Tara Desousa hasn’t been able to hoodwink corrections and parole officials — yet.
Armed with an Indigenous background and buoyed by a transition to womanhood, even those woke weapons have not been quite enough to send Desousa dancing into the daylight.
And there is good reason for this.
In another life, Desousa, now 43, was a boy named Adam Laboucan, who was 15 years old in 1997. At that time, he sexually assaulted the three-month-old baby he was caring for in Quesnel, B.C.
The assault caused grievous internal injuries to the god-forsaken child.
As a result of the horrific sex attack, the baby required extensive surgery to remedy its terrible injuries. Adam Laboucan was undoubtedly a deeply disturbed monster who also later admitted to drowning a three-year-old boy when he was 11.
Thus, he became the country’s youngest dangerous offender. In the slammer, Laboucan transitioned into Tara Desousa.
Now, they’re demanding to be sprung to attend Indigenous cultural ceremonies in Vancouver. Desousa has applied to the Federal Court to torpedo a decision by B.C.’s Fraser Valley Institution (FVI).
FVI nixed “escorted temporary absences” from the federal women’s prison. It is not hard to understand why.
Even the pollyannish judiciary was repulsed by Laboucan’s sickening crimes and he was declared a dangerous offender in 1999.
B.C. Supreme Court Judge Victor Curtis said: “(There was no foreseeable) time span in which Adam Laboucan may be cured.
“In doing so, I do not intend that Mr. Laboucan be kept in prison for many years with no hope for release. What is intended, and what must happen is that Mr. Laboucan be kept only so long as it is necessitated by the risk he poses.”
That risk has not ebbed.
Now, Desousa is zeroed in on the Anderson Lodge “healing centre for women” in Vancouver.
Desousa tried a Hail Mary parole bid in June. That gambit was also scuttled.
In a rarity, the Parole Board said the victim and their family’s nightmare of “pain, anxiety and anguish” have endured more than 27 years after the horrendous crime.
Noting the “extreme” abuse Desousa suffered as a child, the panel still felt they were far too dangerous to let loose on the public.
“Each time you come up for parole, they are haunted by your offending and the damage you inflicted on their defenceless son/grandson,” the decision said.
The board ruled that Desousa presented “an undue risk to society,” if she was paroled. Indeed.
But don’t worry, Desousa’s case management squad assured us. The temporary absences are the “next logical step in reintegration and gradual release.”
Now housed in a women’s prison, there have been complaints that Desousa has allegedly made “sexist and inappropriate antagonizing comments” towards at least one inmate.
For decades now, no outrage has been too extreme for judges, corrections and the parole board to overlook. In the case of Tara Desousa, the crime was beyond the beyonds.
Twenty-seven years ago, Judge Victor Curtis didn’t seem to think there was anything to exorcise the evil demons embedded in the dark, troubled soul of Adam Laboucan.
And apparently, corrections and the parole board agreed. But will the Federal Court?
There lies the rub.
@HunterTOSun