over the edge, it would appear.
I’m all for giving her a chance for a new life having served her full time. (With some minimal oversight.) But the story her team told was outright denied by the videotape evidence. Although most people found it a more comfortable one to swallow. In my opinion.
I don’t think that’s accurate, as he has pled guilty to many of the rapes committed by the Scarborough Rapist, which began before he met Homolka in late 1987.
She was found to be attracted to sexual sadists, and her boyfriend between Bernardo and her husband was a murderer, so I wouldn’t be surprised if her husband is what keeps her from re-offending (post 3). I wouldn’t be surprised if she were to team up with another sicko if her marriage failed.