Paul Bernardo victims’ families barred from parole hearing: lawyer

Families of victims who were murdered by notorious serial slayer and rapist Paul Bernardo person been barred from attending his upcoming parole proceeding successful person, according to the families’ lawyer.

Bernardo, who is serving a beingness condemnation and was transferred from maximum- to medium-security situation past year, is scheduled to look for a parole proceeding adjacent week astatine Quebec’s La Macaza prison.

Tim Danson, the lawyer representing the families of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, who were murdered arsenic teenagers by Bernardo, argued successful a missive sent to officials connected Tuesday that his clients person a ineligible close to be the proceeding and work their statements successful person.

The letter, shared with Global News, was addressed to Joanne Blanchard, the chairperson of the Parole Board of Canada, Correction Service of Canada commissioner Anne Kelly and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc.

“We person conscionable been advised that the families’ statutory close to beryllium physically contiguous astatine Mr. Bernardo’s November 26, 2024 parole proceeding and to work their Victim Impact Statements successful person, successful the carnal beingness of Mr. Bernardo and the Parole Board panel, has been denied,” Danson wrote successful the letter.

“Other than a bald notation to the PBC being ‘unable to guarantee information and information of each proceeding attendees’, we person not been provided with immoderate further details.”

Danson argued that this does not conscionable the criteria stated successful the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.

According to the act, the parole committee tin contradict a idiosyncratic from attending a reappraisal proceeding if the “security and bully bid of the instauration successful which the proceeding is to beryllium held is apt to beryllium adversely affected by the person’s presence.”

Danson said this denial was “unacceptable” and “remarkably insensitive” to the Mahaffy and French families.

“It was thing abbreviated of gut-wrenching to acquisition the achy and heartbreaking absorption of Debbie Mahaffy and Donna French erstwhile they learned that the PBC was prohibiting them from representing their daughters (and themselves), and denying them the close to face Paul Bernardo, successful person, done the speechmaking of their Victim Impact Statements,” the missive said.

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“This was genuinely a daze to their system. It was bony chilling – an insult truthful heavy and hurtful that, (figuratively speaking), it acceptable victims’ rights backmost to the chromatic age.”

“It is unthinkable however the ‘system’ is determination to assistance and payment Canada’s astir notorious sadist, intersexual psychopath and murderer, but not his victims, who endure each day.”

Danson urged that Bernardo’s parole proceeding beryllium adjourned to December oregon a aboriginal day to accommodate the families and counsel truthful they tin question to La Macaza.

Bernardo has been serving a beingness condemnation for the kidnappings, tortures and murders of French and Mahaffy successful the aboriginal 1990s adjacent St. Catharines, Ont. He and his then-wife Karla Homolka besides killed her younger sister, Tammy Homolka.

Bernardo, 60, was transferred to a medium-security situation successful Quebec successful June past year, a determination that acceptable disconnected a firestorm crossed the country, and engulfed the Liberal authorities successful controversy.

Bernardo had been surviving retired his condemnation successful maximum-security prisons until then.

A reappraisal into his arguable transportation concluded that the determination to determination Bernardo was “sound.”