Cancrime

Col. Russ Williams mysteriously absent from jail

2010-03-09T19:52:00.014-05:00

Accused sex killer Col. Russ Williams (inset) was mysteriously absent recently for roughly a day and a half from the eastern Ontario detention centre where's he's being held, Cancrime has learned. Sources tell me that Ontario Provincial Police officers took Williams out of the Quinte Detention Centre in Napanee (located about 30 kilometres east of Kingston) last Thursday and for half of Friday. Police have not made any public statement about Williams' secretive jaunts from jail, where he's being held on two charges of first-degree murder and charges of sexual assault related to two home invasions in which women were bound and assaulted.

When an accused perpetrator wants to cut a deal with investigators, or simply co-operate with an investigation, it's not unusual for the accused person to be spirited out of jail and taken to a crime scene(s). It's typically done secretively, since investigators don't want media watching the macabre events unfold. Police will often ask an accused killer who confesses or provides detailed, incriminating information about a killing, to re-enact the crime, or at least walk investigators through the circumstances. That was done famously in one of Canada's most notorious murders, the 1977 killing of Emanuel Jaques, a 12-year-old boy who endured sexual torture at the hands of three deviants before he was drowned in a sink and then buried under garbage on the rooftop of a building that housed a seedy Yonge Street body rub parlour. One of the killers, Saul Betesh, went to the building with police and re-enacted the torture and murder of the child. Williams remember, has apparently given what the Globe and Mail said was a "lengthy and wide-ranging statement" to investigators and also took them to the body of one of his alleged victims, Jessica Lloyd. Williams also is charged with killing Corporal Marie-France Comeau, who was a military flight attendant at Canadian Forces Base Trenton, the airbase where Williams was commander, until his arrest Feb. 7.

After Col. Williams was arrested and charged with the murders of the two women, and sex attacks on two others, police made it clear they would investigate whether he can be linked to any other unsolved, similar crimes. Could his sojourn from jail indicate that he's willingly linking himself to other crimes? Williams now has a top notch criminal defence lawyer, Michael Edelson, representing him. Williams remains in segregation at the detention centre.

3 months set for canal mass murder trial

2010-03-04T06:57:00.000-05:00

The trial of three Montrealers accused of killing four family members is expected to start in April 2011 and likely will run for three months. The details were discussed in a Kingston, Ontario, courtroom Wednesday, at a hearing where the accused trio are trying to get a communication ban lifted that bars them from talking to three children in Montreal and each other (the hearing didn't finish and will continue in May). Ottawa judge Mr. Justice Robert Maranger will preside over the Kingston trial of the mother, father and son from Afghanistan who are accused of a diabolical conspiracy to murder three teenage sisters in the family and a 50-year-old woman who was the accused father's first wife. Some relatives have alleged it was an honour killing, orchestrated by the father. The victims were found in a submerged car in a Kingston canal on June 30 last year. Exclusive photos of the accused leaving the Kingston courthouse yesterday appear in a slideshow above. After the jump, my complete story from today's Whig-Standard.

A complex and lurid murder trial likely will begin in Kingston in 13 months and could last more than three months.
The date for the Kingston Mills case was tentatively set yesterday by the judge who will preside over the case after discussions with five lawyers.
At the conclusion of a second day of a hearing related to the case, Mr. Justice Robert Maranger asked the lawyers about time needed and their availability.
“2010 isn’t going to work for me [but in] 2011 the court is available as soon as counsel are available to get the trial started,” he said, speaking to the lawyers in the main courtroom at the county courthouse.
The lawyers agreed that roughly four weeks would be needed to hear pre-trial motions.
“I think that is being very generous,” said Crown prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis.
Maranger said he would block off the month of October for those hearings, beginning Oct. 4. They could involve issues such as defence motions to prevent some material from being used at trial.
Maranger revealed the scope of the case when he said that it’s likely that 750 citizens will have to be summoned to the courthouse to allow the selection of 12 impartial jurors. Picking the jury could take four days.
“I think there’ll be a special jury selection for this,” he said. “It’s going to be a mega panel.”
Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 40, her husband, Mohammad Shafia, 56, and their son, Hamed, 19, are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
Jury selection could be held in the last week of March, he said, setting the stage for the trial to begin in April. It is projected to last 12 to 15 weeks.
The discussions about logistics capped a full day of testimony from a woman from Montreal who gave evidence alternately in English and sometimes in French, through a translator. As she has done often during hearings in the case, the accused mother began to sob during some of the testimony. She spent considerable time wiping at her face with tissues.
Her evidence is part of hearing called because the three accused are seeking to have a court order lifted that bars them from communicating with three family members in Montreal and with each other. The family members are children of the accused mother and father and siblings of the accused 19 year old. A publication ban prevents the reporting of evidence at the hearing.
The lawyers agreed to continue the hearing in May, at the same time that a pre-trial meeting is held, at which the lawyers and judges will meet to discuss means to streamline and expedite the process.
Maranger left no doubt that he’s handling the case. On Tuesday, he said he expected that he’d be assigned to the trial.
“I am seized with this,” he said yesterday. “I am going to be the trial judge.”
For the second day in a row, a court-appointed interpreter was not available to translate between English and Farsi, the Middle Eastern language spoken by the accused mother and father. Instead, an interpreter hired by the defence sat in the prisoner’s box between them and translated the English evidence.
Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahari, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead inside a submerged car discovered June 30 in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife.

Ottawa judge likely to preside at canal murder trial

2010-03-03T07:32:00.000-05:00

A bilingual Ottawa judge who is handling a high-profile immigration case involving a 30-year-old terrorist bombing will preside over a sensational Kingston murder trial that will unfold in at least three languages. During discussions yesterday as part of a hearing in the Kingston Mills canal murder case, Mr. Justice Robert Maranger revealed that he likely would be the trial judge.

“There’s a very good chance I am,” Maranger told the lawyers. “I think I am. There’s a really, really good chance I am.”
The issue came up as defence lawyer Peter Kemp was asking Maranger about scheduling pre-trial motion hearings and setting aside time for a trial. Kemp said he hopes that the pre-trial issues can be handled in May and June so that a trial could begin in October or November and conclude by Christmas.
Maranger was taken aback by the timeline Kemp was outlining.
“I didn’t realize this was on such a fast track,” he said.
Maranger noted that he is still busy with the Ottawa case in which France is seeking to extradite a former Carleton University professor, Hassan Diab. The French government claims Diab is responsible for a terrorist bombing in Paris in 1980 that killed four people and injured 40 others. A radical Palestinian group is blamed for the bombing.
Yesterday Maranger was on the bench in the cavernous second-floor courtroom of Kingston’s county courthouse (above) where three members of the Shafia family will be tried for murder.
Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 40, her husband, Mohammad Shafia, 56, and their son, Hamed, 19, are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
The accused mother and father walked, with leg shackles clinking, into the glass-encircled prisoner’s box in the centre of the courtroom. Hamed Shafia was seated at the side of the courtroom.
The hearing was convened because the three accused are seeking to have a court order lifted that bars them from communicating with three children in Montreal and with each other.
Like the preliminary hearing that concluded last week, a broad publication ban prohibits the reporting of most of what transpires during the hearing.
At the beginning of the proceeding, a lawyer representing an agency from Montreal sought to have a Whig-Standard reporter (me) turfed from the courtroom because of privacy concerns regarding evidence. The judge rejected her request and a man who works for the agency was called to testify.
Translation issues arose even before the hearing began.
“We have a little bit of a logistical problem,” Maranger said, at the beginning of the day. “We’re short one interpreter.”
It was explained that the court-appointed interpreter who was supposed to appear to translate between English and Farsi, the Middle Eastern language spoken by the accused mother and father, had a last-minute medical emergency; he was at the hospital with his wife who had gone into labour.
The lawyers agreed that a translator hired by the defence lawyers would substitute. He was seated in the prisoner box between the man and woman so that he could translate the evidence.
A woman also stood next to the witness, translating between English and French.
The witness, who appeared last week at the preliminary hearing, spent five hours on the witness stand.
Crown lawyer Laurie Lacelle told the judge, when he interrupted her questioning just after 4:30 p.m. to ask how much longer she would be, that she needed several more hours.
The lawyers realized that they might not be able to complete the hearing because the witness is not available to come back to Kingston today and defence lawyer Peter Kemp is not available on Thursday.
Another witness is expected to appear when the hearing resumes today.
Several times yesterday, the accused mother began to weep softly during the testimony. At one point, she held tissues over her nose and mouth for several minutes.
Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahari, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead inside a submerged car discovered June 30 in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife.

Man brings Easter treats to court - cocaine, marijuana

2010-03-02T22:24:00.005-05:00

It's probably not a good idea to take your cocaine to court with you, or your cute little pot-filled Easter eggs, either. I'll let the news release from the Kingston city police department 'splain the rest:

Accused canal killers want communication ban lifted

2010-02-27T10:42:00.005-05:00

from left, Mohammad Shafia, 56, wife Tooba, 40, son Hamed, 19, at the Kingston, Ontario courthouse on July 23, 2009 (photos by Ian MacAlpine and Michael Lea/The Whig-Standard)

My account from The Whig of the end of the preliminary hearing in the canal mass murder case in Kingston, Ontario:

Three Montrealers (above) accused of killing four family members are heading back to court Tuesday, just four days after the completion of a critical stage in their case.
A preliminary hearing for Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 40, her husband, Mohammad Shafia, 56, and their son, Hamed, 19, concluded yesterday in less than a third of the time it was expected to consume.

The trio will appear before a Superior Court judge in the coming week in a bid to overturn an order that bars them from communicating with three family members living in Montreal and from each other. The hearing is expected to last two days and, like the hearing that concluded yesterday, most of what is said will be subject to a broad order that prohibits publication or broadcast.
The family members in Montreal are three children of the Shafias, siblings of the accused 19 year old.
Though it was a formality, Justice Stephen Hunter, who presided over the preliminary, made an important declaration at its conclusion.
“The accused will be committed to stand trial on all counts,” Hunter said, ordering them held in custody. Early in the hearing, all of the accused had conceded that there was enough evidence to try them. The lawyers used the hearing, in part, to test the performance of some witnesses and some evidence.
The accused each face four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
Crown prosecutors called 22 witnesses over 15 days and filed thick stacks of documents and several DVDs. Roughly 50 exhibits were logged. The defence did not call any witnesses or submit any evidence, though it is entitled to do so.
Hunter also set May 3 as the next court date in the process, when discussions will be held about scheduling a trial and setting time for hearings on pre-trial motions. The defence lawyers are likely to file motions on a number of issues, including the admissibility of some evidence.
A trial is expected to be scheduled for early 2011.
The preliminary hearing spanned 15 days, though lawyers involved had originally estimated that it might take 10 weeks.
An elaborate audio system was installed in the courtroom to allow the simultaneous translation of the proceedings between English and Farsi, the Middle Eastern language spoken by the accused mother and father, who are originally from Afghanistan. The translation was fed to everyone in the courtroom through wireless headsets.
A sound-deadening booth that was dubbed the ‘garden shed’ by lawyers was erected near the prisoners box. Two court-certified translators, a man from Ottawa and another from Cornwall, drove to Kingston daily to sit inside the booth for hours, where they took turns interpreting the dialogue. An interpreter hired by the defence sat at a table behind the three defence lawyers.
Hunter thanked the court translators, lawyers and court staff for their hard work and noted that often the criminal justice system is criticized for moving at a “glacial pace.”
“This has not been the case here,” he said. “This is and has been an extremely complex and difficult matter, both substantively and logistically.
“It could have consumed more weeks and consumed many hundreds of thousands of dollars more.”
The proceeding wasn’t without hiccups.
Often Hunter was required to interrupt witnesses and occasionally lawyers, urging them to slow down to allow the translators to keep pace.
Several times, the translators interrupted the proceedings after realizing that they had misinterpreted words and phrases.
“It worked better than I expected it would,” said defence lawyer Peter Kemp, who represents the accused father. “The problem still is, when the witness gets asked a question, for example, in English by the Crown and the translator translates that question in Farsi to the witness, there is quite often a lengthy discussion that goes on between the translator and the witness which leaves me wondering whether there is more being said by the witness that we should be hearing.”
At the conclusion of the hearing, Hunter called all the lawyers into his chambers for a private debriefing about the logistics.
Kemp, an experienced litigator who is well known for his ability to pinpoint and pounce on inconsistencies in testimony, said it was difficult to make notes and to focus on the behaviour of witnesses.
“You’re trying to concentrate on the witness, who’s off to my right and the translators are speaking and I can hear them subtly off to my left,” he said. “You lose track of what’s being said.”
The translation booth butted up against the defence table in the relatively small courthouse on Wellington Street.
That physical problem likely will be eliminated if the trial is conducted in the large, second-floor courtroom in the county courthouse.
The translation obstacles were exaggerated by the occasional appearance of witnesses who spoke in French, including the last witness who appeared yesterday, a man from Montreal.
In that case, a French translator stood next to the witness, translating back and forth between English. Those translations were then translated into Farsi.
Kemp said it will be critical for the trial judge to instruct witnesses to take pauses and to speak slowly to allow translation to keep pace.
There were often more police officers at the preliminary hearing than spectactors.
Four highly trained tactical officers, equipped with handguns and Tasers, brought the accused to court each day in a three-vehicle convoy from the Quinte Detention Centre in Napanee and whisked them back there each night.
They remained in and around the courtroom throughout the hearing. At times, there were three additional officers in the courtroom, investigators assisting the Crown lawyers.
The accused sat in a row in the prisoner’s box, separated by police or court security officers. Many days, friends or family members of the accused sat in the spectator benches. Most refused to give their names or offer any comments outside the courtroom.
Several times during the hearing the accused mother broke into sobs. One day, she and her 19-year-old son were permitted to leave the courtroom because they did not want to be present for some evidence.
Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahari, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead inside a submerged car discovered June 30 in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife.
The accused were arrested July 22. They have been behind bars since that date.

» All coverage of the case

Imprisoned cop killer wins court battle for transfer

2010-02-26T00:09:00.000-05:00

A judge has ordered Corrections Canada to move an ailing, geriatric double cop killer to a minimum-security Ontario prison with no fences and no armed guards so he can be closer to his sister. James Hutchison (inset), 82, went to court because Corrections denied his transfer to Beaver Creek Institution, near Gravenhurst. Hutchison is currently behind bars at Bath Institution, a medium-security prison just west of Kingston, Ontario. Hutchison suffered a “deprivation of liberty,” when Corrections blocked the transfer in July last year, Ontario Superior Court Justice Stanley Kershman ruled, in a recent judgment (full judgment here). “There was no new evidentiary basis being put forward to increase the applicant’s escape risk from low to moderate,” the judge wrote.

Here's the rest of my story from The Kingston Whig-Standard:

Hutchison is serving a life sentence for the cold-blooded murder in 1974 of two Moncton police officers.
Hutchison and accomplice Richard Ambrose pushed Const. Michael O’Leary and Cpl. Aurele Bourgeois into shallow graves that the killers had dug in a wooded area near Moncton, N.B.
They shot the officers in the head and buried them.
The killers were quickly captured, tried and order to hang. The death sentences were commuted to life in prison after the death penalty was abolished in 1976 (the Supreme Court of Canada turned down an appeal by the killers in 1977).
In January last year, Hutchison’s parole officer recommended that the convict’s security status be changed to minimum, making him eligible for a transfer to a minimum-security prison, a stepping stone to release.
In April, the warden of Bath approved Hutchison’s transfer to Beaver Creek but Hutchison voluntarily postponed the move because he was making frequent trips to Kingston General Hospital.
He has a host of medical problems, including a recent bout of lung cancer, past heart problems that required bypass surgery and he has had knee replacement surgery. It’s expected he’ll need more surgery in future.
In his decision, Justice Kershman noted that a story appeared in the Whig-Standard on May 26 that detailed Hutchison’s crime and his planned transfer.
Two months later, as he was being prepared for transfer, Hutchison was reassessed by a new parole officer he had never met and a recommendation was made to change his security status to medium.
At the time, the warden of Bath who approved the original transfer request and Hutchison’s usual parole officer were on vacation, according to the court decision.
Hutchison was re-designated as a medium-security inmate, his escape risk was deemed to be moderate and his transfer was cancelled.
He filed the court action in response.
In defending its decision, Corrections argued that it had new information, including more details of his escape in 2000 while on a work pass from minimum-security Pittsburgh Institution in Kingston. The information showed that the escape “was much more calculated than first believed.”
Hutchison was at large for several days before he was recaptured.
Corrections also cited a decision by the National Parole Board in 2008 to deny Hutchison any form of release.
The judge said all of this information was available previously and there was no new material.
“There is no evidence before the court to show that between April 8, 2009, when the warden approved the transfer to Beaver Creek, and July 13, 2009 ... the date that his escape risk was reclassified by the Deputy Warden, that he had committed any offences or had exhibited any inappropriate behaviour,” Kershman wrote.
Corrections could not immediately say if the decision will be appealed.
In an interview last year, Dale Swansburg, the retired RCMP officer who caught Hutchison in 1974, said he didn’t believe the killer should ever be released, regardless of his age or frailty.
“I don’t know what physical shape he’s in, but my [concern] is, there’s all kinds of young people that would think he was a hero-type thing,” Swansburg said. “What he couldn’t do now, he could have somebody else do for him.”
Kershman’s judgment cited a quote from the Whig story from Dean Secord, president of the New Brunswick Police Association.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that if he escapes and it comes right down to it, he would kill again,” Secord said.
Hutchison’s accomplice remains behind bars in Western Canada.
O’Leary and Bourgeois were part of a police dragnet thrown up after the 14-year-old son of a wealthy restaurateur was kidnapped.
The businessman paid a $15,000 ransom to Hutchison and Ambrose, who returned the boy unharmed.
Police were hunting the kidnappers after the exchange. O’Leary and Bourgeois were assigned to check out a suspicious car when they disappeared and were found dead two days later.
Hutchison already had a 30-year criminal record at the time of the killings.
He was on parole from a robbery sentence at the time.
Prisoners at Beaver Creek live in rooms in small, residential-style units where they prepare their own meals. Inmates can simply walk away from the prison, which operates on an honour system.

Related:
» Ailing cop killer James Hutchison denied transfer
» The double cop killing that shocked the nation

Number of pardons sought surges

2010-02-25T07:34:00.000-05:00

The number of Canadians seeking to sweep skeletons from their closests has skyrocketed. New stats released by the federal government show that the number of pardons sought last year shot up by 62% - 40,428 pardon applications were filed last year compared to 25, 021 the year before. The number of pardons granted more than doubled. A pardon essentially purges a person's criminal record, and there's no shortage of Canadians with records, roughly one in 10 people. The chart above shows a five-year trend.

Related post: Government tripling price of pardons

Mass murder hearing speeding toward end

2010-02-24T07:28:00.000-05:00

The first key court process leading to a trial for a mother, father and their 19-year-old son, who are charged with murdering four family members, is winding down. Here's my report from today's Whig-Standard on the progress of the hearing, which continues today but is expected to wrap up Friday.

A preliminary hearing for three Montrealers accused of killing four family members heard yesterday from its first witness who does not live in Canada.
A man from Sweden spent four and a half hours testifying in Farsi, the Middle Eastern language spoken by the accused.
A broad publication ban prohibits the reporting of the man’s testimony.
Prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis told the court that another European witness who had been scheduled to testify today will not appear. He said a “communication breakdown” scuttled plans for the woman from France to come to Canada. Instead, she is expected to testify as part of pre-trial motions that will be heard before a trial begins.
Because of the cancellation, it means only four witnesses remain to testify in a hearing that has heard from 20 witnesses over 13 days.
Laarhuis said the court won’t need to sit on Thursday, given the cancellation of the witness from France.
The hearing is expected to conclude Friday on schedule because the lawyers moved swiftly through the evidence. The hearing was originally projected to last 10 weeks.
The brevity is the result, in part, of the decision by all of the accused to concede early in the proceeding that there is enough evidence to send them to trial. It means that the prosecution does not have to prove to Justice Stephen Hunter that there is enough evidence to order a trial. Instead, the lawyers are using the hearing, largely, as a forum in which to test some of the evidence and the performance of witnesses when faced with the pressurized atmosphere of the courtroom.
There have been frequent bouts of crying and sobbing from witnesses and the accused, as evidence has been introduced and discussed.
The man from Sweden began to sob softly early in his testimony yesterday, forcing a brief stop in the proceedings as he composed himself. He took less than a minute to wipe at his eyes with a tissue.
Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 40, her husband Mohammad Shafia, 56, and their 19-year-old son Hamed, are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
The accused sit in the prisoner’s box each day, separated by two police officers or court security officers. They are prohibited by court order from communicating with each other.
They are accused of killing three daughters, Zainab, 19, Sahari, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50. The victims were found dead inside a car found June 30 last year submerged in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife.

Williams 'in custody' on day Comeau's body found

2010-02-17T23:07:00.013-05:00

Col. Russ Williams (above left) was "taken into custody" on November 25 last year, the day that one of the two women he's alleged to have murdered was found dead. The photo above shows Williams being led to the lockup during a charity fundraiser at the Trenton, Ontario airbase he commanded, at least until his real arrest, on February 7 this year.

Williams was arrested in November in a familiar charity schtick used at workplaces across Canada each year known as Jail 'n Bail. Bosses, VIPs and celebrities are rounded up, often by a real law enforcement officer, maybe even handcuffed, and thrown into a mock jail where they have to make desperate phone calls to friends and colleagues, begging for pledges to raise their bail. The money goes to the charity. The photo above appeared in the December 4, 2009 issue of the Contact, the in house newspaper of Canadian Forces Base Trenton. The photo caption noted that Williams was arrested and charged with "being too young to be a Wing Commander" as part of a United Way fundraiser. An ominous headline declared: "Jail and Bail event locks up the worst Wing offenders."

That same day, the body of Corporal Marie-France Comeau (inset), who worked at CFB Trenton, was found in her home in nearby Brighton. If what police allege is true, the smiling colonel in the picture above, who appears to have been handcuffed, may have killed Comeau just hours before the photo was snapped.

Here's the full page from that issue of the base newspaper and below, the entire December 4 edition:

And here's an update to my last post about Williams, who had not, until today, hired a lawyer. Now he has a top criminal defence lawyer working for him.

Accused sex killer suicidal again; has no lawyer

2010-02-16T22:21:00.013-05:00

Col. Russ Williams (inset), the Canadian Air Force commander who is now an accused serial rapist and sex killer, isn't doing well behind bars. On Sunday, Williams was stuffed back into what jail staff call an 'oven mitt,' or 'baby doll,' a humiliating anti-suicide gown, sources tell me, because of concern he might try to kill himself while locked in a segregation cell at the Quinte Detention Centre in Napanee, just west of Kingston, Ontario. The gown is tear and burn proof. The wearer can't pull off strips to fashion a noose. It's made from oven-mitt like material and has a head hole and arm holes. Jail sources tell me that Williams had such a bad night and was so distraught that he was allowed to make a phone call to his wife, who then visited him on Sunday for the first time since his arrest Feb. 7.

Williams was placed on suicide watch and dressed in the oven mitt when he was first admitted to Quinte (see previous post), but within days he traded that for a regular orange jumpsuit. Now it seems jail authorities aren't sure what to expect from the once-revered military leader. In addition to his unpredictable jail behaviour, Williams has refused to hire a lawyer and is trying to plead guilty to the charges he faces. Sources tell me that judicial authorities aren't yet sure what to do, though it's likely a psychiatric evaluation will be ordered to ensure that Williams is competent and capable of making the decision to act without a lawyer. It's almost unheard of for someone accused of such heinous crimes to plead out so speedily, but it's not surprising, given reports that Williams already has given a detailed confession. The full Globe confession story is preserved here, since Globe links tend to disappear:

By Christie Blatchford
The Globe and Mail

Colonel Russell Williams has given police a lengthy and wide-ranging statement about four dozen so-called "lingerie break-ins," two home invasions that turned into bizarre sexual assaults last September, and the murders of two young women, one a military steward with whom he may have flown.

Several sources have also told The Globe and Mail that the 46-year-old commander of Canadian Forces Base Trenton took detectives to the body of Jessica Lloyd, a 27-year-old who suddenly disappeared on Jan. 29 after texting a friend she had safely arrived home.

The Globe has also learned that while Col. Williams was in countless photographs in the base newspaper, The Contact, since taking over the job last summer - there is hardly an issue without at least several pictures of the lantern-jawed veteran - more ominously, he was also an avid amateur photographer.

Sources say that he photographed the murders and sexual attacks. His computer, once examined by forensic specialists, is expected to yield what one source called "a treasure trove" of evidence.

After Sunday's extraordinary interview with officers from the OPP's criminal behavioural analysis section, Col. Williams was formally charged with two murders - Ms. Lloyd's and the Nov. 25 slaying of Corporal Marie-France Comeau - and the two unusual sexual assaults in nearby Tweed, Ont., last fall.

The key officer in the room was Detective-Sergeant Jim Smith, who last year had obtained a statement in the abduction and murder of eight-year-old Tori Stafford of Woodstock, Ont., last summer.

According to those close to the investigation, Col. Williams' statement was delivered in a crisp, almost business-like fashion, less out of contrition, it appeared, than out of a sense of duty ingrained during a 22-year military career.

Because of his seeming frankness and willingness to talk to investigators, while police are checking into other unsolved cases at bases where Col. Williams was previously posted, he isn't considered a suspect in any of those.

Yet all the while he was allegedly and abruptly acting out his fantasies, Col. Williams was also filling his calendar with the busy quasi-social whirl of a base commander, a role with a huge grip-and-grin component.

Between the Nov. 25 slaying last year of Corp. Comeau and the disappearance of Ms. Lloyd late last month, for instance, Col. Williams was cheerfully posing with a variety of visiting base guests, among them Santa Claus and former Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier, then on his book tour; taking part in myriad events, including a "jail and bail" charity fundraiser in which he was photographed being arrested and put behind fake bars for "being too young to be a Wing Commander," kicking off a curling bonspiel, and writing a year-end letter to the men and women under his command.

Ms. Lloyd was abducted from her house, the tire tracks left behind in the snow the first link police ever had - though they didn't know it at first - to the eminently respectable base commander.

Last Thursday, police set up a version of the familiar RIDE spot check, a sort of mobile version of a door-to-door search, along rural Highway 37, which runs north from Highway 401 at Belleville to the municipality of Tweed. They were looking to match the unusual tire treads found outside Ms. Lloyd's house.

Col. Williams, behind the wheel of his Pathfinder and not the BMW people most often saw him drive, happened to get caught in that roadside check. If it was the first indication he could have been involved, it was not the last.

The 37-year-old Corp. Comeau had been under his command; Ms. Lloyd lived just off Highway 37 close to Belleville, and the two women who were sexually assaulted in September lived on the street in Tweed, Cozy Cove Lane, where Col. Williams and his wife, who works in Ottawa and lives there during the week, have a cottage.

Detectives also had descriptions of lingerie and other intimate souvenirs reported missing by the two Tweed women who were assaulted in their homes last fall. Although the victims' faces were covered, as was their attacker's, they were able to tell police that they had been "posed" and photographed by their assailant.

Given the sudden escalation in violence between the September break-ins/assaults and the lethal attack upon Corp. Comeau in November, police believed at first they likely were dealing with two different perpetrators.

Corp. Comeau was a steward on Prime Minister Stephen Harper's visit to India in early November. By the time the Prime Minister headed to China the next month, her body had been discovered by her boyfriend in her Brighton, Ont., home.

Given the statistics on domestic murders, suspicion naturally fell upon the boyfriend, at least in the public eye and among the air crew who were on the PM's flight to China, but a search of his home quashed that, sources told The Globe, and he was quickly cleared by police.

It is the dichotomy between the commander's accomplished life and the allegations against him now which has left those who knew or worked for him reeling. He is described by subordinates as both friendly and thoroughly professional.

Although the job of commander kept Col. Williams so busy he was often the last to leave the office, he also continued to fly the CC150 Airbuses that are flown by 437 Squadron, Corp. Comeau's squadron, to keep his pilot status current.

Bizarre behaviour behind bars from Williams

2010-02-12T07:11:00.000-05:00

Col. Russ Williams (inset), the Canadian Air Force commander accused of two murders, exhibited some strange behaviour when he was taken to the Quinte Detention Centre, a provincial jail in Napanee, just west of Kingston, after his arrest. That's where Williams is being held while his criminal case begins to wind its way through the courts.

Sources tell me that Williams was acting as though he was a prisoner of war when he was first processed at the detention centre. He would only give authorities his name, rank and serial number.

Williams was assessed by a psychiatrist and he was deemed a possible suicide risk. His demeanor has been described as "cocky" but "vacant."

He was given a tear and burn proof outfit, known among jail workers as an "oven mitt" or "baby doll," to wear.

It is a thick gown, made from an impervious material, with holes for arms and head. The wearer is stripped of personal clothing, including underwear and other personal effects.

Williams was placed in a segregation cell where he could be monitored continually by security staff and where he had no privacy. The suicide watch segregation cell does not have a screen or covering over the barred front so that staff can see inside at all times.

Williams' mattress was removed in the daytime and returned only at night.

On Wednesday, Williams was allowed to exchange his suicide gown for a regular, orange jumpsuit that is issued to most prisoners at Quinte, a crowded provincial holding and remand centre. Most of the inmates at the facility are awaiting trial.

Built to hold nearly 100 inmates, Quinte is often jammed with 300 or more prisoners. In some cases, inmates sleep on mattresses in hallways or placed on the floor of cells.

Williams remains in a segregation cell by himself with no contact with other inmates.

He has spoken very little and often refuses to make eye contact with jail staff.

His next court appearance will be by video link from the detention centre. Inmates are taken to a room in the centre where they stand in front of a camera, monitor and telephone that is part of a network connected to provincial courthouses.

The system allows routine remands to be conducted without the expense and time of shuttling prisoners from jails to court buildings.

Defence lawyers are still able to talk to the accused on a secure phone line.

Military distancing itself from accused killer colonel?

2010-02-11T00:31:00.001-05:00

Is the Canadian military already trying to distance itself from Col. Russ Williams? Four days ago, Williams was a shining star in the Air Force, a pilot who ferried VIPs and the commander of one of the busiest military airbases in the country. On Sunday, Williams was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of young women. As of Wednesday evening, just two days after the charges were announced publicly by police, Williams' glowing, official military biography had disappeared from the web. Clicking the former link to that page, took you to this:

Anticipating this would happen, I preserved the bio at this blog post two days ago.

Trial for accused canal killing trio now a certainty

2010-02-10T22:55:00.006-05:00

There's no longer any doubt that three Montrealers, a mother, father and their 19-year-old son, will stand trial in the murder of four family members, including three teenage sisters. This was confirmed today at a preliminary inquiry taking place in Kingston, Ontario.

Here's my story from the Whig-Standard:

A Montreal woman accused of killing three of her children and a 50-year-old woman has given up fighting the possibility of a trial.
“I understand that Yahya Tooba Mohammad is conceding committal today,” Crown prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis said this morning, at the resumption of a preliminary inquiry in the case of four females found dead inside a submerged car at Kingston Mills on June 30 last year.
“That’s correct, sir,” replied defence lawyer David Crowe, who represents the woman.
She was the last of three accused in the case to concede that there is enough evidence to send her to trial.
Her husband, Mohammad Shafia, 56, and her 19-year-old son Hamed, already had made the concessions.
It means there is no longer any doubt that the three family members will be tried, perhaps early in 2011. Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahari, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead inside the car discovered last year in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife.
Yahya’s concession came after a key decision yesterday by Justice Stephen Hunter.
He ruled that a significant piece of evidence that Crown lawyers wanted to submit is admissible.
The three accused are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
The evidence being presented at the preliminary inquiry cannot be reported because of far reaching publication bans.
The hearing, normally a legal exercise to determine if there is enough evidence to send the accused to trial, has taken on the tone of a fact finding exercise, now that all of the accused have acknowledged there’s enough evidence to try them.
The hearing is set to continue daily until the end of the month.

An accused killer's career: Col. Russell Williams

2010-02-08T22:02:00.014-05:00

Click here for larger view

I've preserved it here, in case this official National Defence biography (above) of Col. Russell Williams vanishes from its current location on the net, now that he has been charged with two-counts of first-degree murder. The stunning news that the commander of the Canadian Air Force base in Trenton, just west of Belleville, Ontario, has been charged with the slayings of two women, was revealed today at a news conference (video). He's also charged with home invasion-sex attacks on two other women.

Police have acknowledged that they're looking at Williams' past, with an eye to other unsolved crimes. His biography (above) is a roadmap to that investigation. In 2003, Williams began taking a graduate degree at Royal Military College in Kingston. Two months later, RMC cadet Joe Grozelle vanished from the campus. He was found dead 22 days later when his body was found in a nearby river. Investigators have never been able to conclusively determine how he died.

Spectators denied canal killing evidence

2010-02-06T07:21:00.000-05:00

Some strange goings-on in the last few days of the preliminary hearing being held in Kingston for three people accused of killing four family members who were found dead in a submerged car.

Here's my full story from today's Whig-Standard. Though the piece may seem deliberately cryptic, I'm handcuffed by the publication bans in place.

A preliminary inquiry is typically a secretive justice system process. Sweeping publication bans bar the reporting of most of what is said in the courtroom during such a hearing, but the courtroom remains open to spectators. Any citizen can show up and listen in.
The preliminary inquiry for three Montrealers accused of murdering four family members took on a super-secret atmosphere yesterday as some evidence in Farsi, a Middle Eastern language, was not translated into English for courtroom spectators, including reporters.
The mechanics of this strange situation cannot be explained because of the publication bans in place. They are designed to prevent evidence from being widely disseminated in the community, where it could theoretically poison citizens who might later serve on a jury. During the preliminary hearing, a judge determines if there is enough evidence to order the accused to stand trial.
For several hours Friday and on Thursday, spectators and some court staff did not know what was being said in the Kingston Mills case.
Two translators, sitting in a sound-dampening booth inside the courtroom, said nothing as evidence in Farsi was presented. The translators take turns interpreting most of the testimony into and out of Farsi. Their translations are fed to everyone in the courtroom through a network of wireless receiver boxes and headsets.
Until Thursday, they had translated all of the Farsi evidence into English.
Mohammad Shafia, 56, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 40, and their 19-year-old son Hamed are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder. Only Hamed Shafia speaks fluent English.
Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead inside a car discovered June 30 last year submerged in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife.
Yesterday the lawyers finished presenting evidence that is part of a hearing within the hearing. Justice Stephen Hunter is being asked to rule on whether a key piece of evidence is admissible. On Tuesday, when court resumes, the lawyers will make submissions to Hunter before he makes what could be a critical decision.
After the matter is decided, the preliminary hearing will continue in earnest.
So far, four witnesses have appeared, all police officers who have been involved in a case that crosses continents and cultural barriers.
The divide was evident yesterday.
The judge adjourned the proceedings at 12:30 p.m. for lunch, at a time when he normally would have continued hearing evidence. The two court-appointed translators had asked Hunter to give them an hour off at that time so that they could get to the Kingston mosque, located on Sydenham Road, for Friday prayers.
The men, practising Muslims, needed to participate in a group prayer session. They also pray to Allah five times a day, but are able on other days to pray in the court building on Wellington Street. When the two men took oaths to tell the truth at the beginning of the hearing, they placed their hands on the Quran, an Islamic holy text.
Though the courtroom was packed with spectators when the hearing began this week, by yesterday, only two or three spectators sat in the public benches.
Around noon, a young man in jeans raised some eyebrows when he strode quickly into the room and took a spot on the first-row spectator bench and began waving enthusiastically to Hamed Shafia, who grinned in acknowledgment from the prisoner box, where he is shackled and seated next to a court security officer.
When court concluded for the day, the spectator waved again. Hamed Shafia lifted his right hand slowly and waved twice.
The spectator described himself as a cousin of the accused, but he would not give his name.
The mother, father and son were arrested on July 22 last year, roughly three weeks after the four females were found dead. They remain behind bars at the Quinte Detention Centre in Napanee. They are brought in a van, under tight security, to the Kingston courthouse each day.

The canal mass murder: Secrets I must keep

2010-02-04T06:48:00.001-05:00

For a journalist, there's nothing more painful than hearing a good story – or a great story – that you can't write. Imagine how it feels when this happens every day, for days on end. I'm trapped now in this kind of journalistic purgatory, as I watch evidence, some of it dramatic and startling, unfolding at the preliminary hearing for three Montrealers – a mother, father and their 19-year-old son – who are accused of murdering four family members. A sweeping publication ban bars reporting of the evidence presented at the hearing. I've already heard and seen a wealth of new information, among the reams of material collected by investigators, but I can't tell you about any of it.

Of course, it could be worse. Canada's Criminal Code has broad provisions that enable a judge to conduct essentially a secret preliminary hearing, if he/she thinks that's a good idea, by ordering everyone out of the courtroom except the prosecutor, accused and his or her lawyer. A publication ban is imposed if the accused asks for it, and may be imposed if the prosecution asks for it. Journalists and a number of organizations are continuing to battle the courts and government over the use of publication bans, most notably in bail hearings. So far, the bans remain in widespread use, bolstered by the byzantine notion that citizens who could end up on juries will be poisoned by hearing the evidence reported before a trial. In an age where electronic communication knows no boundaries and spreads at nearly incomprehensible speed, it seems a sadly arcane and unenforcable notion. But it's the system we have, and we have to life with for now. Given this, here's my story that appears in today's Whig-Standard about Day 3 of the preliminary hearing, yesterday:

A battle over the admissibility of one significant piece of evidence continued yesterday (wed) at a hearing in the Kingston Mills murder case.
The evidence will likely be the subject of several more days of debate. The evidence and the submissions concerning it cannot be reported because of sweeping publication ban imposed by the judge.
Yesterday marked the third day of a preliminary hearing, a proceeding to determine if there is enough evidence to send the three accused to trial. The judge need only conclude that there is some evidence to order a trial.
Publication bans are typically sought by the accused at this stage to prevent potential jurors from hearing the evidence that will be presented at a trial.
Mohammad Shafia, 56, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 40, and their 19-year-old son Hamed are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
Police allege that the trio hatched a plan to kill four family members.
Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead inside a car discovered June 30 last year submerged in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife.
The two men have conceded that there is enough evidence to send them to trial, but they did not waive their right to participate in the preliminary hearing. Yahya has not made the same concession.
Lawyers for the two accused men were not in court yesterday.
A problem with translation that forced an abrupt end to the hearing Tuesday was resolved. The hearing is being simultaneously translated between English and Farsi by two translators closeted in a small booth erected inside Courtroom Number 1 at the provincial courthouse on Wellington Street.
Kingston Police have made a show of force at the hearing. At times, there have been seven officers in the courtroom, including four tactical officers armed with Tasers and handguns.
The accused sit in a row inside the prisoner’s box, separated by two court security officers. The accused are prohibited by court order from communicating with each other.
They wear headsets connected to wireless receivers that allow them to hear all of the English testimony translated into Farsi. Headsets and receivers also are available to members of the public who attend.
The 10-member Shafia family came to Canada from Afghanistan roughly three years ago.
The mother, father and son were arrested on July 22 last year. They have been held in custody since that time.

Emotional outbursts at canal murder hearing

2010-02-03T08:26:00.002-05:00

Some of the evidence revealed yesterday at the resumption of a hearing in the canal mass murder case proved emotionally jarring for one of the three accused killers. My full account of the hearing, published today in the Kingston-Whig-Standard, also appears after the jump.

By Rob Tripp
The Whig-Standard

A Montreal woman accused of murdering three of her daughters cried big, racking sobs yesterday as prosecutors began revealing some of the evidence against her.
Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 40, her husband Mohammad Shafia, 56, and the couple’s 19-year-old son Hamed are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead in a car that was discovered early on the morning of June 30, submerged in about three metres of water near a lock in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife.
The three accused have been behind bars since their arrest three weeks after the bodies were discovered.
Yesterday marked the beginning of a marathon, key phase of the court proceeding. A preliminary hearing that ran one day before Christmas resumed and is scheduled to continue for four weeks.
At a preliminary hearing, prosecutors present some of their evidence in a bid to convince a judge that he should send the accused to trial.
In this case, Shafia and his son already have conceded that there is enough evidence to commit them to trial. It means prosecutors don’t have to convince the judge to order a trial for those two.
But Yahya has not conceded.
A sweeping publication ban prohibits reporting of evidence heard at the hearing.
Yesterday Crown lawyers Gerard Laarhuis and Laurie Lacelle introduced two books of evidence, each about four inches thick.
Two witnesses were called, both police officers, and twice Yahya began to cry, loud enough that her sobs were audible from behind the glass of the prisoner’s box, where she was shackled at the legs, seated in a row, separated from her husband by a police officer, who, in turn, was separated from his son by another officer.
At least once, Mohammad Shafia appeared overcome by emotion. He wiped at his face with a tissue and buried his face in his hands and also appeared to be crying.
In the afternoon, Yahya’s crying stretched out for roughly 15 minutes, as she sobbed and dabbed at her face with tissue.
The evidence that provoked the outburst cannot be reported.
When a recess was called, she refused to leave the prisoner’s box, as is customary during breaks in the proceedings. Only her husband and son were escorted out of the courtroom.
She remained in the corner of the box, sobbing quietly, partly concealed from the courtroom by a large garden-shed sized structure that houses two translators.
The entire proceeding is being simultaneously translated into Farsi. Yahya and her husband speak Farsi.
Two translators sit inside the booth, connected to everyone in the courtroom through a network of wireless headsets.
The plans went briefly awry when the hearing began. The translator thought his job was only to translate testimony involving witnesses, so he did not begin translating any of the opening remarks.
“You have to translate everything, sir,” Justice Stephen Hunter said.
The hearing also began with only one of two translators in place, apparently because the second man got lost. He arrived almost an hour late.
Despite the initial hiccups, and occasional admonition from the judge to the lawyers to slow down to allow the translators to keep pace, the translation worked effectively for most of the day.
“I thought it went very smoothly,” defence lawyer Clyde Smith said, in an interview outside the courtroom, after the lunch break. “I was pleasantly surprised by how smoothly it went.”
Smith represents the son.
But the day ended abruptly just after 4 p.m. when one of the two translators interrupted the proceedings to tell the judge that he was having difficulty translating a dialect of Farsi.
Hunter asked the lawyers if they had a possible solution.
When no ideas emerged, he adjourned the hearing and asked to meet the lawyers behind closed doors.
A hearing within a hearing also began yesterday, as the judge is being asked to consider the admissibility of some evidence. Debate about the matter is expected to stretch into next week.
There was one other problem during the morning. After court had sat for roughly an hour and a half, Laarhuis pointed out to the judge that a woman who may be a witness was sitting in the public benches, despite an order the excludes all witnesses from watching the proceedings.
The woman was quickly hustled out of the courtroom.
A group of about half a dozen people who appear to be supporters or friends and family of the accused sat through the day’s proceedings.
In the morning, when Mohammad Shafia was first brought into court, he offered a slight smile and a wave to a woman among the group. She nodded in acknowledgment.
The hearing is set to resume today.

Canal mass murder trial reaches critical stage

2010-02-01T07:51:00.001-05:00

from left, Mohammad Shafia, 56, wife Tooba, 40, son Hamed, 19, at the Kingston, Ontario courthouse on July 23, 2009 (photos by Ian MacAlpine and Michael Lea/The Whig-Standard)

Birthdays behind bars. Tooba Mohammad Yahya turned 40 on December 12. Her son Hamed can now legally purchase alcohol in Canada, though it's possible he may never get the chance. He turned 19 on New Year's Eve. It's unlikely either Shafia family member did much celebrating. They are languishing behind bars at the Quinte Detention Centre, an overcrowded provincial holding centre just west of Kingston, as they wait for their day in court. Tooba, Hamed and father Mohammad Shafia are each accused of killing four other family members in a diabolical plot police say was carried out in June last year in Kingston, Ontario. That day in court looms. The case against them moves into a critical stage tomorrow with the commencement in earnest of a preliminary inquiry.

Here's my preview of what's to come in the prelim, published today in the Kingston Whig-Standard:

Monday, February 2, 2010
By Rob Tripp
The Whig-Standard

Defence lawyers representing three Montrealers accused of killing four family members who were found dead in a submerged car haven’t yet seen all of the evidence against the accused despite the looming start of a critical court hearing.

A month-long preliminary hearing begins in earnest tomorrow (tues) in Kingston for Mohammad Shafia, 56, his wife Tooba, 40, and their 19-year-old son Hamed. Each is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.

“There’s still some disclosure missing, some important disclosure,” defence lawyer David Crowe told the Whig-Standard. “The police are making best efforts and no one’s faulting the police or Crowns.”

Crowe would not say what evidence is missing. In Canada, prosecutors are required to provide an accused person with all relevant evidence that has been collected, in advance.

Crowe represents Tooba Mohammad Yahya, the only one of the three accused who has not conceded that there is enough evidence to send her to trial in the deaths of her children. Hamed Shafia and Mohammad Shafia conceded, on the first day of the preliminary hearing, held before Christmas, that there is enough evidence to order them to trial.

Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead in a car that was discovered early on the morning of June 30 last year, resting on its wheels in about three metres of water near a lock in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Mohammad Shafia’s first wife.

The mother and father claimed, in interviews soon after the victims were found, that the four must have died in a freak driving accident that happened as the family was passing through Kingston on the way home to Montreal. Siblings of Rona Mohammad allege that the four were victims of an honour crime, orchestrated by the father.

Police have never revealed the cause of death of the victims.

Preliminary hearings are held to allow a judge to decide if there is enough evidence to order an accused to trial. Despite the concessions by two accused, all three will be in Courtroom Number 1 at the provincial courthouse on Wellington Street tomorrow.

“Just because we conceded committal doesn’t mean that we’re waiving the prelim,” said Clyde Smith, the lawyer who represents Hamed Shafia. “That’s two different things.

“We’ve said to the Crown and to the judge, ‘Look, we’re not going to argue about whether or not there has to be a trial on this, we agree that the matter has to go to trial. In the meantime, we want to hear some of this other evidence just to get a sense of what it’s all about.’ ”

Smith said he has “zeroed in on some evidence that we need to understand a little better and that’s what we’re going to be doing for most of the month.”

Kingston lawyer Peter Kemp represents the accused father, who also has conceded there is enough evidence to send him to trial.

Much of what will transpire in the courtroom for the next four weeks will be done under a cloak of secrecy. Sweeping publication bans bar the media from reporting most evidence heard at preliminary inquiries.

The Shafia preliminary was originally expected to last 10 to 11 weeks.

“We’ve cut it down quite a bit,” said Crowe, predicting that most of the evidence will be complete by the end of February.

Everyone involved in the case is uncertain how the process will be slowed by one major obstacle.

The proceedings will require simultaneous translation between English, Farsi and, at times, French. The accused mother and father speak Farsi.

“The real difficulty is that we just don’t know how long the evidence is going to take to go in because of the translation equipment … but none of us has ever been involved in anything of quite this type before,” Smith said. He said roughly a dozen witnesses are expected to appear.

Conducting the hearing in Kingston required significant planning, including temporarily shifting all provincial court matters scheduled for Courtroom Number 1 to the county courthouse for February.

For the month, only the Shafia preliminary will take place in Courtroom Number 1.

A large, garden-shed sized booth with windows has been installed in the Wellington Street courtroom, near the prisoner box, to accommodate two translators. A large audio control board sits at the rear of the room and two pole-mounted transmitters are located in corners of the courtroom. Everyone in the room will have access to a wireless receiver box and headphones with a volume and channel control. One channel provides the live audio of the testimony. The simultaneous translation of the testimony can be heard on the other channel.

The Ministry of the Attorney General says there will be 30 headsets available daily to media and spectators, on a first-come, first-served basis.

“There’ll be people testifying in Farsi but there’ll also be people testifying in French and everything has to be translated into English and then, of course, everything that’s said in English or French has to be translated for the benefit of the accused so the potential for confusion is large, it seems to me,” Smith said.

Smith notes that judging the credibility of witnesses is about much more than just hearing their testimony.

“If you think about somebody watching a video statement, for example, and having it translated at the same time that they’re watching it, and trying to understand the nuances of what’s being said by the person on the videotape when, at the same time, you’re listening to a different voice, that’s not their voice, telling you what’s being said and presumably there’s a lag of some dimension,” he said. “It can’t be instantaneous so that the words of the person on the tape, once translated, may not match their demeanor and their facial expressions and their body languages and so on which, of course, is an important part of communication, so it’s a big challenge.”

Translation can be a factor in later debate about issues under appeal.

In September, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected a Nunavut man’s appeal of his conviction for first-degree murder, but the high court judges wrestled with the question of whether the transcript of the proceedings accurately reflected the context of what was said.

The trial of Salomonie Goo Jaw was conducted in Inuktitut and English, with simultaneous translation.

Jaw argued that the judge gave misleading instruction to the jury. The top court scrutinized the passage in the transcript showing the judge’s comments.

“The confusion surrounding this passage might be explained in part by the potential for transcription difficulties at trial,” Justice Louis LeBel wrote, for the 7-2 majority, noting that even individual sentences were at times broken down to facilitate translation.

“The transcription process is already reductionist in nature,” LeBel wrote. “The regular inflections in one’s voice, one’s emphasis on certain words and the natural flow of an idea or thought are not always captured by a written record.

“In the case of a trial conducted in two languages, the natural breaks between topics may not be as clear as usual, given the constant interruptions required for translation.”

Smith said he’s concerned about how translation will affect the Kingston case.

“I think its fair to say that everybody involved is worried about that issue,” he said.

Judicial officials already are looking ahead to a trial, which could begin in Kingston in early 2011, Smith said.

There have been discussions about trying to set aside court time for a trial and for hearings on pre-trial motions.

No one has been able to predict how long the trial might last, he said.

“This process we’re about to go through will help us a lot I think in understanding how much evidence is involved and what will be needed for the trial but more importantly, how much we’re slowed down by the translation and I don’t think anybody can tell that at this point,” he said.

Smith noted that murder cases in Kingston typically take about two years to get to trial.

“What I think everybody is trying to do is sort of keep the thing under control,” he said.

Smith said he does not believe that there will be any additional security in place for the preliminary inquiry.

“I think any concerns that there may have been about security were based largely on the fact that these people are from Afghanistan with all the [baggage] that that word carries but I think everybody has come to realize that this is just a family,” he said. “This isn’t the Taliban or a biker gang or international drug cartel or any of that kind of stuff; they’re not terrorists.”

The Shafia family moved to Canada roughly three years ago, settling in Montreal.

Kingston Police said the 10-member family, seven children and three adults, travelling in two cars, was returning home last summer from a vacation in the Niagara area when they stopped overnight in Kingston.

Their car, a black Nissan Sentra, was found submerged near the Kingston Mills locks early on the morning of June 30 by a Parks Canada worker. The four dead females were inside.

The mother, father and one son were arrested roughly three weeks later.

» All past coverage of the case

Wanted: Ex-con No. 589239A, Richard Earl Rupert

2010-01-29T07:41:00.000-05:00

In prison, Richard Rupert (above) would have been known to many as Inmate No. 589239A. This confidential number marks Rupert as a man who's been in trouble with the law in the past. It is his Fingerprint System (FPS) number, uncovered by Cancrime. Today, Rupert is known as the suspected swindler who has criss-crossed the country bilking trusting seniors out of thousands of dollars. Police are hoping a major media blitz will smoke out the elusive fraudster who operates off the grid. Police say he doesn't have a credit card, driver's licence or car and travels only by train and bus. He's a suspect in at least 20 recent crimes, though police believe there are many more victims who have not come forward.

Rupert has been in federal prison at least twice, Cancrime discovered. His last sentence expired in 2005, so the Correctional Service of Canada won't talk about him. I'm still digging up other records on Rupert. Stay tuned.

The FPS number is a unique identifier assigned to everyone in Canada who is fingerprinted. If you're dispatched to penitentiary after a conviction, it becomes a de facto inmate number.

I can tell you that Rupert began his first federal bit, a three-year stretch, in 1988.

Rupert was reportedly in Ottawa in October 2009.

He is apparently from Windsor, Ontario.

Here's the link to the video released by police of an assault on an 81-year-old Toronto woman.

Here's a map police released of some of Rupert's alleged crimes:

Click here to enlarge map

Here's the entire wanted poster put out by police:

BTW, they want him alive.

Convict roundup puts final fugitive behind bars

2010-01-28T19:56:00.001-05:00

I was remiss in not posting sooner that the motley crew above, all federal convicts who escaped in 2009 from the same federal prison in Kingston, are now all back behind bars. The last remaining fugitive from Frontenac Institution, Kenneth McBain (centre), was caught January 27 in Toronto by the Repeat Offender Parole Enforcement Unit (ROPE), a cross-province team of officers – Ontario's version of the famed U.S. Marshals. The ROPE squad hunts federal parole violators and escapees.

McBain bolted Frontenac, a minimum-security pen that has no armed guards or fences, on July 6 last year. Kevin Rice (left) fled the prison November 26 but was caught a few days later. Murderer Andrew Wood (right), bolted June 13 and was caught five days later. He was camping out in the bush north of Kingston, where he'd been set up with gear and food by his girlfriend, Erin Danto, a psychologist at Frontenac. The pair were nabbed swiftly thanks to some clever police work including an elaborate surveillance operation in which a team of officers tailed Danto the night she headed to Wood's campsite to deliver supplies. Danto essentially ruined her life with that convict romance. She resigned her job before the Correctional Service of Canada could fire her, she ended up in jail and likely will lose her accreditation as a psychologist. (Here's the whole story of the Danto-Wood affair and her conviction.)

Frontenac has a chronic escape problem, in part because of its location, which was explained in this post about Wood's escape.

» Wood's parole records
» Charges against Danto
» McBain's parole records

Here's a list of fugitives ROPE is still hunting.

Here's a feature story on the origins of the current ROPE squad.

Axe murderer Francis Clancy wins parole

2010-01-26T23:54:00.012-05:00

Imprisoned axe murderer Francis Patrick Clancy, who bashed in the head of a young born-again Christian man who had befriended him in Ottawa, has been paroled, Cancrime learned.

The 62-year-old Clancy, who is serving a life sentence in a British Columbia prison, was granted release to a halfway house (day parole), despite his repeated infractions, escapes and what the parole board calls his "parasitical life of crime" dating to 1969.

On March 5, 1983, Clancy and an accomplice, James Nelson Wall, were robbing the home of Iain Irvine, a 29-year-old Ottawa man who did volunteer work with ex-inmates. Irvine had befriended Clancy. Irvine arrived at the house unexpectedly and surprised the burglars. Wall held Irvine down on the floor. Clancy fetched an axe and began bashing Irvine's head. At the trial of the murderous pair, witnesses said Irvine might have been conscious for 15 minutes and alive for up to two hours. The killers stuffed him into a trunk and began hauling it outside. When Irvine tried to escape the box, Wall strangled him with a cord, twice. The killers drove 60 kilometres out of Ottawa and dumped the body in a field. Wall eventually led police to the body. He got life in prison with no chance of parole for 10 years. Clancy got life, with no parole for 15 years.

But he's been out of prison many times on passes since his conviction 25 years ago and, at one time, he was classified as minimum security and moved to a low-security prison with no fences and no armed guards. He escaped twice.

Now he's getting another shot at partial freedom. He'll have to live at a halfway house. He's been ordered not to drink alcohol, to avoid consorting with criminals and he has to take any psychological counselling that's ordered.

Here's the National Parole Board record of the hearing held this month at which he was granted parole:

Clancy was the ringleader in the 1983 robbery that left Irvine dead. When Clancy's accomplice in Irvine's murder, James Nelson Wall, was fingered as a suspect in a 1997 Kingston murder, I wrote this story, revisiting the Irvine killing (Wall was convicted in 2002 of first-degree murder in the slaying of his girlfriend, Jutta Weber. He was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years):

Kingston Whig-Standard
Saturday, March 21, 1998

By Rob Tripp

"Don't do this, Jesus loves you, Jesus loves you."
Those were the last words of 29-year-old Iain Irvine, as he lay face down on the floor of a bedroom in his parents' home, moments before his skull was crushed by half a dozen blows from the blunt end of an axe.
It was March 5, 1983.
Irvine had surprised two burglars who were robbing his parents' Nepean home. The thieves hid in the closet of a bedroom. When Irvine came into the room, they sprang out and pushed him to the floor before he could see his assailants.
James Nelson Wall, then 27, held Irvine's head down, and turned his own head away so Irvine couldn't see him.
Wall's lawyer would later tell a murder trial that Wall believed his accomplice, 35-year-old Francis Patrick Clancy, was going to get rope and a blindfold.
Clancy returned with an axe and began smashing Irvine's head.
The trial heard that Irvine could have been conscious for 15 minutes after the attack and alive for up to two hours.
Clancy and Wall put Irvine, who was still alive, into a steamer trunk and hauled it downstairs.
There, they bound and gagged Irvine. Then, Wall tried to strangle Irvine "to put him out of his misery," according to one of the police officers who investigated the murder and testified in court.
Wall and Clancy ransacked the house, then took Irvine's body out of the trunk, wrapped it in a quilt and put it into the trunk of Irvine's car. Clancy drove to an area about 60 kilometres east of Ottawa and dumped the body in a field.
After they pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, Wall and Clancy listened in court to Molly and Alex Irvine recount the trauma of having their only child murdered in the family home.
"We can still see where Iain's blood has soaked into the floor boards," Molly Irvine told the court. "We can never forget where he died."
Irvine said her son knew Clancy and Wall from a prison fellowship program where he had befriended them.
"Iain was very religious and believed strongly in helping others," Irvine said. Her son had even brought Clancy to the family home. On one of those trips, Clancy spotted a stack of savings bonds, and plotted the robbery.
Iain Irvine trusted Clancy because he claimed he was a born-again Christian who had given up his life of crime.
"As you know, Clancy's response was to betray Iain's trust and, with the help of his evil friend Wall, to murder him in a most foul way," Molly Irvine said.
Clancy was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 15 years. Wall got life with no chance of parole for 10 years.
Wall was granted full parole in 1993, and has lived in Kingston since. He refuses to say he is a killer.
"In 1983 somebody died and I was there," Wall says in an interview. "I didn't kill anybody then and I didn't kill anybody now ... "
Wall says he was a troubled man in 1983 with a long record of property offences.
"I was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person or group of people," he says.

My colleague Arthur Milnes, wrote this story, after interviewing Irvine's mother and after Wall's conviction in 2002:

Kingston Whig-Standard
Monday, February 11, 2002

By Arthur Milnes

There are no pictures of grandchildren on 76-year-old Molly Irvine's walls. In the twilight of her life, she's completely alone in her suburban Ottawa home.
Alex Irvine, her husband and best friend, died at the age of 80 a year ago. Her only sibling is an ocean away in Great Britain.
There is a terrible pain associated with the family home she has refused to leave.
"People have said to me, 'How can you live in the house?' but it doesn't go away just because you move away," she said.
"I have good friends ... you have to learn to live with it. Otherwise, life is impossible."
Jim Wall is responsible for her pain.
"I would think him capable of anything," says Irvine.
Nearly two decades ago, in her house, Wall and another man, Francis Patrick Clancy, killed Irvine's only child, her 29-year-old son Iain.
Irvine talks of leaving her beautiful home, perhaps finding something smaller. She'd have to first pack her late husband's beloved books and other family treasures.
That's in the future.
Today, she has agreed to talk about the past - a past that still sears her soul with sadness.
Irvine looks carefully at the identification and business card she's been offered before letting a visitor inside. She is friendly and welcoming but her sadness is palpable.
Her son was murdered almost 20 years ago, on March 5, 1983. Clancy battered Iain Irvine's skull with an axe, then Wall strangled him with an electrical cord.
When Iain arrived at his parents' home early that morning, he unwittingly interrupted Wall and Clancy, who were robbing the house.
When Irvine walked into his upstairs room, the burglars sprang from the closet and pushed him to the floor before he could see either of them.
Wall's lawyer - his client remained silent - would later tell a judge that Wall believed his accomplice was going to get a rope and blindfold.
Wall was left alone with Iain, who did not struggle but begged for his life.
"Don't do this, Jesus loves you, Jesus loves you," Iain Irvine said as he lay pinned to the floor, with Wall's knees pressed down on his arms.
Clancy returned with an axe and began smashing Irvine's head with the blunt end.
Wall and Clancy did not realize the beating had not killed him. Iain Irvine could have been conscious for 15 minutes after the attack and alive for up to two hours, experts concluded.
The intruders put Irvine in a steamer trunk and hauled it downstairs. Irvine lifted the lid and tried to escape.
Wall ripped an electrical cord from a nearby timer and strangled the victim and then closed the lid. Again Irvine, clinging to life, opened the trunk lid.
Wall strangled him again with the cord, an act he would later claim was a mercy killing, designed to put Irvine "out of his misery."
After rushing home from Florida, Molly Irvine and her husband last saw their son in the morgue at Ottawa General Hospital.
Without speaking, Molly Irvine places her hand across her throat to describe how the ligature marks from where Wall strangled her son could be seen clearly on his body at the morgue.
She can still see them today.
In one of the first victim impact statements ever heard in a Canadian court, Irvine tried to put the family's pain into words before Wall and Clancy were sentenced.
"We can still see where Iain's blood has soaked into the floor boards," she said, on Oct. 21, 1983, in an Ottawa courtroom.
"We can never forget where he died."
She said her son was a religious man who believed strongly in helping others. Iain, a library technician in an Ottawa hospital, put his beliefs into practice and worked with prisoners in a fellowship program.
He later allowed Clancy to move into his apartment.
Today, Molly Irvine says she was suspicious of Clancy when her son brought him to her house.
A mother's instincts proved to be correct. While visiting the Irvine family home, Clancy spotted some savings bonds and began to formulate his robbery plot.
"I didn't know he'd been a prisoner," she told The Whig-Standard. "He said he was a born-again Christian. Hah."
She leaves the living room for a moment and returns with two pictures of Clancy she's kept all these years. He is at the church, washing dishes. The pictures have been pinned up and in one, Clancy's eyes are poked out.
"As you know, Clancy's response was to betray Iain's trust and, with the help of his evil friend Wall, to murder him in a most foul way," her victim impact statement continued.
After pleading guilty to second-degree murder in Iain's death, Wall received a life sentence with no eligibility for parole for 10 years. Clancy, the ringleader, also received a life sentence with no eligibility for parole for 15 years. He remains in prison in B.C.
Mrs. Irvine is still serving a sentence of her own. She will never be free of the pain her son's murder brought.
She said she and Alex did the best they could after her son's death. The couple rarely spoke of Iain's murder but it haunted them, especially on anniversaries and other special days.
"For the first year, we were like zombies," she said.
Irvine shakes her head when told that the woman Wall killed in 1997, Jutta Weber, was dismembered and taken in her own car to a swamp north of Kingston, where her body parts were scattered like household trash.
Wall and Clancy bundled her son's bloody body, wrapped in a quilt, into the back of Iain's car, and drove to an isolated area 60 kilometres from Ottawa. They had removed the body from the steamer trunk after discovering it would not fit in Irvine's car.
They discarded the body in a remote woodlot off a rural road.
In 2000, Donald Gazley, a friend of Wall who was the Crown's star witness in the Kingston case, led police to Weber's remains, along a remote stretch of Jones Falls Road.
Gazley took investigators to the spot after cutting a deal for lenient treatment as an accessory in Weber's murder.
In 1983, Wall was subject to a long police interrogation. He agreed finally to take police to Iain's remains.
"It all sounds familiar, doesn't it," Molly Irvine said.
Without Wall's help, Ottawa police couldn't prove a murder had taken place - despite the blood they found in the Irvine home and in Iain's car - until they had a body.
In 1993, Wall was granted full parole and decided to live in Kingston.
After Weber's disappearance, Wall agreed to an interview with The Whig-Standard - the only time he has ever spoken publicly about the case.
"In 1983 somebody died and I was there," Wall said. "I didn't kill anybody then and I didn't kill anybody now ... I was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person or group of people."
Molly Irvine glares when she hears Wall's comments.
"You'd have to judge that for yourself," she said. "I should say the parole board has something to answer for."

In granting Clancy release, the parole board concluded that the risk in releasing him is "manageable" and "not undue."

A goofy crime stat claim from a top cop

2010-01-25T19:24:00.012-05:00

Pity the poor superintendent - he knows not what he does. At least, that's how it looks to me. A senior officer in the Ontario Provincial Police, Supt. Gary Couture, an officer of sufficient rank that you'd expect him to know better than to wade into dangerous territory with a wonky claim, has stepped in a pile full.

Couture claims full, unqualified, humility-challenged credit for a drop in the number of property crimes recorded across a big chunk of Canada's most populous province last year. Here's the news release issued today by the eastern regional headquarters of the Ontario Provincial Police, with quotes from Couture bringing up the rear:

FROM: Eastern Region Headquarters RELEASE: IMMEDIATELY
DE: PUBLICATION LE: January 25, 2010

Property Crime Down in 2009 in Eastern Ontario

(Smiths Falls) – The Ontario Provincial Police in Eastern Ontario are pleased to advised that reported property related crimes in OPP patrolled areas was reduced in 2009 over 2008.

Comparing 2009 to 2008, Eastern Region OPP detachments had a decrease of 18%. There were 9,412 reported incidents in 2009 compared to 11,300 in 2008.

As we look forward into 2010, the OPP will continue to strive to reduce property crime.

“Hard work and dedication have contributed to the safety of our communities, to saving lives and to reducing victimization,” said Chief Superintendent Gary Couture. “Property crimes have been identified, targeted and effectively addressed, resulting in an 18% reduction. Our vigilance and continued enforcement in relation to unwanted criminal activity has proven incredibly effective.”

Couture claims that the OPP staged a crackdown on property crimes. He says they were "targeted and effectively addressed." He pays homage to the hard work of officers, claiming that their vigilance and enforcement "has proven incredibly effective."

Yikes.

First off, the statistics here represent only crimes reported to police, a notoriously low figure – It's estimated that roughly two thirds of all crimes are never reported to police. Many property crimes go unreported. The last victimization survey reported by Statistics Canada in 2005 showed "a decline in reporting of property-related offences, such as breaking and entering, theft of motor vehicles or parts, and personal property thefts." Nearly half of all break-ins are never reported.

So the annual tally of property crimes counted by police is highly subject to the whim of fickle citizens who don't like to call in these crimes. If the rate of reporting rises by just a few per cent in a year, it can have a substantial effect on the numbers. That's a bigger problem with small numbers, and in this case, we're talking about a change of just a few thousand crimes.

Property crimes also are notoriously influenced, StatsCan experts say, by the relative difficulty in reporting the crimes. If police departments make it easier for citizens to file reports, they'll report more often. The police jurisdictions involved here are primarily rural detachments that operate with a handful of staff and an office that often isn't accessible to citizens. That could keep the numbers down. For reference, it's worth noting that the City of Kingston annually has about 4,000 property crimes, compared to the 9,400 the OPP report here for a vast swath of territory that stretches from Trenton to Ottawa.

Here's another big problem for Couture. He claims keen cop work is behind the decline. What if the number of property crimes reported to the OPP rises dramatically next year – keeping in mind that we know roughly half of those crime aren't being reported now? Would he claim next year, let's say hypothetically, that the department dropped its vigilance and its enforcement? If that were the case, he'd likely face a public outcry over that failing. Or might he simply claim that the jump was unexplained? Or might he confess that during that year, his coppers weren't up to snuff and so more property crimes were committed?

Really, there's a simple answer here. The drop in the number of property crimes isn't substantial and it doesn't tell us anything about the level of criminal activity, since we don't really know what that is to begin with – given the failure of many victims to call the police in the first place. Couture shouldn't be taking such unabashed credit, unless he's prepared to take the blame when the numbers flip.

Teacher-student sex is nothing new, or unusual

2010-01-21T22:40:00.016-05:00

A small but "not insignificant" number of teachers in Ontario prey on students for sex. That was the conclusion of retired Ontario Court of Appeal judge Sydney Robins, who produced a nearly 600-page report into the abuse of students by teachers a decade ago. His findings seem forgotten in the breathless rush to report that a female Toronto elementary school teacher, Mary Gowans (inset), has been charged with sexually assaulting a former student.

If Gowans is guilty, she'll join a long list of female teachers caught having sex with students or seeking sex from vulnerable pupils, like Leanne Carla Hanselman, who had sex with a 17-year-old female student and sometimes had threesomes with the student and her boyfriend. Elizabeth Ann Jeffrey confessed her sexual relationship with a 17-year-old drama student she was tutoring, promising the mother of the student she'd stop it. She didn't. Erinne Renata Acciaroli, who was a high school teacher charged with helping troubled students, tried to coerce a former student into having sex. She kissed him, then sent notes, gifts, and emails when he rebuffed her. Jennifer Elizabeth Allan was a private school teacher who went after a 16-year-old male student. She served him booze, kissed and cuddled. She was caught when emails were discovered. Tiffany Dawn Angus struck up a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old male student soon after she began her probationary high school teaching job. She bought and drank booze with the boy, kissed and hugged in the school library and had intercourse at his home. Caught by school officials, she refused to end the relationship. Supply teacher Heidi Franziska Coleman had sex with a 13-year-old male student. Annie Mary Markson told a 14-year-old male student she pursued that "the thought of you kissing/talking/breathing with another female except with me drives me crazy."

There have been significant changes to oversight, investigation, and discipline for teachers since 1997, when an independent professional college was established. It made the discipline process mostly public. Once-secret deals that allowed teachers to shuffle between schools and school districts are a thing of the past. Discipline meted out to teachers caught exploiting or abusing students is now conducted in court-like hearings that are open to the public, with the results published in a college magazine and online.

The Robins report brought much needed attention to a mostly hidden and dramatically underreported issue. But the report didn't make the problem go away. Talk frankly with female students at any high school and ask them about the "creepshow teachers," the ones they all know to avoid.

If you're looking for more research and advocacy around the issue, you'll have a hard time finding it in Canada. This is a good starting point, a longstanding American organization dedicated to exposing and stopping teacher-student sexual abuse and exploitation.

Here's my assessment of the Robins report, published a decade ago:

The Kingston Whig-Standard
Saturday, April 8, 2000

By Rob Tripp

Governments, school boards and other agencies must do more to protect students from sexual predators in the ranks of Ontario's 144,000 teachers, says a retired Ontario judge.
"While the vast majority of educators are highly dedicated and caring individuals who seek to ensure a safe learning environment, there is a small, but not insignificant number of 'bad apples' who engage in sexual misconduct with their students," concludes Mr. Justice Sydney Robins, in a mammoth report on sexual misconduct by Ontario teachers.
Robins' 568-page report, nine months in the making, was released yesterday at Queen's Park by Attorney General Jim Flaherty, who said he was "deeply disturbed" by the findings.
"His conclusion is, there's a significant incidence of this conduct [by teachers] and there are problems of underreporting and the cases we do see are the tip of the iceberg," Flaherty said at a news conference.
Robins was commissioned last May to study and make recommendations to prevent abuse and exploitation of students.
Robins' findings echo the conclusions of a three-month probe of sexual misconduct in Ontario schools conducted by The Whig-Standard in 1997.
The newspaper found that school boards and school staff were poorly equipped to stop sexual abuse or respond to allegations against teachers, engaging in many cases in a conspiracy of silence designed to protect the reputations of teachers and institutions.
The case of a Sault Ste. Marie teacher, Kenneth DeLuca, whose abuse of students was concealed for roughly 20 years, was a key factor in the government decision last year to study the problem.
Robins made 101 recommendations aimed at making it easier to expose, prosecute and kick out of the profession teachers who sexually abuse their students.
The report calls for changes to the Criminal Code and a host of provincial laws, including the act that guides the operations of the Ontario College of Teachers. The changes would also close loopholes that allow teachers accused of misconduct to resign and move on to teach in other areas.
Flaherty said the province is moving swiftly on some recommendations, including:
-mandatory criminal background checks for anyone teaching or working in Ontario schools;
-urging prosecutors to make better use of a Criminal Code provision that could keep teachers convicted of sex offences away from children;
-changes to make courts less intimidating to child witnesses.
Flaherty said he has also written to his federal counterpart, Justice Minister Anne McLellan, asking her to implement changes to the Criminal Code.
Queen's law professor Nick Bala, an expert on issues of child abuse and the law, was consulted by Robins during the preparation of the report.
"I think there's a lot of really important, positive, constructive things here to better recognize and deal with the sets of issues," Bala said, after reading an executive summary of the report.
Nearly half of the Robins recommendations, 45, are aimed at changes to federal and provincial laws.
"Our evidentiary laws, our procedural laws have often made it very difficult to prove abuse and we need to continue to review and monitor those laws," he said.
Bala said a key to the success of the proposals is government commitment to provide resources, such as support for abuse victims and ongoing training for new teachers, child protection workers, police and prosecutors.
"Merely changing the law, while certainly important, is not going to solve the problems in our justice system unless we have training, which means resources," he said.
Bala said he is concerned that the report does not address the lack of training for teachers, as students in faculties of education or during later years, in issues of student sexuality.
"Teachers have to have an understanding of adolescent sexuality," he said, noting that there have been cases of high school teachers who defended themselves against sexual misconduct allegations by claiming that the student initiated the contact or wanted a sexual relationship.
The Robins report also suggests broadening the definition of sexual misconduct used by the Ontario College of Teachers to "offensive conduct of a sexual nature which may affect the personal integrity or security of any student or the school environment."
The Ontario Teachers' Federation, the umbrella group for the province's teacher unions, pledged to help protect students.
"On behalf of the federation, we will be contacting the Ontario College of Teachers and other educational stakeholders to get started on the work of pursuing these recommendations," said Barbara Sargent, president of the federation, in a release.

The case of the polite parole violator

2010-01-20T22:16:00.014-05:00

In the dead of winter, when you're three sheets to the wind, tired and far from home, a police station can look like an inviting crash pad, particularly if you're a man of limited means. That might be the explanation for the bizarre behaviour of a paroled federal prisoner who showed up at the HQ of the constabulary in the Friendly City, as Belleville, in eastern Ontario, is known. Police noted, dryly, that:

at approx 4 a.m. an extremely intoxicated male attended the front desk of the police station advising that he was breaching his parole conditions and proceed (sic) to list all of the conditions being breached

While it clearly wasn't a hot crime story, someone at the Belleville PD with a wry sense of humour thought to put the story out in a release (read it after the jump).

The tale of the polite and oh-so-helpful parole violator was tacked on to the bottom of this routine release, issued January 18, that included the usual mundane stuff about fender benders and drunk drivers:

A Belleville officer told me that the ex-con was violating three conditions, though she couldn't say what they were. He was not on conditional release living in Belleville, and his parole officer was located in Ottawa, so it's a reasonable inference that he may have been on a roadtrip that went awry. The officer surmised that it may have been a simple case of needing a warm place to sleep it off. Unfortunately, it could also mean a trip back to a pen.

The case is notable for one other reason. It's a demonstration of the strange interplay of Corrections and law enforcement. Even though the ex-con showed up and confessed to police that he was breaching his parole conditions, police couldn't arrest him. They don't have that legal power. The coppers have to call Corrections and wait for penitentiary authorities to issue a warrant suspending the offender's release (a warrant of apprehension and suspension) and ordering him into custody. Corrections has 30 days after that to decide whether to recommend that his release be revoked, though the final decision comes from the National Parole Board. The entire process after suspension is thoroughly explained at this site.

Cop killer Laurie Bell gets another shot at freedom

2010-01-13T23:36:00.008-05:00

Imprisoned cop killer Laurie Ann Bell (inset), who was caught consorting with a male prison guard the last time she was free on early release from prison, is getting another shot at freedom. This time, not surprisingly, she's being ordered to report all "intimate relationships and friendships" to her parole supervisor, with whom she has to make contact at least four times a month. An internal parole document (available after the jump) sets out all the conditions, including the requirement that she stay at a halfway house.

Winnipeg Free Press reporter Mike McIntyre broke the story last year of Bell's liaison with a Corrections Canada employee and he's still on top of developments in the case. Bell is getting out on statutory release. It's automatic early freedom given to most convicts so they can serve the final third of their sentences in the community under supervision. In this case, parole authorities imposed a host of special conditions after conducting a paper review of Bell's case. Here's the internal document produced last month outlining the conditions and the overview of Bell's case:

» Read more about Bell's case, including more parole documents