Families of victims who were murdered by notorious serial killer and rapist Paul Bernardo have been barred from attending his upcoming parole hearing in person, according to the families’ lawyer.
Bernardo, who is serving a life sentence and was transferred from maximum- to medium-security prison last year, is scheduled to appear for a parole hearing next week at Quebec’s La Macaza prison.
Tim Danson, the lawyer representing the families of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, who were murdered as teenagers by Bernardo, argued in a letter sent to officials on Tuesday that his clients have a legal right to attend the hearing and read their statements in person.
The letter, shared with Global News, was addressed to Joanne Blanchard, the chairperson of the Parole Board of Canada, Correction Service of Canada commissioner Anne Kelly and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc.
“We have just been advised that the families’ statutory right to be physically present at Mr. Bernardo’s November 26, 2024 parole hearing and to read their Victim Impact Statements in person, in the physical presence of Mr. Bernardo and the Parole Board panel, has been denied,” Danson wrote in the letter.
“Other than a bald reference to the PBC being ‘unable to ensure safety and security of all hearing attendees’, we have not been provided with any further details.”
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Danson argued that this does not meet the criteria stated in the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.
According to the act, the parole board can deny a person from attending a review hearing if the “security and good order of the institution in which the hearing is to be held is likely to be adversely affected by the person’s presence.”
Danson said this denial was “unacceptable” and “remarkably insensitive” to the Mahaffy and French families.
“It was nothing short of gut-wrenching to experience the painful and heartbreaking reaction of Debbie Mahaffy and Donna French when they learned that the PBC was prohibiting them from representing their daughters (and themselves), and denying them the right to confront Paul Bernardo, in person, through the reading of their Victim Impact Statements,” the letter said.
“This was truly a shock to their system. It was bone chilling – an insult so deep and hurtful that, (figuratively speaking), it set victims’ rights back to the stone age.”
“It is incredible how the ‘system’ is there to assist and benefit Canada’s most notorious sadist, sexual psychopath and murderer, but not his victims, who suffer every day.”
Danson urged that Bernardo’s parole hearing be adjourned to December or a later date to accommodate the families and counsel so they can travel to La Macaza.
Bernardo has been serving a life sentence for the kidnappings, tortures and murders of French and Mahaffy in the early 1990s near St. Catharines, Ont. He and his then-wife Karla Homolka also killed her younger sister, Tammy Homolka.
Bernardo, 60, was transferred to a medium-security prison in Quebec in June last year, a move that set off a firestorm across the country, and engulfed the Liberal government in controversy.
Bernardo had been living out his sentence in maximum-security prisons until then.
A review into his controversial transfer concluded that the decision to move Bernardo was “sound.”
