Rob Tripp's Blog: Cancrime, page 14

Child sex predator Davidson-Brown isn’t an unusual case

UPDATED JAN. 14 Kingston Police announced early this morning that Davidson-Brown had left Kingston. They didn’t say where he was headed.

The case of child sex predator Eric William Davidson-Brown (inset) drew a torrent of attention on my social media channels. Since I posted his photo and the details announced by police of his release to Kingston, Ontario, the post has been shared more than 3,000 times and, by late on January 13, had drawn nearly 200 comments. I was surprised since Davidson-Brown isn’t really an unusual case. There are hundreds similar ex-convicts living on the street in Canadian communities every day.

Child sex predator Eric Davidson-Brown (Kingston Police handout)

In fact, in 2011, 15 of Canada’s worst criminals, those designated as Dangerous Offenders – who can be kept locked up forever – were living under supervision on the street, free from prison, federal stats show (this doc, p. 103). In addition, as of April 2011, there were 269 high-risk offenders (70% are sex offenders) living in Canadian communities subject to the kind of long-term supervision order that once allowed authorities to track Davidson-Brown.

It’s clear that the reach and speed of social media has accelerated and exaggerated public response to cases like Davidson-Brown, which is not to downplay the seriousness of this situation. He’s a frightening fellow, a peristent child predator with a history of indecent exposures who was once caught with stun guns, duct tape and books filled with the names of addresses of young children. He’s also been convicted in the past of child pornography crimes. The discovery of the stun guns, tapes and books was made when he was apprehended in Northern Ontario in 2002. But Davidson-Brown hasn’t been deemed a dangerous offender and locked up forever. Like most offenders, he has cascaded through the system, back onto the street. The last time he was freed, he was subject to a long-term supervision order. This is a special, court-imposed restriction that allows authorities to track a released offender, typically high-risk sex offenders, for up to 10 years after release from prison. The provision extends beyond the expiry of a criminal’s sentence and his parole. It’s clear that police in Kingston believe Davidson-Brown is still a threat, even though he has completed his long-term supervision order. They went to court and, using a provision in the Criminal Code, had another year-long legal leash slapped on him. Police in Kingston pioneered the use of this tactic, which is now widely used by police agencies across the country to keep tabs on high-risk offenders, particularly sex offenders (like predator Mark Bedford). Under these orders, offenders typically have to stay away from children or the places they can be found, they must report to police regularly and ensure that police have a current address. These conditions apply to Davidson-Brown.

It’s a crude tool, but one of the few available to authorities to track someone in this situation, who has passed the expiry of his parole, his sentence and his long-term supervision order.

The police report the Shafia jurors did not see

When a small black Nissan Sentra was found submerged in a shallow canal in eastern Ontario on June 30, 2009 with four dead females inside – members of the Shafia family – investigators had one critical question: Was it a freak accident or a heinous murder? Key to teasing out the answer was a meticulous analysis of the Nissan, another Shafia vehicle – a Lexus SUV – and the scene at the canal. Constable Chris Prent, a provincial police officer and collision reconstruction expert, produced a detailed 94-page document. In it, Prent revealed his conclusion: The Nissan was deliberately pushed into the canal by someone operating the Lexus. This theory was the centrepiece of the criminal case that saw three members of the Shafia family – Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Yahya, and their son Hamed – each convicted by a jury of four counts of first-degree murder. Constable Prent’s 94-page document, titled An Analysis of the Events at Kingston Mills Locks (Rideau Canal), City of Kingston – was not given to the jurors. The 12 people who decided that the Shafias were guilty of mass murder did not see the document.

Thousands of pages of documentary evidence, photos and videos were released publicly because they were submitted as evidence at the trial, but Prent’s 94-page report was not made public. In my pursuit of the story, I obtained a copy of Prent’s report and I’m making it accessible to all online here. Getting the document, which was discussed but never introduced as an exhibit at the murder trial, was just one of many obstacles in the journalistic pursuit of the Shafia story. If you’d like to know more about how I chased this story over a three-year span, I encourage you to join me at 7:30 p.m. on January 31 at Pages book store in Kensington for the Calgary launch of Without Honour: The True Story of the Shafia Family and the Kingston Canal Murders, published by HarperCollins. I’ll be available to sign copies of the book and answer questions.

I’m excited for this opportunity to meet readers and share behind-the-scenes background on the case, including the Prent report. It isn’t clear precisely why the document was not tendered as an exhibit during the trial. When Prent testified, the Crown indicated that his report would not be filed because the officer’s testimony constituted his evidence, and not the document. Passages from his report were read aloud and he was questioned about his findings. Defence lawyers parsed paragraphs in the document and challenged his conclusions.

Other technical experts who testified during the trial were treated differently. A forensic expert who examined a Shafia computer and cellphones testified and his report was filed as an exhibit. A scientist who examined paint samples and other substances found at the canal testified and his report also was filed as an exhibit. A lengthy report by an officer who compiled cellphone data was filed as an exhibit, in addition to the officer’s testimony. Toxicology and pathology reports were filed, in addition to the testimony of the forensic pathologist who autopsied the victims. The contradiction is one of many puzzling aspects of a remarkably complex case that culminated in a 47-day murder trial that heard 58 witnesses from around the world who testified in four languages. The three Shafias were sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, though they have maintained their innocence and are appealing.

Here is a complete and unedited copy of the Prent report:

Shafia criminal case collision reconstruction report

Appeals of Shafias, convicted honour killers, move forward

A Montreal man, convicted along with his mother and father of murdering four family members, has complained to Ontario’s top court that the trial was “unfair” because of “abusive” questioning of his mother by a Crown lawyer during the trial. The new claim is contained in a document (read it after the jump) filed at the Court of Appeal for Ontario on behalf of Hamed Shafia, 21, (inset) who was convicted in January of four counts of first-degree murder, along with his mother Tooba Yahya Mohammad, 43, and his father, Mohammad Shafia, 59. The three, natives of Afghanistan who came to Canada in 2007, were sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

“The cross examination of the Appellant’s co-accused, Tooba Yahya Mohammad, was protracted, abusive and repetitious to the extent that it rendered the trial unfair,” states the notice of appeal filed by Patrick McCann, the lawyer acting for Hamed Shafia. McCann also represented him during the trial. Immediately after the convictions, all three Shafias filed appeals but Hamed is the first of the trio to file a more detailed notice setting out grounds. The notice asks that the convictions be quashed and a new trial ordered.

The appeals of the three Shafias took a significant step toward a hearing with the completion recently of a transcript of the 47-day murder trial. The 4,500-page document has been sent to the appeal court and to the lawyers. This clears the way for the lawyers to complete and file their detailed appeal documents, after which a date will be set to hear the appeals.

Hamed’s appeal cites two others grounds: the trial judge erred in admitting the hearsay statements allegedly made by the victims to friends, family, teachers, child protection workers and police officers who testified; and a Crown expert on honour killings, Professor Shahrzad Mojab, should not have been permitted to testify because her knowledge of the Afghan diaspora in Canada was “mainly anecdotal,” she wasn’t objective and the prejudicial effect of her evidence outweighed its probative value.

McCann said he’s not sure how long it will take the court to schedule the hearing once the lawyers file their factums.

“I’m not sure what the standard lag is these days at the Court of Appeal for an appeal like this, but I would think probably in the neighbourhood of six months,” McCann said, in an interview. He has taken the lead in shepherding the appeals, in part because he is the only lawyer among the three who was involved in the trial. Mohammad Shafia is represented by Toronto lawyer Michael Dineen. His wife is represented by Toronto lawyer Frank Addario.

“They haven’t looked at the case yet,” McCann said. “They’re going on sort of my general description of what it’s all about.”

Appeal court rules stipulate that the lawyers have 90 days to finalize their appeals after the transcript is completed, but the court often extends latitude in complex cases.

Shafia, Tooba and Hamed were convicted after a trial that heard 58 witnesses (all of my trial coverage). A host of Crown witnesses testified that Mohammad Shafia, who brought his 10-member family to Canada, including two wives, was a controlling and abusive patriarch who subscribed to a cultural code of honour that required subservience and modesty from the women and girls in his family. Shafia became enraged when his daughters defied him, began dressing in Western clothes that he considered immodest and secretly dated. Shafia plotted to kill them, along with his defiant first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, the trial heard.

Sisters Zainab Shafia, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, and Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead inside a submerged car that was discovered June 30, 2009 in a shallow canal in Kingston, in eastern Ontario. All of the victims had drowned. The Shafias told investigators that they believed Zainab took the family car without permission and crashed it into the canal in a joyride that ended in tragedy.

Investigators were not able to determine conclusively how the victims were killed, but speculated that they were incapacitated or rendered unconscious, perhaps even drowned elsewhere, and then were placed inside the car that was pushed into the canal.

Yahya was on the witness stand over six days during the trial, though on four of those her testimony lasted only half the day. Her cross-examination by Crown lawyer Gerard Laarhuis began at 2:40 p.m. the afternoon of her second day on the stand. Laarhuis assailed her over memory lapses regarding critical events and her changing account of her movements. Yahya told a police interrogator that the three were at the canal early on the morning of June 30 when the car carrying the victims plunged into the canal. She later disavowed the statement and, during her testimony, claimed “these were all lies” she had concocted to escape the interrogation and to somehow save her son Hamed from torture.

Addario said he has not yet filed a detailed notice of appeal because he hasn’t read the transcript or seen the exhibits.

“I don’t know anything about the grounds of appeal,” he said.

The transcript includes 11 days of evidence and discussions during pre-trial motions heard in the year before the trial began.

Here’s the document filed with the Court of Appeal for Ontario on behalf of Hamed Shafia:

Hamed Shafia appeal of murder conviction

Carmen Robinson – a life with no conclusion

Carmen Robinson should be 56, a greying boomer, perhaps an early retiree discovering the joy of life untethered from the daily grind. Time to sip mid morning lattes. Time to lounge with a favourite book. Time for family. Instead, Carmen (inset) is a smiling snapshot, a memory, a life with no conclusion. She also is a statistic, one of thousands of unsolved murders that have been accumulating in Canada in the past half century. Carmen was just 17 when she stepped off a bus a few blocks from her home in Victoria, British Columbia, on December 8, 1973. She vanished and was, it is presumed, murdered. Her body has not been found and her killer remains unknown.

Carmen’s is a very cold case. Investigators have made valiant efforts to rekindle it over the years, with limited success. Memories have faded, witnesses have died or disappeared. This is the fate of a growing number of murders each year in Canada, a fact illuminated this week with the release of the annual homicide survey, published by the Canadian Centre of Justice Statistics, part of Statistics Canada. The survey provides a detailed analysis of every murder reported to police.

This latest edition of the annual report shows a 7% year-over-year increase in the murder rate. This statistic dominated headlines in news coverage of the report, although this small statistical shift  is virtually meaningless. The truly troubling figures – numbers that remind us of Carmen – were virtually ignored.

The homicide survey reveals that the rate at which Canadian police solve murders remains at a historically low level, consistent with an unabated five-decade decline. One in every four murders reported to police in 2011 was unsolved. The solve, or clearance rate, for murders is at 76%. That’s 143 unsolved murders among the 598 reported to police. The rate of decline in the murder-solving record of law enforcement has been steepest in the past three decades.

A chart from the latest edition of Statistic Canada's homicide survey

In the past 50 years, the rate at which Canadians murder one another has declined substantially. The strength of police departments across the country has surged, and yet, the rate at which police solve murders has hit historically low levels and is continuing a gradual decline. The current solve rate, 76%, is a dramatic decline from levels in the early to mid 1960s, when the solve rate was 90 to 95%.

No one seems able to say with certainty why Canadian police are solving so many fewer murders, although there are plenty of theories. There’s very little real research on the issue, although this report highlights a number of factors: the relationship between victim and killer, the social situation in which the killing happens, the method of murder and geography. This report, and even Statistics Canada suggest that gang-related killings are proving difficult to solve.

There’s very little hope that old cold cases will be solved, despite the use of cold case squads by police departments. A detailed review of unsolved homicides by Statistics Canada in 2006 showed that most murders that are solved, 95%, are solved in the first year after the killing. After that, the chances that a murder will be solved are very, very low. Perhaps this could be improved, if departments poured considerably more resources into cold case investigation. In most police jurisdictions, it is a low to non-existent priority.

Until it is a priority, there will be many more Carmens.

Victim agency gets financial reprieve from stingy feds

A meagre, last-minute grant from the federal government has rescued the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime. The independent agency faced imminent shutdown without funding for 2013. Ottawa came through with $50,000, a paltry amount, that will allow the agency to function next year, though it will still have to scratch together additional cash.

Questioned in the House of Commons about the government’s failure to adequately fund the small agency that provides critical help to crime victims, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews trumpeted the government’s investment in crime prevention initiatives. Toews boasted that Ottawa is spending $40 million annually on the National Crime Prevention Centre. Admittedly, any measures that prevent crime, or address the root causes, are worthy, but there are already plenty of victims in Canada who need help navigating the arcane and intimidating bureaucracies that govern courts and corrections. The CRCVC is one of the few independent organizations that can, for example, help a victim follow the progress through the prison system of the perpetrator who victimized him or her.

NDP MP Randall Garrison asked Toews if he would commit to providing the CRCVC with stable, long-term funding. Toews dodged the question with this obfuscation answer:

Mr. Speaker, the NDP likes to talk about crime prevention measures, but when it really counts, it has consistently voted against these very measures. It is our Conservative government that created programs like the national crime prevention strategy and the youth gang prevention fund. I hope the member opposite will finally stop the double-talk and get serious about supporting our measures to support victims.

Here’s the announcement issued by the CRCVC about the funding it has managed to extract from Ottawa:

The Board of Directors of the CRCVC is pleased to inform you that we received a grant from the federal government very shortly after our message for assistance went out. We applied for Time-limited operational funding (TLOF) in July of 2012 and have been approved for $50,000 for 2012-13 and $50,000 for 2013-14.

We cannot thank you enough for all the support you showed us through emails and social media in this difficult time. We are equally appreciative of the efforts of staff at the Policy Centre for Victim Issues and the Minister of Justice. The Board is so pleased the important services we offer have been recognized through this funding.

In order to return to full operating capacity, we will need to acquire some additional project funding in 2013. We will keep everyone posted.

Heidi Illingworth

Executive Director

Vital victim agency in danger of shutting its doors

An invaluable agency that operates on a shoestring budget, and provides critical service to victims in the criminal justice system, is in danger of shutting its doors. The Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime is one of the few organizations that assists victims who wish to attend parole hearings of the criminals who victimized them. At a time when Ottawa is spending billions of additional dollars on prisons, how could it possibly allow this agency to disappear when it requires a minimum of just $100,000 to continue functioning?

Here’s the information I received today from Heidi Illingworth, the tireless head of the resource centre:

Dear supporters and friends across the country:

I am deeply saddened to inform you that the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime (CRCVC) is in jeopardy of closing our doors. Since 2010, we have relied on non-reoccurring project funding from the Department of Justice Victims Fund to remain open. Projects proposals now take many months to be approved, if at all, which leaves the future of the CRCVC uncertain. If we do not secure a commitment of sustained funding from the federal government at once, the office cannot continue to offer services into 2013.

Our staff and students want to continue to offer vital emotional support, information resources and advocacy to our clients and stakeholders across Canada. We are proud of the work we have accomplished since 1993 as a national, bilingual, non-partisan victim support and advocacy agency. We have played a significant role in: the passage of Bill C-79, which gave victims the right to give oral victim impact statements at sentencing and s.745 hearings; amendments that strengthened the DNA databank; financial assistance being made available for victims to attend parole hearings; and the creation of an emergency fund to assist Canadians who are victimized abroad.

If you agree the services and resources we offer Canadians are vital, please contact your federal Member of Parliament and ask him/her to ensure this agency is funded on an ongoing basis by the federal government. It is also critical to let the Prime Minister and the Ministers of Public Safety (Hon. Vic Toews) and Justice (Hon. Robert Nicholson) know how much this office is valued. Please keep in mind that the CRCVC helps hundreds of victims and survivors each year for approximately the same amount of annual funding that is required to incarcerate one federal prisoner.

We need your help! Please show your support of the CRCVC by writing to your local Member of Parliament AND to the Prime Minister (stephen.harper@parl.gc.ca), Minister of Public Safety (vic.toews@parl.gc.ca) and Minister of Justice (rob.nicholson@parl.gc.ca). In doing so, please feel free to download the attached letter, or share your personal experiences with the politicians.

I thank you for your ongoing support of the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime.

Heidi Illingworth

Executive Director

Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime

Visit:

http://www.crcvc.ca/

Email: crcvc@crcvc.ca

Phone: 1.877.232.2610

The agency has drafted a letter that you can download here and send to Prime Minister Stephen Harper if you’re willing to join the fight to save the CRCVC.

Khairi conviction pushes Canada’s honour killing toll higher

Randjida Khairi is the 16th person to die in Canada in the past two decades in an honour killing, a Canadian court has confirmed. Today, a jury convicted her husband Peer (inset) of second-degree murder in her slaying in Toronto in 2008. My research shows that there have been at least 15 previous deaths in cases that led to convictions since 1990. Peer Khairi, an Afghan immigrant, stabbed his wife five times and slashed her throat nearly through to her spine. The trial heard that he was enraged because of his wife’s defiance and because she had sided with their children who had adopted liberal, Western attitudes to clothing and dating.

Since Randjida Khairi’s death, seven other women and young girls have died in apparent honour killings in Canada. Two of those seven involve cases that are still before the courts. Amandeep Kaur Dhillon, 22, was stabbed to death in Mississsauga, Ontario in January 2009 by her father-in-law. Kamikar Singh Dhillon pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He believed Amandeep was going to leave her husband and shame the family. In June 2009, Shafia sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, Geeti, 13, and their father’s first wife, Rona Amir, were found dead in a submerged car in a shallow canal in eastern Ontario. Afghan immigrant Mohammad Shafia, his second wife Tooba and their eldest son Hamed were each convicted of four counts of first-degree murder. They were sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. They have appealed. Shafia was furious that his daughters were dating, wearing clothes that he considered immodest and were disobedient. His first wife Rona sided with the girls and had asked for a divorce.

The Khairi case may prompt a new round of public handwringing and pronouncements by politicians who have refused to offer much beyond platitudes in response to the growing problem of honour crimes in Canada. Recent cases prompted the federal government to give $350,000 to a Quebec-based agency, Shield of Athena, to develop programs and public information around the issue of honour-based violence and in Alberta, a community agency got a $241,000 grant to develop recommendations to address honour-based violence. The comitments are a pittance compared to the financial costs (and untold social costs) of investigating and prosecuting honour murders. The Shafia case in Ontario cost millions in police and courts costs, although officials have refused to disclose any amounts. Hundreds of thousands were spent just to equip an aging courtroom in Kingston, Ontario to accommodate a complex trial that involved testimony in four languages.

Canadians politicians have publicly condemned honour crimes, but, for the most part, Ottawa appears content to pass the buck. Rona Ambrose, the minister responsible for the status of women, told the Globe and Mail that community leaders among immigrant groups must play a greater role.

The real issue here is that a message be sent – not only from the government, but from community leaders, especially male community leaders, across all cultural and religious communities – that this kind of so-called honour-based violence is not going to be tolerated in Canada.

Ambrose has been quick to praise agencies that have recognized the problem, including Calgary police, considered leaders in training officers in identifying and responding to honour-based violence and she praised a consultant for the publication of a memoir about the issue and her research, but the praise did not include any commitment to government initiatives.

Public condemnation, and there have been efforts by community leaders, have not stopped murderous men from killing daughters and wives in Canada. The problem is escalating, perhaps a reflection of the growth in immigration – two thirds of Canada’s expansion is now fuelled by immigration. Research has shown that immigrants often seek to ‘freeze’ or preserve their culture through strict adherence in their new home to old practices and customs. Since 2000, 15 people have been victims of violent honour crimes in Canada that led to convictions. Among that number are three victims who narrowly escaped death in 2007 when a Toronto man, an immigrant from Sri Lanka, used his minivan to run down his daughter and her boyfriend. He was angry that the girl had shamed him by dating a boy of a lower caste. He also ran over his young son in law. Originally charged with three counts of attempted murder, Selvanayagam Selladurai pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated assault. The prosecution said it was an attempted honour killing.

The cases reflect the fact that some immigrants to Canada preserve their strict cultural beliefs despite the education that Canadian authorities provide about individual rights and freedoms. The national publicity surrounding recent, high-profile honour killings prompted Ottawa to update its study guide for newcomers to include an explicit warning against honour-based practices. It’s not clear how the government will ensure that newcomers have embraced Canadian ideals.

Unlike some other Western jurisdiction that respect individual human rights, Canada has not ‘institutionalized’ the investigation of honour-based crimes or their prosecution.

In Britain, the Crown prosecution service has established investigative units, provided special training to police and prosecutors about the dynamics of forced marriage and honour-based crimes. In 2007, the agency implemented a pilot project to identify and monitor cases as part of a developing strategy to contain the problem.

In 2005, Turkey introduced mandatory life sentences for convicted honour killers, in a bid to combat an epidemic. Honour killings are said to account for half of all murders in the country.

At a recent conference in Calgary, Alberta on honour crimes, panellists, including police, said that social agencies are not responding properly to cases involving women and young girls facing honour-based violence.

What have we learned from Shafia honour killings?

Canada is awash in laws, rules, regulations, conventions and customs designed to protect people. These protections define our democracy. Individual freedom is constitutionally enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms:

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.(Charter)

It sounds good on paper. Yet, all these ‘paper protections’ did not save Zainab, Sahar, and Geeti Shafia and Rona Amir, from execution by three family members. How could it have happened, given the many warning signs and the appeals for help from the victims to confidants, social agencies, teachers and police officers? I discussed this catastrophic, system failure with Dave Rutherford, on his radio show on QR77 Calgary.  Here’s the complete interview:

Honour killing toll at least 15 in Canada in past two decades

If Peer Khairi (inset)  is found guilty of murdering his wife in an honour killing, as alleged by prosecutors, it will make Randjida Khairi at least the 16th person to die in Canada since 1990 in an honour killing in which the perpetrator was convicted, according to my research. In three additional deaths, court proceedings are still underway, including two in 2011. I believe there may be many more Canadian homicide cases that were not recognized as honour killings. Khairi is accused of stabbing to death his wife Randjida in 2008 in Toronto, Ontario in a case with troubling parallels to the Shafia case. Peer Khairi, like Mohammad Shafia, is an Afghan immigrant who brought his family to Canada. His murder trial began October 5.

Khairi was unhappy with his life in Canada, his trial has heard. He fought with his daughter about her relationship with another Afghan immigrant and he feuded with his wife. He felt he was losing control of his family. Khairi wanted his daughter to follow custom and marry a cousin. She wanted to choose her own partner and her mother supported her, sparking bitter disagreement between the parents. According to evidence from the couple’s daughter, provided at a previous court hearing, her mother was afraid of her husband and had talked of leaving him. She told a counsellor at the Afghan Women’s organization, two days before her death, that she wanted to live on her own. Crown prosecutors suggest that the man held his wife responsible for the disrespect he believed he faced at home and he lashed out at her violently, stabbing her in the chest and slashing her throat. Khairi has acknowledged inflicting the wounds but has pleaded not guilty to the charge of second-degree murder.

Khairi called emergency services after his wife was stabbed. Here’s the 911 call:

The 911 call after the stabbing by torontostar

Seven women and young girls have been slain in cases that are confirmed or alleged honour killings in Canada since Randjida Khairi died in March 2008.

» Amandeep Kaur Dhillon, 22, was stabbed to death in January 2009 by her father-in-law. Kamikar Singh Dhillon pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He believed Amandeep was going to leave her husband and shame the family.

» Zainab Shafia, 19, her sisters Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13 and their stepmother Rona, 50, were killed in June 2009. The parents of the girls, Mohammad Shafia and his wife Tooba and their eldest son Hamed, were each convicted of four counts of first-degree murder. Prosecutors established that Shafia was enraged that his daughters had shamed him by consorting with boys and adopting Western lifestyles. Rona, who was Shafia’s first wife, had asked for a divorce and sided with the girls.

» In July 2011, Shaher Bano Shahdady, 21, was strangled in her Toronto apartment in an alleged honour killing. Her estranged husband is charged with first-degree murder.

» Ravinder Kaur Bhangu, 24, was hacked to death in July 2011 outside the newspaper office in Surrey, British Columbia, where she worked. Her husband, Sunny Bhangu, 26, is charged with first-degree murder. The victim’s family in India allege she was killed because they did not comply with dowry demands.

In addition to the fifteen honour killings where convictions have been registered since 1990,  there are an additional three victims who were injured in an attempted honour killing in 2007. In that case, a Toronto man, Selvanayagam Selladurai, used his minivan to run down his 16-year-old daughter, her boyfriend and his son in law, seriously injuring two of them including his daughter. He believed that his daughter had shamed him by dating a boy of a lower caste. He pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated assault and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Although some politicians, social service and child protection agencies suggest that honour killings are a relatively new phenomenon that is not well understood, there care cases in Canada dating back nearly 60 years. In July 1954, an Italian immigrant, Annunziato Tripodi, strangled his wife to death because she had been unfaithful, became pregnant by another man and had an abortion. He told police and family later that he had to kill her to avenge his family honour. Tripodi was convicted of murder and he argued unsuccessfully, in an appeal that ended up at the Supreme Court of Canada, that he should be convicted only of manslaughter. Tripodi claimed that he killed his wife in a moment of passion, the result of sudden provocation when she admitted to having had an abortion. The provocation defence is an arcane concept in Canadian law (section 232) that often has been used by men to mitigate their responsibility for killing wives and girlfriends, typically in situations where the man found his partner with her lover. The section of law stipulates that:

Culpable homicide that otherwise would be murder may be reduced to manslaughter if the person who committed it did so in the heat of passion caused by sudden provocation.

Another honour killer in Canada, Dilbag Singh Nahar, tried in 2002 to use the defence of provocation after murdering his wife, Kanwaljeet Kaur. Like Tripodi 48 years earlier, he failed. The couple, Sikhs from India who came to Canada, were wed in 1998 in a marriage arranged by their families while she was just 17. Three years later, Nahar stabbed his wife in the chest and neck with a kitchen knife. He claimed he did not remember inflicting the fatal wounds. Nahar acknowledged the marriage was tumultuous and he had often tried to convince his wife to stop smoking, drinking and socializing with other men, acts that he considered forbidden by their strict Sikh upbringing. During one of these confrontations, on May 19, 2001, Nahar said his wife again refused his entreaties, telling him: “You can’t stop me.” During his trial, Nahar testified that: “My brain became numb and I became like blind.” It was during this ‘blindness’ that he stabbed her. Nahar’s provocation argument was summarized in the decision of the judge:

Central to the case is evidence as to the shared expectations among the Sikh community, and the Indo-Canadian community at large, as to the proper conduct of a married woman and as to the importance attached to these expectations.  The case for the defence, reduced to its simplest terms, is that the words and actions of Mrs. Nahar, just before she was killed, amounted to a sudden and unexpected insult of such a nature as to be sufficient to deprive an ordinary person of the power of self control and that Mr. Nahar acted on that insult on the sudden and before there was time for his passion to cool.

The judge ruled that an ordinary man would not have been “raised up to a heat of passion” even if the provocation was as Nahar described it. Nahar was convicted of second-degree murder.

» “I don’t know anything about the law in this country,” accused killer told police.

» My coverage of the Shafia honour killing murder trial

Without Honour, the untold story of the Shafia murders

It began thirty-nine months ago, on a slow Tuesday morning at the newspaper where I worked as a crime reporter. I was making a round of routine cop checks, as they’re called among journalists. It’s an old fashioned but still useful practice of reaching out to police departments by telephone several times each day, to ask a duty officer or a spokesperson if anything newsworthy is happening. That morning, on June 30, 2009, around 11 a.m., I reached the duty sergeant at Kingston Police. He had something for me, something that seemed at first to be routine, but which would turn out to be the biggest story I had ever covered.

The sergeant told me that my call came at a fortuitous time. He was preparing to send out a news release and this would save him the trouble of sending it to the newspaper. The locks at Kingston Mills, the southern entrance point to the Rideau Canal from the Kingston area, were being shut down and the road closed because a car had been found underwater, he told me. I asked if there was anything notable about the incident. Was there anyone in the car? The sergeant said they didn’t know yet.

When I hung up the phone, I had an odd feeling. It seemed a dramatic step to shut Kingston Mills Road for a sunken car, a likely prank by joyriders who had dumped a stolen vehicle into the shallow water. Thankfully, I followed my instinct and hopped in the car and drove out to Kingston Mills, a 10-minute ride away from the newsroom, to check out the situation for myself.

My spidey sense tingled when I arrived at the Mills. The police response was out of proportion if this was just a submerged, stolen car. Marked police cruisers were blocking Kingston Mills Road, about 30 metres from both the east and west sides of the swing bridge that crossed over the northernmost of the four locks. A constable stationed at the blockade on the west side said he couldn’t tell me anything and the senior officer at the scene was busy. In the distance, I could see a ‘white shirt,’ an inspector, and what appeared to be several detectives. The police officers were huddled together, talking near the triangle of grass on the east side of the lock. Something significant was transpiring to warrant the on-site attention of an inspector and criminal investigators and I was itching to know more.

The uniformed officer at the blockade told me, when I asked, that it was OK to walk south on the property, toward the lower three locks. I figured there might be canal staff, boaters or fishers around who knew more than I did and who were more talkative than police.

At the lower lock, the first encountered by anyone travelling north from Lake Ontario into the canal system, I met a round-faced, middle aged man who was sitting in a small aluminum boat jammed with camping and fishing gear. The man, John Moore, explained that he’d been on a boating and camping trip in the Kingston area with his son and a friend. Moore explained that the trio were making their way through the locks, heading north to their home in Manotick, when they were ordered to turn their boat around. Canal staff had discovered the sunken car was blocking the gates of the northernmost lock.

I said it was too bad they were delayed by the incident and it seemed there was no way to know long the delay would last, since police didn’t yet know what they were dealing with. Moore corrected me. Oh, they know, he said. There’s bodies in the car, he told me.

Moore was a navy diver who had his scuba gear with him. He had descended an hour earlier to the sunken car. He had seen the bodies of at least two young women inside the vehicle.

I had my explanation for the the dramatic police response that I had encountered. What followed, over the next 31 months, was a sweeping, covert police investigation, the arrests of three members of the Shafia family on charges of first-degree murder and a trial that led to their imprisonment.

My account of this remarkable story, including dramatic new revelations, will be available in bookstores October 30, 2012. Without Honour: The True Story of the Shafia Family and the Kingston Canal Murders, is the complete story of the desperate lives of the victims, Zainab, Sahar, Geeti and Rona.

» Available for pre-order from Chapters/Indigo

» Available for pre-order from Amazon