Rob Tripp's Blog: Cancrime, page 6

Former choirmaster-pedophile faces fourth set of charges

John Gallienne (inset), a pedophile who exploited his trusted position as choirmaster and organist at Anglican churches across Canada to prey on young boys sexually, has been charged again with abuse committed decades ago. Now 71, Gallienne is charged with three counts of indecent assault on a boy in Kingston, Ontario between 1975 and 1978, when the victim was 10 to 12 years old, according to this story by reporter Sue Yanagisawa. It’s not surprising that another victim has come forward now, years later, and more charges have been filed. Gallienne has been affiliated with at least four churches across Canada, including Ottawa and Victoria, B.C. Past convictions have established that he was an insatiable predator with many victims. It is possible that there remain hundreds of victims who have never reported the abuse to police. Several of his Ontario victims committed suicide. There is no statute of limitations in Canada for reporting sexual assault and national surveys suggest most abuse is never reported to police.

Disclosure of sexual abuse, particularly against children, is often a gradual or incremental process that is dependent on the mental strength and resolve of the victim. Children often lack the skill or confidence to explain what has happened to them. They may feel frightened, humiliated, ashamed and fear that they won’t be believed or that nothing meaningful will come from reporting. Some perpetrators warn children that must keep the abuse secret or threaten them. Many victims wrongly believe that they must protect the predator by keeping the abuse secret. It’s only in adulthood that many child victims recognize what was truly done to them and find the strength to disclose the abuse they suffered.

Gallienne’s third set of convictions, in 2011, netted him house arrest for sexual assaults against two former choristers in Kingston. This too would be a factor in the decisions of other victims to come forward. They may be discouraged from reporting once they see that new charges do not lead to substantial punishment for Gallienne. At the sentencing in 2011, the Crown prosecutor failed to convince the judge to send Gallienne back to prison. She noted that Gallienne could have long ago taken full responsibility for his actions and provided authorities with the names of all of his victims, but he has chosen to conceal the true scope of his abuse.

In 2004, an investigation by reporter Sarah Crosbie (disclosure: my spouse) revealed that Gallienne was again leading a choir, playing the organ and was involved in music programs at an Anglican church in Ottawa. It was, according to a senior Anglican cleric in Kingston, a violation of rules imposed in 1994 by the Kingston-area diocese of the Anglican Church. Anglican leaders in Ottawa saw no problem with permitting Gallienne to hold leadership positions in a church.

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Chronology of events in the Gallienne case

• Oct. 28, 1989: Senior officials at St. George’s Cathedral, an Anglican Church in Kingston, Ontario, review a letter alleging Gallienne had molested the son of a writer and other boys from the choir

• Nov. 3, 1989: Church officials meet Gallienne to discuss allegations. He says there had been no incidents since one reported to the police and the Children’s Aid Society in 1985.

• Nov. 13, 1989: A letter is sent to Gallienne insisting on a system of supervision any time children are involved in practices or performances. He was told not to be alone with children.

• Nov. 17, 1989: Gallienne sends church wardens a letter saying it’s his policy to never see children alone

• November to December 1989: Church wardens contact former choristers and parents; approximately 300 had been in the choir since 1975. The wardens are contacted by a number of people suggesting any investigation into Gallienne is inappropriate.

• Jan. 31, 1990: A letter is received from Gallienne’s therapist saying he is at the “benign” end of the spectrum and there isn’t sufficient risk to justify his dismissal

• Feb. 13, 1990: Church wardens ask Gallienne for his resignation, effective June 30. The church proposes a separation package for Gallienne.

• March 1, 1990: Church parents are called to a meeting to inform of them about current state of affairs and Gallienne’s resignation

• March 6, 1990: Following discussions with police, a letter is sent to Gallienne’s lawyer advising of Gallienne’s dismissal. The offer of severance is rescinded.

• March 7, 1990: The Whig-Standard publishes a story on Gallienne’s notice in the church bulletin saying he’s leaving the church and Kingston

• Sept. 17, 1990: pleads guilty to 20 sex abuse charges involving 13 boys, some as young as eight

• Oct. 2, 1990: sentenced to four and a half years in prison

• 1992: Gallienne pleads guilty to three more charges after a 14th victim speaks to police. Eighteen months are added to his prison sentence.

• 1994: convicted of two more sex charges involving a victim at St. John’s Anglican church in Victoria, where he was choirmaster from 1970 to 1974. He receives one year in prison for each charge but his six-year sentence isn’t increased.

• 1994: Bishop Peter Mason of the Diocese of Ontario (Kingston) hand-delivers to Gallienne in prison a two-page document that bans him from any involvement in church music programs or positions of leadership in Anglican churches of the diocese. The Ottawa diocese also adopts the ban. Gallienne was paroled from prison later that year.

• 1995: 11 former choirboys and 10 parents share a $2.1-million settlement that ends a lawsuit against the cathedral and the Ontario diocese

• Oct. 2, 1996: Gallienne’s sentence expires, meaning he is no longer subject to any supervision or restrictions

• April 14, 2010: Kingston Police arrest Gallienne in Ottawa and charge him with one count of indecent assault related to the sexual assault of a boy between 1980 and 1982

• June 2011: pleads guilty in a Kingston courtroom to charges of molesting two young choirboys who were members of the choirs he led at St. George’s in the late 1970s and early 1980s; he was automatically stripped of a pardon he had received in 2007

• February 2016: Gallienne charged in Kingston with three counts of indecent assault on a male between 1975 and 1978, when victim was aged 10 to 12

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» All of Cancrime’s coverage of the Gallienne story

Shafia honour killing appeal begins March 3; secret application filed

Convicted multiple murderer Hamed Shafia has filed documents with Ontario’s top court in a bid to establish that he was unfairly tried as an adult in the sensational 2009 honour killing case. The exact contents of the application to admit fresh evidence, filed Feb. 19, aren’t yet known. It’s being kept secret by the Court of Appeal for Ontario until a hearing is held on March 3-4 at the court in Toronto but, as I reported previously, a secret hearing was held in Kingston, Ontario last October, at which his father and co-accused, Mohammad Shafia, testified that newly obtained documents show that Hamed was not 18 at the time of the murders on June 30, 2009. Hamed must convince Ontario’s top court to permit him to introduce evidence of the age discrepancy. He claims that his birthdate is December 31, 1991, and not 1990 as first believed. Next week’s hearing also will consider the broader arguments of all three convicted family members. Mohammad Shafia, 62, his wife Tooba, 46, and their son Hamed, were each convicted of four counts of first-degree murder but they have appealed, claiming that their trial was unfair because of “overwhelmingly prejudicial evidence” and “cultural stereotyping.”

The victims, (from left) Zainab, Sahar, Geeti, Rona

The trio was convicted in January 2012 of killing sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, and of Roma Amir, 50, who was Mohammad Shafia’s first wife. The polygamous Afghan family settled in Montreal in 2007. Two years later, the victims were found dead inside a sunken car resting at the bottom of a shallow canal in Kingston, in eastern Ontario. Jurors heard that Mohammad Shafia orchestrated the killings, believing it would restore his family honour. He felt it was tarnished because three of his daughters violated strict cultural rules around modesty and obedience and Rona supported them. Jurors heard that Hamed researched locations and means to commit the murders.

After the guilty verdict, trial judge Robert Maranger said the crimes were based on a “twisted notion of honour.”

If Ontario’s top court accepts the new information that suggests Hamed was not 18 at the time of the killings, it would have several options, legal experts have told me. The court could order a new trial for Hamed in youth court, where penalties would be substantially less. The court also could act essentially as a trial court and impose the penalty it deems appropriate.

The three Shafias filed a 110-page legal document in March 2015, outlining their appeal arguments.

They attacked the evidence of University of Toronto professor Shahzrad Mojab, who was permitted to testify at the trial about the origins of honour killings. She wasn’t permitted to offer an opinion about whether the deaths of the four Shafia family members were honour killings.

“Dr. Mojab’s evidence was overwhelmingly prejudicial and should not have been admitted,” states the document filed with the appeal court. “Her evidence invited the jury to improperly find that the Appellants had a disposition to commit family homicide as a result of their cultural background and to reject their claim that they held a different set of cultural beliefs.”

The manner in which Mojab’s evidence was presented “created enormous prejudice” and invited jurors to decide contested factual issues by relying on “cultural stereotyping,” according to the document.

“By reinforcing pre-existing stereotypes of violent and primitive Muslims, it created the risk that the jury’s verdict would be tainted by cultural prejudice,” the document states. It was prepared jointly by three lawyers representing the trio and argues that while some of Mojab’s evidence may have been admissible, the judge failed to “limit its scope and its potential for prejudice.”

Crown prosecutors filed a 93-page document with the Court of Appeal, rejecting the argument that Mojab’s evidence was improperly admitted and led to “cultural stereotyping.” Cancrime obtained a copy of the document.

“The appellants have mischaracterized the evidence of Dr. Mojab, so as to raise concerns regarding its prejudicial effect that did not, in fact, exist,” states the document. “More particularly, the evidence did not amount to ‘profiling’ or ‘cultural similar fact evidence.’ Her evidence did not invite the jury to find that the deaths in this case resembled a category of murders or invite the jury to engage in cultural stereotyping.”

The Crown argues that the trial judge’s decision to admit Mojab’s evidence is “entitled to deference.”

“The appellants have failed to demonstrate that the trial judge misapprehended the evidence, erred in principle, or reached an unreasonable conclusion so as to justify appellate interference,” the document states. “The evidence was properly admitted. The charge to the jury regarding Dr. Mojab’s evidence was balanced and fair.”

The appeal hearing will be held in Courtroom Number 10 at the court, in Osgoode Hall in downtown Toronto, beginning Thursday, March 3. Appeal hearings are open to the public.

 

 

Internal records reveal “evil” pedophile’s deviousness

Pedophile James Alfred Cooper (inset) knew that he was being watched closely while he was out of prison on early release. Yet he still schemed to procure children while he was free in 2014. The depth of Cooper’s deviousness is detailed in the internal parole records (read them after the jump) of the Ontario man who tortured and raped children. Cooper was convicted only of 16 crimes involving six children over a span of 17 years but it is likely there are other victims. Most predatory pedophiles do not abuse just a handful of victims. The six victims for whom convictions were registered were aged seven to 14 at the time of the abuse that included whippings and beatings and forced sex including intercourse. Five of them, four girls and one boy, were his stepchildren from two of his marriages. One was a neighbour’s daughter.

Online searches lead to many stories about Cooper’s crimes – including this powerful 2012  feature by Susan Clairmont that includes interviews with five stepchildren abused by Cooper when he lived on a farm near Hamilton, Ontario.

In January 1994, Cooper was sentenced to 30 years in prison for 16 counts of sexually and physically abusing the six children. Dozens of other charges were dropped. Cooper was convicted of charges of rape, buggery, gross indecency, indecent assault and having sex with girls under the age of 14. The victims had testified that Cooper beat and violated them with his fists, sticks, wet towels, a buggy whip, cat-o- nine-tails, wooden spoons, belts or cattle prods.

“You are a low-down, mean, despicable, evil manifestation of a human being that preys on little children,” judge Nick Borkovich said, in passing sentence. Cooper appealed and the sentence was shortened to 21 years.

Pedophile James Alfred Cooper in a Hamilton, Ontario police booking photo in 1993 (left) and a photo released by Toronto Police in January 2015 when Cooper was freed from prison at the end of his sentence

Now 80, Cooper appears remorseless and unremittingly predatory, despite his age and despite taking lupron, a drug intended to reduce his sex drive. He has repeatedly violated rules imposed on his early freedom from prison and he has deceived and manipulated corrections and parole staff, records show.

He was released from a minimum-security prison in January 2008 but he was back behind bars by 2012, after repeated violations of his release conditions. In one case, he attended a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of a woman who did not know his criminal history. Two children were at the dinner. Cooper sent inappropriate emails to a member of his community support group and a complaint was filed to police that he touched a woman he knew in a sexual way. Charges weren’t laid but Cooper kept the information from his parole supervisor for days.  In January 2012, the parole board revoked his release.

He was again released in December 2013, sent to live in a halfway house in Brantford, a small city 100 kilometres southwest of Toronto. Two months later, he was arrested after authorities gathered troubling information that suggested that Cooper was actively hunting victims.  The written record of  a May 2014 parole decision details what Cooper had done:

… you made calls to a local community centre inquiring about programs for seniors but during one call, asked if “there would be women chasing you around” and during another call, indicated you would have a young child with you and wanted to know what children’s activities coincided with the senior’s programs. The day prior to this event, it is reported that you asked your doctor about lowering your medication dosage so that you could be more sexually responsive to your wife. File information indicates your wife lives in [REDACTED], has not visited you since release and has no plans to do so because of financial strains.

Cooper’s scheming prompted authorities to revoke his freedom and he was returned to penitentiary to serve out the remainder of his 21-year sentence behind bars. The parole board noted, in explaining the decision, that the staff who had supervised his case believed he was “engaging in behaviour which strongly suggests a return to predatory behaviour, potentially against women and children.” Cooper wasn’t charged with any crimes and there’s no way to know definitively whether he assaulted more victims during his brief stretch of freedom. Many child victims of sexual and physical abuse do not report their victimization until many years after the events (see Myths and Facts below).

Cooper was released from prison in January 2015, after he had served every day of his 21-year term. Toronto Police issued a public alert and a current photo, citing Cooper’s “potential to re-offend against children.” A court order was obtained that bars him from visiting daycare centres, school grounds, playgrounds, arcades, public swimming areas or public parks. He was also prohibited from having contact with anyone under age 16 and was prohibited from living with or engaging in a relationship or marriage with a person who is the parent or guardian of children under 16, until that person has been identified to police.

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Written records of five decisions (20 pages) of the Parole Board of Canada in Cooper’s case between 2007 and 2014. “Page 2″ in the top right corner denotes the beginning of a new decision (on mobile? Click here to read doc):

 

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MYTHS about disclosure of child sexual abuse

» If a child is sexually abused s/he will immediately tell a safe adult in her/his life.

» All adults will take action and report a child’s disclosure of sexual abuse.

» Children are more likely to disclose if directly questioned by their parent or an adult authority figure who can help.

FACTS about disclosure of child sexual abuse

» Disclosure of sexual abuse is often delayed; research indicates that only 30% of children disclose their abuse during childhood (Hon. Sydney Robins, 2000).

» Children often avoid telling because they are either afraid of a negative reaction from their parents or of being harmed by the abuser. As such, they often delay disclosure until adulthood.

» Children do not always realize that what they have experienced constitutes abuse.

» Disclosures often unfold gradually, and may be presented in a series of hints.

» Children might imply something has happened to them without directly stating they were sexually abused — they may be testing the reaction to their “hint.”

» If they are ready, children may follow-up with a larger hint if they think it will be handled well.

SOURCE: Canadian Centre for Child Protection

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Killing of six-year-old boy unsolved, half century after murder

When they found six-year-old Michael Kent (inset), he was motionless, lying face down in the muddy snow on the west side of the parking lot of the arena in Elmvale, a small community 120 kilometres north of Toronto. The fair-haired boy, one of five Kent siblings, was still wearing his navy blue and white tuque and his navy blue ski jacket but it was now covered with mud and blood. Michael had been stabbed seven times, four times in the abdomen and three times in the back. There was no indication he had been sexually assaulted. Police later surmised that the small boy’s face had been held down in the mud while he was killed on that winter day, February 11, 1966. A half century later, Michael’s murder remains unsolved.

It is possible the killer is now dead. Perhaps he’s in prison, serving time for other offences. Or, perhaps he got away with one of the most heinous crimes, despite an intensive police investigation and despite the fact that footprints were found and the murder weapon was located immediately. A fishing knife with a four-inch long steel blade was found on the roof of the curling rink, roughly 50 feet from the spot where Michael’s body was found. Within weeks, dozens of investigators had interviewed more than 3,000 people and interrogated 50 suspects. One hundred and twenty people who were in the area of the rink the night of the killing were interviewed. Investigators went door to door to the hundreds of homes in Elmvale with a photograph of the murder weapon. Police were clearly frustrated at their inability to solve the terrible crime.

“There is no apparent motive to this senseless killing,” Insp. James McBride, of the Ontario Provincial Police, told the Globe and Mail newspaper in an interview weeks after the murder, as the investigation dragged on. “A murderer, that’s all we’re looking for, and you tell me what a murderer looks like. As for suspects … well, everybody’s a suspect. I’m the only one I’m really sure about.”

McBride said Michael’s wounds were deep, clearly inflicted with considerable force, suggesting that the attacker was older and was not a child.

The Kent family, who lived in nearby Port McNicoll, had gone to the rink that evening because son John, 12 had a game. Michael knew the rink well. He played there on Tuesdays. On Feb. 11, mother Ann Kent took her two youngest children, infant Kevin and daughter Allison, 3, to the stands while her husband went to the dressing room to help John dress for the game. In the confusion, Michael disappeared. When John Kent joined his family in the stands, they realized Michael was missing. His body was found in the parking lot, roughly an hour after they had arrived at the rink, by a family friend.

“I searched all around the arena – inside, that is,” John Kent later told a reporter. “Who would have thought to look outside? I mean, I just figured he had wandered off somehwere; you know, he was so familiar with the place.”

Police later said they confirmed that Michael was in the dressing room and talked to teammates on his brother John’s team. He was also seen in the arena lobby.

A $5,000 reward was offered at the time for help in solving the crime. Investigators were flooded with tips, many of them anonymous. The Ontario government is now offering a $50,000 reward.

Perhaps the most cryptic lead surfaced roughly one month after the killing, in March 1966. The Globe and Mail reported that someone claimed to know the identity of the killer. A brief story appeared in the paper on March 10, 1966:

A letter was shoved under the door of the Penetanguishene office of the Midland Free Press Herald yesterday from a person claiming to know the identity of the murderer of Michael Kent, 6. The boy was killed at Elmvale Arena on Feb. 11 while a brother played hockey. His body was found in the arena yard and later a knife, believed to have been the murder weapon, was found on a section of the arena roof. The letter to the weekly newspaper was unsigned, and the writer said he wishes to remain anonymous because of personal danger.

The Ontario government reward poster still available on the website of the Ontario Provincial Police:

 

Prison service can’t contain spending or limit inmate deaths, report shows

Despite an enormous infusion of cash in the past decade, the agency that runs the country’s penitentiaries has failed to deliver on longstanding promises to reduce prisoner deaths and has failed to limit critical security incidents that endanger staff and inmates, a newly released report card on the operations of Correctional Service of Canada reveals. “I continue to be very frustrated that CSC continues to deal with deaths in custody as sort of one-off events and not paying enough attention to the patterns and the common issues that contribute,” says Howard Sapers (inset), the federal correctional investigator. (Hear the full interview with Sapers, after the jump, in Episode 1 of the Cancrime podcast).

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Corrections Canada spending and budgets from 2012 through 2017 (Source: CSC Departmental Performance Report, 2014-15)

The departmental performance report made public last week (January 25) shows that, while the former Conservative regime in Ottawa pledged four years ago to spend less on prisons, Corrections Canada spent nearly a quarter of a billion dollars more in the last fiscal year than first budgeted. Corrections spent $2.57 billion in 2014-15, up 61 per cent from the $1.6 billion spent in 2005-06, when the Harper-led Conservatives came to power. The fiscal year covers the 12-month period that ended April 1, 2015. In 2012, then Public Safety Minister Vic Toews announced that CSC had been ordered to cut $295 million in spending by 2015, part of a government-wide deficit reduction plan. In 2012, Ottawa also shuttered three institutions including maximum-security Kingston Penitentiary and claimed the closings would save $120 million annually. The latest report includes no evidence those savings have been realized. Sapers says he “never understood where that money was going to come from.”

Corrections had a budget of $2.35 billion for 2014-15 but the service spent $2.57 billion last year and yet, in a remarkable bit of accounting, reports an end-of-year “surplus of $90.4 million,” according to Lori Halfper, a spokeswoman for Corrections Canada at its national headquarters in Ottawa.

Halfper explained, in an emailed response to a request for comment, that, part way through the year, the agency got the green light to boost its budget. “CSC received additional authorities for $330.9 million through established approval processes,” Halfper explained. CSC didn’t spend all the extra cash so it is now claiming this qualifies as a surplus.

The departmental performance report reveals that 20 prisoners died “non-natural deaths” while behind bars – a definition that includes murders, suicides, use of force, accidents and undetermined deaths. Five died in what CSC calls “critical security incidents” – murder, use of force and undetermined deaths.

“CSC did not meet its own expectations in the area of critical security incidents in institutions,” the performance rate states. A similar refrain appears several times in the document. “Despite persistent efforts, CSC did not meet its own expectations in the area of critical safety incidents in institutions,” the report notes, a reference to deaths by suicide or accident, which totaled 13 in the year.

The total of 20 deaths overall is up from 18 the previous year and down from 25 in 2012-13.

The Tory government claimed in 2012 that closing maximum-security Kingston Penitentiary and two other institutions would save $120 million yearly (Photo: Rob Tripp)

The rate of non-natural deaths was 1.34 per 1,000 prisoners, a level that Sapers, the prisons watchdog, believes may be higher than the rate recorded a decade ago. In the past 10 years, a litany of reports from his office, coroner’s inquests and CSC’s internal investigations exposed chronic problems that required urgent attention. In 2007, a study commissioned by Sapers of 82 prison deaths over five years concluded that CSC was not incorporating lessons from past incidents. It found “serious errors” in assessing suicide risk and “gross errors” by medical staff who responded to emergencies.

“Enhancing safety and security for staff and offenders in institutions is one of four operational priorities for CSC over the next few years,” states CSC’s departmental performance report for 2005-06.

“The frustrating thing is, is that those efforts aren’t having the intended result,” said Sapers. “And, in part, it’s because while those efforts exist, they tend to lose momentum. We were supposed to have annual expert reviews of deaths in custody. We’ve had three in the last nine years. We’re still waiting for the response from the last expert review which is now, I think … already two years old.”

Sapers said there have been “many, many commitments” from Corrections to address recommendations of dozens of reports and investigations that have clearly identified the problems. He said he can’t explain why Corrections has failed to address issues, despite claims that it understands the problems and is committed to change. He says CSC has never provided a full, appropriate response to 104 recommendations that flowed from an inquest into the death behind bars in 2007 of 19-year-old Ashley Smith.

Criminologist Justin Piche says CSC appears unable to control its spending.

“A significant reason for this is that the federal penitentiary population has increased in recent years in conjunction with the Conservative punishment agenda that aimed to send more people to prison for longer periods of time with fewer chances of release,” said Piche, an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa who studies the prison system. “In the process, CSC has also failed to meet many of its objectives.”

He says the “Canadian carceral experiment is a costly and unjust failure.”

“If the new Liberal government is serious about changing things, it will need to conduct a rigorous review of the criminal justice system, assessing everything from what we criminalize in this country to how we can better prevent harm and respond to the needs of everyone impacted by it,” Piche said.

He said Ottawa should immediately reinstate accelerated parole for first-time, non-violent offenders – a measure scrapped by the Conservatives – and should determine why there is such a disparity between CSC recommendations for prisoner release and parole board decisions.

 

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Here’s CSC’s 2014-15 fiscal year departmental performance report, made public January 25, 2016 (on mobile? click here to read document):

 

Parole record for sex predator hockey coach James released

The Parole Board of Canada has released the written record (read it after the jump) of a decision last week to grant freedom to sex predator Graham James, 62, (inset), a former hockey coach who exploited and abused young men he coached, including several who went on to successful professional careers in the National Hockey League. James was granted day parole after a hearing January 25 in Quebec, where he is completing a seven-year sentence for sexual assault, the latest in a series of convictions related to hundreds of incidents that date to the early 1970s. It is his second federal prison term.

The parole document notes that some of the young men, often teenagers at the time of the attacks, reported being abused by James hundreds of times. James was a successful coach in the Western Hockey League in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Among his victims were Theo Fleury and Sheldon Kennedy, who both went on to careers in the NHL. James was first convicted in 1997 in Calgary, after pleading guilty to abusing players. He also has a conviction from an incident in 1971 involving a 14-year-old boy, according to a chronology of his case compiled by the Toronto Star. James will be released to a halfway house with six conditions, including the requirement that he not be in the presence of any male children under the age of 18 unless he’s accompanied by a responsible adult who knows his criminal history and has been approved by his parole supervisor. The parole document notes that James admitted to a psychologist that he’s still attracted to adolescent males and particularly to young men aged 15 to 25. It also appears that the board isn’t convinced his his empathy for the suffering of his victims is genuine. The document states that James seem to “have intellectualised [his] empathy but the Board cannot conclude that it is heartfelt.”

 

Here’s the written record of the parole decision (on mobile? click here to read document):

 

Authorities won’t explain reinstatement of rapist-killer’s parole

Dread has stalked Annette Rogers for 30 years, since her abusive former boyfriend, Jamie Giff (inset), first threatened to kill her in 1985. “I’m scared of him,” she says, her voice trembling. “I don’t care what anybody says.” Giff is a killer. He raped and stabbed to death a teenage girl in 1985. For the past three decades, Rogers fought, but ultimately failed, to keep him behind bars. She was horrified when she learned recently that Giff, free on parole, had done something that so alarmed his supervisor that he was taken into custody and his parole suspended. When he was freed a month later and his parole was reinstated, authorities cited privacy laws and refused to tell anyone, including Rogers, what happened. “So I sat here, vibrating, didn’t know what to do,” she says.

On January 28, 1985, when Giff first threatened to kill Rogers, he could not find her, so he raped and stabbed to death Heather Fraser, a 16-year-old girl he did not know and who he encountered by chance while prowling the streets of Smiths Falls, the small eastern Ontario town where he lived. Giff was enraged, in part, because Rogers had told him she was ending their dysfunctional relationship. Heather was a gifted student and athlete.

“That day, the rage to kill became uncontrollable,” Giff told me, in an interview in 2009 at the Ontario penitentiary where he was then incarcerated. “Annette was the intended victim. Heather Fraser was an innocent victim.”

From left, intended victim Annette Rogers, victim Heather Fraser and murderer Jamie Giff

It is the only time Giff has spoken publicly about the murder – he did not testify at his trial in which he was treated as an adult, although he was 17 when he killed Heather. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. In prison, he was diagnosed as a sexual sadist, someone who derives pleasure from inflicting pain. Giff confessed to prison counsellors that he had mutilated Heather’s genitals with his buck knife during the attack though he later claimed the admission was untrue and that he had been pressured to make the statement in a therapy session. In an unusual development, recent prison reports backtracked. Experts now say that “the former diagnosis of sexual sadism could not longer apply in your case.” A 2012 report from a psychiatrist assessed Giff’s risk of sexual recidivism as low. Other reports point to “compliant behaviour” in prison and a conclusion that his “antisocial personality disorder seems far less prevalent.”

Giff insists he has changed. He says his alcohol and drug addictions are contained and he and is no longer driven by misogynistic rage. In his interview with me in 2009, he said that the day he raped and murdered Heather: “I was a psycho. I had no remorse, no compassion for nobody. I didn’t even care about my own life — but I’m different now.”

Rogers doesn’t believe him.

“No, I don’t,” she answers without hesitation. “Would you? – and I’m the one who’s kept him in there.”

In there is in prison. Giff was behind bars until he was granted significant freedom early in 2015. He was released on day parole, a form of supervised release that permits him to live at a halfway house in Montreal. He can leave the halfway house daily but must return nightly and he must report to a parole officer. He is under orders to stay away from Rogers and her family. But something went wrong with Giff’s parole recently. In October, his parole was suspended and he was taken into custody to assess his risk to the community. In early November, the suspension was lifted and Giff was returned to the halfway house. Rogers was notified that Giff was free again but she was not told what had transpired. Because a parole hearing was not conducted, there is no publicly accessible, written record of Giff’s transgression.

“Unfortunately I can’t comment on this issue because the board is not responsible for the supervision of the offender,” said Luc Desbien, a Quebec spokesman for the Parole Board of Canada, which first released Giff on day parole.

It is a bizarre feature of the parole and correctional systems in Canada – two separate and independent bureaucracies – that one can free an imprisoned murderer and the reasons for the decision are fully publicly accessible but, once free, the paroled murderer is supervised by a parole officer who works for the Correctional Service of Canada, and whose actions are secretive.

“We won’t be able to comment on the case because we don’t give information related to an offender but usually in that kind of situation we only give general information,” said Jean-Francois Cusson, a spokesman for Corrections Canada in Quebec. Cusson said he could not disclose why Giff was taken into custody and why he was later released.

“That’s not the kind of information that we provide,” Cusson said.

Rogers is exasperated.

“Doesn’t the public have a right to know if he messed up?” she asks.

Heidi Illingworth, a longtime advocate for rights of victims, says it is a bad system that leaves victims in the dark.

“Not informing victims of the behaviour that caused parole to be suspended causes additional anxiety and is a revictimization,” said Illingworth, head of the Ottawa-based Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime.

Even if the offending behaviour is minor, victims should be told immediately about it, she said, so that they can “feel safe or take steps to address their safety.”

Rogers, who has been to every one of Giff’s many parole hearings and has argued at those hearings that he should be kept locked up, remains fearful and angry.

“Why should I have to go into hiding?” she asks.

***

Here’s the written record of the Parole Board of Canada decision January 13, 2015, granting Giff day parole release (on mobile? click here to read doc):

Here is the written record of the decision by the Parole Board of Canada on July 10, 2015, permitting Giff to continue to remain free from prison on day parole (on mobile? click here to read doc):

» Read all of Cancrime’s coverage of the Giff case

Former thief orchestrates ‘Christmas break-in’ that gives

Robin Marc Smith (inset, 2007 booking photo) had a 30-year career as a Grinch – and he was remarkably good at it – so it’s surprising to see him don a Santa hat so that he can break, enter and give. Smith organized a charity event in a small eastern Ontario town in which a band of holiday ‘bandits’ broke into the house of a needy family. The group of about a dozen people knew the single mom wasn’t home because she had taken her two young children to visit a mall Santa. The group left gifts and $500 cash behind and no clue to their identity. Local media around Tweed, a small village 200 kilometres east of Toronto, reported the feel-good story but with no mention of Smith’s infamous past. Smith tells me (hear the full interview after the jump), that everyone in the Tweed area knows about his past.

Former thief/fraudster Robin Smith, seen in a screen grab from a CKWS television report on a ‘Christmas break and enter’ in Tweed that Smith organized

For more than three decades, Smith was a thief and fraud artist who stole credit cards, defrauded banks and pocketed goods, cash and services worth millions (see my story, below, from 2010, about Smith’s return to Canada). Born and raised in London, Ontario, he committed crimes across Canada and the United States and served prison terms in both countries. “I was a thief and I took for 30 years,” he says. Smith was released from prison in Ontario in 2011 and is now living on a rural property near Tweed with a girlfriend.

In 2007, he and his wife Dorothy Ann Smith were arrested in southern California for an apparent 13-year crime spree that primarily involved the theft of wallets and fraudulent use of credit cards in the Irvine area, about 100 kilometres south of Los Angeles. In November that year, Smith’s wife died and he was sentenced to five years in state penitentiary, though he was required to serve just two and a half years before he would be returned to Canada to face charges of escaping custody. At the time he was arrested in California in 2007, Smith was a fugitive from Canadian justice. He had bolted while free from prison in 1991 on a pass.

But Smiths says his days of running, hiding and stealing are behind him. He claims to have had an epiphany after he was sentenced in 2007 in California (He explains it at the 10:00 min mark of the interview below).

“It was like a peace came over me,” he says. “I’ve never had the desire to commit fraud again.”

Smith says his only child, a daughter, died in a car crash in December 2011. He says the death of his daughter and wife near Christmas make the holiday season particularly painful. Smith organized the ‘Christmas break and enter’ project in Tweed, with the help of a local church and area businesses, in an attempt to refocus himself and give back to the community, he says.

http://cancrime.com/audio/smith.edit.mp3

 

Chronology of Smith’s Criminal Career

1986 – 1989 – Perpetrates hundreds of thefts in seven cities across Canada – Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Hamilton, Windsor, London – that are valued at more than $100,000. Poses as a furnace inspector to get into office buildings, steals wallets and uses stolen credit cards to defraud financial institutions

1989  – Arrested in Toronto and charged with 162 crimes in seven cities (131 in Toronto alone); he bolts when freed on bail

1990 – Returned to Toronto from Florida, later convicted of 76 crimes and sent to prison for three and a half years

1991 – Given three-day pass to leave Collins Bay penitentiary, a medium-security prison in Kingston, Ont. He doesn’t return to prison. He flees to the United States and by 1994, has landed in southern California.

1994 – 2007 – Smith works his phoney repairman scam again, this time in Irvine, Calif. and neighbouring areas

March 2007 – Irvine, Calif. Police Department issues a release announcing that it has arrested Robin Marc Smith, 49, and his wife, Dorothy Ann Smith, 57, and charged them with thefts and frauds that date as far back as 1994 with losses estimated at more than $1 million. Robin Smith is eventually sentenced to five years in state penitentiary. Dorothy dies in November 2007.

January 2010 – After serving two and a half years of the American sentence, Smith is returned to Kingston, Ontario to face charges for escaping custody 19 years earlier

February 2010 – He pleads guilty to being unlawfully at large, is handed nine months, concurrent to his original sentence, so there is no new time, although he goes back to prison to continue serving the sentence he ran from in 1991.

June 2011 – Released from prison in Kingston

 

My newspaper story, published in the Kingston Whig-Standard in January 2010, after Smith was returned to Ontario from California to face charges of escaping lawful custody:

A slippery career thief who has been on the lam from a Kingston prison for nearly two decades is back behind bars in Canada, after a stint in a California state penitentiary.

Robin Marc Smith, 51, was returned to Kingston this week, according to provincial police. In California, he served time after he was caught stealing credit cards and making fraudulent purchases.

American authorities realized that Smith was a fugitive.

“They contacted Canadian authorities,” said Sgt. Kristine Rae, of the OPP. Canadian police were told last September that Smith was in custody. He was returned to Kingston Wednesday.

Smith was at Collins Bay Institution in Kingston in 1991, serving a three-and-a-half year sentence for 76 crimes, most involving stolen credit cards.

He was given a three-day pass in November that year to leave prison. He didn’t return.

It appears that Smith landed in southern California a few years later, along with a wife, Dorothy AnnSmith. It was the second time he fled Canadian justice by heading south.

Smith and his partner came to the attention of police in Irvine, Calif., a high-tech hotbed of 200,000 people about 100 kilometres south of Los Angeles.

“I think this case was pretty significant for us because they were being very successful at what they were doing,” Lt. Henry Boggs, of the Irvine department told the Whig-Standard yesterday.

Investigators saw a pattern of wallet and purse thefts, most in south Orange County, in February 2007. Surveillance tapes revealed that a man and woman were stealing credit cards from commercial buildings.

“That’s when we knew we had a serial criminal here,” Boggs said.

The tapes showed Robin Smith would enter a building pretending to be a technician checking lighting or air conditioning. While workers weren’t looking, he would snatch wallets.

The pair used the stolen credit cards to buy expensive items like televisions and game consoles. They sought to throw off investigators by making the purchases in another police jurisdiction.

“They were pretty good at crossing jurisdictional lines,” Boggs said. “They’d commit the theft here and go down to San Diego and make their purchases.”

Irvine investigators worked with the Orange County Sherrif’s Department to crack the case. Officers believed the Smiths were responsible for many thefts and frauds, perhaps hundreds, dating back to 1994 that involved losses of $1 million.

“This was the way they made their living,” Boggs said. “They went out every day from what we can tell and looked [for] commercial businesses to commit these thefts.”

The pair were arrested in March 2007, while they were living at a San Diego County hotel.

Robin Smith freely revealed his Canadian citizenship. Boggs said documents show that he told investigators his last address was in London, Ont.

Smith and his wife were convicted. Boggs said he believes Robin Smith received a sentence of three-to-five years in state penitentiary.

Smith’s crime spree in southern California followed a similar pattern to his exploits in southern Florida.

Smith was arrested at a luxury hotel in West Palm Beach in 1990 and charged with stealing and using credit cards. Police said he posed as a heating and cooling system inspector to get into businesses, where he rifled purses and wallets.

In some cases, he would call credit card companies, posing as a merchant checking on the authenticity of a credit card. If it wasn’t reported stolen, he’d keep making fraudulent purchases.

Smith was in Florida hiding out from Canadian authorities.

In 1989, Smith was arrested in Toronto and was charged with more than 150 crimes there and in Hamilton, Windsor, London, Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton. He bolted when he was freed on bail.

Smith used his familiar ruse in Canada, posing as a heating and cooling system inspector to get into office buildings, where he would steal wallets.

In November 1990, Smith was returned to Toronto from Florida.

Corrections Canada records show that he was convicted of 76 crimes including assault causing bodily harm and 51 stolen credit-card related offences.

His sentence would have expired in July 1994.

He’ll face new charges stemming from his flight from Canada.

At least one prison farm should reopen, Liberal MP says

A veteran Liberal MP who once oversaw Canada’s federal prison system says at least one convict-run penitentiary farm among six shuttered by the Conservatives should be reopened and he’s pushing his caucus to do it. “I’m certainly encouraging it be done and I hope the government, when they do their financial analysis, see the worth of doing that,” Wayne Easter (inset) told me, in a recent interview (hear the full interview after the jump). Easter was Public Safety critic leading up to the October 2015 election. He was solicitor general in the Chretien government in 2003, with responsibility for the Correctional Service. Easter said he planned to meet this week with the new Liberal Public Safety minister, Ralph Goodale.

In April this year, before the election, Easter provided a letter to a group in Kingston, Ontario pledging that a Liberal government would reopen the prison farm at Frontenac Institution, a minimum-security prison in Kingston. “It is our intent as a future Liberal government to support the re-opening of this facility,” the letter states. The closing of the pen farms, located in five provinces, was controversial, but attracted the most opposition in Kingston, where citizens, university professors, farmers and activists staged noisy protests outside the prison, even attempting to stop the removal of a dairy herd in the fall of 2010. Fifteen people were arrested because they blockaded the prison entrance. The Conservatives insisted that the pen farms were expensive – costing $4 million per year to operate – and didn’t provide meaningful job skills for prisoners. Critics said the tough physical labour that inmates performed and the bond with animals were potent rehabilitative tools.

The Frontenac dairy farm was “quite remarkable,” according to Easter, who toured it when it was still operating. He challenged the Conservatives on the closing of the pen farms.

“The prison farms were one of the greatest tools of rehabilitation for the inmate community and the [Frontenac] dairy farm in particular,” Easter said. He said he believes the farms at prisons in New Brunswick and in Manitoba may no longer be viable.

“I think in fairness to the new government, I think the one in Winnipeg and the one in Dorchester is probably beyond opening them as they were,” he said. “I would say the one that is most important and probably the only one that can be opened is the one in Kingston. Having said that, there would certainly have to be an analysis done in terms of what is left of that infrastructure.”

Prison farms were operated at:

* Pittsburgh Institution, Kingston, Ontario

* Frontenac Institution, Kingston, Ontario

* Westmorland Institution, New Brunswick

* Rockwood Institution, near Winnipeg.

* Riverbend Institution, near Prince Albert, Saskatchewan

* Bowden Institution, Alberta

 

Here is Easter’s full interview, recorded December 2, 2015

http://cancrime.com/audio/easter.wayne.mp3

“Aggressive, hostile,” double cop killer fails to overturn parole denial

An imprisoned double cop killer sentenced to death 40 years ago has failed again in a bid to overturn a parole board decision that denied him freedom. Richard Ambrose, 66, is confined to a medium-security prison in British Columbia but he desperately wants out. He is “aggressive,”  “hostile,” “confrontational,” has threatened his lawyers and, recently, a psychologist concluded he is a “high risk” to reoffend, according to documents acquired from the Parole Board of Canada. In 1974, Ambrose (inset) and career criminal James Hutchison shot two Moncton, N.B. city police officers in the head and buried the bodies in shallow graves. Quickly caught and convicted, Ambrose and Hutchison were condemned to hang but the sentences were commuted to life in prison after the abolition of the death penalty in Canada. Ambrose has been rebuffed twice in the past three years in complaints to a parole appeal body.

Ambrose also claims that he doesn’t remember the Moncton murders because of a head injury he suffered after he was released to Edmonton on full parole in 2000. Ambrose was working and fell from a roof. His parole was revoked and he was returned to prison in 2005 after he assaulted his wife, choked his sister and threatened halfway house staff. According to parole records, he “over-exaggerate(s) the symptoms” of his head injury and “the board questions whether you are being truthful or selective in your recall abilities.” The board notes that Ambrose has perfect recall of many past incidents in which he claims prison and parole authorities treated him unfairly.

It is a familiar complaint. Ambrose accuses the parole board of treating him unfairly during his most recent hearing, in December 2014. At that hearing, the board ruled that Ambrose presented an “undue risk to society” and denied him any form of release. Ambrose lodged his ‘unfairness’ complaint with the appeal division of the parole board, a second decision making body. It ruled that Ambrose was treated fairly and the decision to deny his bid for freedom was reasonable. Ambrose sought to turn the appeal into an attack on the correctional system but the appeal division rebuffed him.

“The Appeal Division will not address your submission with regard to your complaints that some Institutional Parole Officers are liars and that reports were withheld from you by Correctional Service of Canada staff,” the June 16, 2015 decision states.

The appeal division also concluded that it was reasonable to deny release because of the gravity of Ambrose’s crimes, his past failure on parole, and “your failure to take responsibility for your behaviour, your lack of insight, your inadequate release plan, your high risk to reoffend, your distrust of CSC staff,” according to the written record of the decision.

Ambrose also failed in a complaint to the appeal division after he was denied parole in 2012.

For most of the past four decades, Ambrose has remained behind bars, although prison has not always contained him.

In July 1980, just six years after the Moncton murders, Ambrose and a fellow convict at maximum-security Dorchester Penitentiary in New Brunswick sawed through the bars of their cells, climbed to the roof and used a homemade ladder to scale the wall and escape. They were caught three days later. Eight years was tacked onto Ambrose’s life sentence.

For the first 17 years of his prison sentence, Ambrose refused to speak to prison officials about the murders. He did not admit his role in the killings until 1992, when he told a prison psychologist that he fired one of the fatal shots.

In previous parole hearings, he has been “condescending and sarcastic.” His answers have been “evasive” and he has insisted that prison staff can’t be trusted. He still harbours a “significant amount of resentment,” records state, over the revocation of his parole in 2005.

Ambrose has not been a model prisoner. Recently, he has been “confrontational” toward prison staff and shown “aggressive and intimidating behaviour.” In May 2014, while being interviewed by two female prison staffers he became aggressive and loud. He has treated lawyers poorly. In 2013, a lawyer refused to represent him any longer because he had become demanding and threatening. In 2014, another lawyer complained to the prison warden and police because of what he considered a threatening letter from Ambrose.

Ambrose, who changed his name to Bergeron after he was imprisoned, married while behind bars and fathered a daughter in 1992 but he is, according to the parole records, now divorcing his “pro-social” wife and plans to live on his own if released.

Ambrose told the parole board in December 2014 that he has the support of his adult children and he insisted that he won’t “screw up” if released.

He’ll be eligible again in 2016 to seek release.

 

 

Here’s the written record of the decision June 6, 2015 by the Appeal Division of the Parole Board of Canada (on mobile? click here to read doc):

 

Here is the written record of the decision by the Parole Board of Canada on December 4, 2014 denying parole to Ambrose (on mobile? click here to read doc):

 

» Read the complete story of the 1974 murders

» Read the full story of the 2011 death behind bars of fellow killer James Hutchison

» Decision of Parole Board of Canada August 2012 denying parole

» Appeal Division of Parole Board of Canada decision December 2012

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