In a bold move, I’m pretty sure the interim chief of police at Edmonton Police Service publicly committed extortion against the Alberta Crown Prosecutor’s Office this week. Unlike the Line’s Matt Gurney, I was left feeling conflicted about it.
To be clear, I fully agree that anyone who harms a child should face the full force of the law.
Would it be surprising to find out that most of the time, they do? What if I said that the laws are antiquated and meant to protect the perpetrators of those crimes because of who those perpetrators are most likely to be?
We’ll circle back to that.
I love the idea that police services could be advocates for victims of crimes; especially children. I think they are in a unique position to do it well because they not only get to see the immediate aftermath but also because they are, I would bet, aware that they are dealing with the decades of consequences — substance abuse, anger and mental health issues — those victims later struggle with.
Let that marinate for a moment.
Children who are victimized — often repeatedly by someone they are supposed to be able to trust — do not magically become well-adjusted adults without access to expert and professional care and support.
That is not to say they all end up in the criminal justice system or “known to police”. Some lead normal-looking lives and struggle personally without ever being a burden on enforcement agencies. It’s not necessarily “better”, it’s just not a problem anyone else has to deal with; yet.
Although, I would support police taking a more public and active role in advocacy, I still believe what the interim chief of EPS did was wrong.
Why? Because they threatened to release information to the public that would be politically damaging if they didn’t get what they wanted.
That’s extortion, not advocacy.
I want better laws to punish those who commit crimes against children, too
An egregious sexual assault against a toddler in Ontario was also made public this week. The perpetrator was on early parole after serving time for another sexual offence he had committed against a young boy.
There is a distinction between bail and parole. “Bail” is something one may be eligible for when they are charged with a crime but have not yet been found guilty. “Parole” is what people who have been charged and found guilty of a crime receive after they have served a portion, or the entirety, of their sentence for that crime.
There has been a lot of talk about fixing the “bail” system in Canada but that is not relevant to this specific crime.
If people want to advocate for more stringent penalties against those who commit crimes against children, they are not looking solely at bail reform, they are seeking changes to criminal law, and recognition of the long-term harm and consequences that crimes against children actually have.
These are very different things and I cannot stress that enough. The guy demanding bail reform is not actually advocating for stronger punishment for perpetrators of child abuse.
Even the interim chief of the EPS is not doing that. He is only advocating that the perpetrator in the case serve a longer sentence, one that is already accessible to the Crown for the crime of murder generally, rather than being offered a plea deal with a lesser sentence.
However, he is basically claiming that what he knows about the crime should supercede what the prosecutors do.
There are many reasons why a prosecutor may choose a plea bargain over a court case and those reasons are not always shared with the police or the public.
For this reason, I further disagree with the EPS chief going public in the manner he did. It’s not his call. He may have the facts of the crime but he does not claim to have knowledge of the factors which the prosecution is considering by offering a plea deal with the accused.
Now we can go back to my earlier comment: What if I said that the laws are antiquated and meant to protect the perpetrators of those crimes because of who those perpetrators are most likely to be?
Child abuse, especially sexual, is treated as a lesser crime
As with all cases of abuse, bruises are easier to see but they are not the only things abuse leaves behind.
In Canada today, children are protected by the same laws that protect adults. If an adult is raped and the perpetrator is found guilty, the perpetrator could face a sentence of up to 14 years. Someone found guilty of raping a child can face the same maximum sentence.
It gets much lighter after that.
Sexual assault of a person under the age of 14 comes with a maximum of two years less a day and a minimum of one year with the chance for early parole. Sexual assault of a person over the age of 14 has no minimum sentence and a maximum of 10 years.
What if I said that people, usually men, who sexually abuse children for years are often treated as if they commit misdemeanors?
Former Alberta MLA Don McIntyre sexually abused a minor female relative for years. He pled guilty to sexual interference involving a child under the age of 16 and was sentenced to three years in January of 2019.
He was quietly paroled six months later.
My own abuser served three months.
He had to deal with the consequences of his actions for three months; I had to do it for 36 years.
The only reason I’ve stopped counting is because I finally received trauma-informed therapy.
My story is not unique. There is a wealth of data available that virtually and literally screams that child abuse is a problem that needs addressing.
But who will be the champion? Certainly not the parents rights groups who are exercising their political clout to take on the big problems of banning books and transgender 12 year olds from playing basketball at school.
There is so much outrage over the Ontario assault, and rightfully so, but that outrage stems from the fact that this vile incident was perpetrated by a stranger. We can hate a stranger; that’s easy.
We can demand the law throw the book at him because he’s not like “us”.
He’s not a family man or a man of faith. He’s not our friend. He’s not a respected conservative pillar of the community. He’s not a coach who led the team to victory.
We have the data. We know that the most likely perpetrator of crimes against children is a person a child is supposed to be able to trust.
It’s a person the family does trust.
So why do you think it is that they only see a few months in jail?
Because you can’t rage farm against people who are supposed to be trusted. That’s anti-family values. It’s anti-Christian.
It is, dare I say, pretty “woke”.
Our justice system is designed to protect the perpetrators of crimes against children because those people are not typically strangers to the child nor the families.
If there was a will to protect children, we would be advocating for awareness rather than trying to silence those who would educate children and their families.
If there was a will to protect children, those who commit crimes against them would face real penalties and trauma-informed therapy would be readily accessible and available for children and survivors.
If there was a will, it would be politically damaging to keep ignoring the problem.
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Victims, and children in particular, need much stronger advocacy in our legal system. However, the police are explicitly the wrong people to provide that
What the police did this week is come out and say “This person is guilty of doing these crimes and deserves X punishment”. No trial. No public evidence. Just the police declaring someone guilty and deciding the punishment
There’s very important reasons we don’t do that. Can’t do that, and remain a free society. People are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, and both the victims and the investigators are intentionally separated from the act of weighing the evidence and deciding guilt.
It’s unacceptable and inexcusable for the police to breach that separation, for any reason. Honestly, it wouldn’t be out of line for the prosecutor’s office to either require the justice minister to remove the head of EPS, or resign on the basis that there’s no ability for them to do their jobs on a professional standard
If we want better advocacy and oversight, let’s start actually funding the prosecutor’s office above minimum viable levels so they can process cases on a basis other than efficiency. Let’s fund the courts, so that cases are not backlogged by years. Let’s fund all the existing victim services and advocacy organizations that already exist.
Excellent piece, Deirdre! Thank you for speaking up for those - including minors and adults - who CANNOT, for any number of complicated/convoluted realities, speak up/out for themselves.