"He'd (Graham James) wait until the middle of the night, and then he'd crawl around the room in the dark on his hands and knees. He had the blinds duct-taped to the windows so no light could get in. It was the same every time. . . . Graham was on me once or twice a week for the next two years. An absolute nightmare, every single day of my life."
National Parole Board, meet Graham James.
Not the James you pardoned, but the real James who is described by Theoren Fleury, a former Calgary Flame, in his autobiography, Playing with Fire.
The book details years of alleged sexual abuse that Fleury suffered from James, his junior hockey coach. It's also a record of Fleury's self-destruction through drugs and alcohol as he silently struggled with his secret. His failed drug tests ultimately led to the NHL suspending him in 2003.
Fleury uses his book to encourage sexual abuse victims to speak out, saying, "The key to abuse is secrecy. Once the secret is out, the spell is broken."
Ironically, the same might be said about Canada's practice of essentially rubber-stamping the pardons of any ex-convict who applies. Until now, less than one per cent of the tens of thousands of criminals who have served their sentences and applied to have their crimes wiped from police databases have been rejected. The rest get a fresh start, unencumbered by a public police record.
News recently emerged (no one knows how) that James had been pardoned for his sexual abuse crimes more than three years ago. No one informed his victims and no one knows where he is. Last word is he was coaching a young hockey team in Spain.
The secret of our flawed pardoning practices is out. The spell is broken and the public is hopping mad. A Herald online poll showed that 96 per cent of readers think the parole board was wrong to pardon James. (Yeah, that's because the media is biased and is not stating the other side of the story, where people are overreacting and the pardon system doesn't need reform).
Fleury rightly responded by calling for changes to a "flawed system." So did Sheldon Kennedy, the former NHL player who was abused by James for years and came forth to publicly accuse him. His accusations and those of an anonymous player led to a 1997 conviction for James, and his three-and-a-half-year sentence.
Now that the news of James's pardon is out, Kennedy expects more victims to come forward. He says he knows "how much of a serial predator (James) is" and reports that investigators in his case estimated James could have as many as 150 victims.
The very idea of a man like James being pardoned violates our collective sense of justice. But the National Parole Board would have considered none of the above in its decision to grant James a pardon. Its criteria for rubber-stamping a pardon are relatively simple: applicants have served their sentences and paid any fines, followed by three to five years without any criminal convictions. After that, it's just paperwork and a $50 fee.
This process doesn't allow for any kind of discrimination based on the type of crime committed or the potential to reoffend. This, despite known high rates of recidivism for sexual molesters who prey on boys.
The John Howard Society of Alberta website reports on a long-term study which found that 42 per cent of child molesters in Canada were reconvicted of sexual or violent crime during a 15-to 30-year followup period. The highest rate of recidivism (77 per cent) was found in those who had previous sexual offences, who selected boys outside the family and who were never married. The description fits James like a glove.
James may have served his time and satisfied the criteria for a pardon. But his right to privacy and a do-over ended with the sustained and serial abuse of those charged to his care. The process may not discriminate based on the nature of his crime, but people do. Once a child molester, always a child molester. It's time for the pardoning process to reflect that reality.
I have to disagree with this article. People can and do change and we need to give them that opportunity. If we limit people's employment opportunities, by denying them a pardon, they will have an increased probability of re-offending than before. The pardon system is not "flawed." This article is biased as it fails to report on the stats that say 97% of ppl granted pardons are successful in leading crime free lives and only 3% of pardons have been revoked since 1970. Also, only 0.2% of pardons are actually granted to sex offenders, so I am not seeing anything flawed about these statistics.
It's the kind of story guaranteed to spark outrage: A much-despised hockey coach, who was jailed for sexually exploiting his adolescent charges, gets a pardon from the National Parole Board.
The federal government certainly wasted no time expressing its horror. How could it resist? In some quarters, the parole board is almost as reviled as Graham James, the coach it pardoned. And so when the Canadian Press broke the story this week, three years after James got the pardon, the Prime Minister's Office reacted with lightning speed, calling the case "deeply troubling and gravely disturbing."
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has since let it be known that the prime minister himself called him to express his concern and demand that the problem be "flagged" as urgent. Not surprisingly, Toews says he's considering a law to make it extremely difficult if not impossible for sex offenders and other unspecified types of criminals, to get pardons.
On first blush, that sounds reassuring. After all, what could be more important for a government than making the world as safe as possible for kids and teenagers? But on sober second thought, it seems that everyone might just be overreacting a little bit .
James is certainly a reprehensible character who abused his authority and trust as well as his players. He deserved every minute of the 3 1/2 years in prison he was sentenced to. But having paid for his crime, he's also entitled to the same consideration as every other convicted felon. And that includes the right to apply for a pardon five years after the end of his sentence.
James was pardoned in 2007, along with 15,000 other ex-convicts, all of whom had met the good-conduct criteria set out in the law. It's worth remembering that these pardons are fragile things. At the slightest hint of wrongdoing, they can be rescinded
And while the pardon puts James's criminal record beyond the reach of most people, it doesn't mean he can sign up as a hockey coach or a scoutmaster without anyone finding out about his past. His name will still be flagged on the Canadian Police Information Centre's database, making it pretty well impossible for him to work with children or young people.
There's no evidence that the pardon system is failing Canadians or their children. The parole board has granted 234,000 of them since 1970, and rescinded fewer than three per cent. There's also some evidence that pardons do help ex-convicts reintegrate into society, which helps to make the world safer for all of us.
However, if Toews can demonstrate that the system puts children at risk, then he should go ahead and revamp the whole procedure. But to do on the basis of one sensational case would be irresponsible.
Disgusted by the pardon of child molester and former hockey coach Graham James, one Alberta MP is soon tabling a petition to disallow convicted sex offenders that right.
Wild Rose MP Blake Richards said he was so outraged by the National Parole Board’s 2007 pardoning of James, who served 3 1/2 years for sexually abusing two of his hockey players including Sheldon Kennedy, he wants the law changed to include sex offenders in the list of ineligible applicants.
“I was, as most people disgusted by the fact someone like that, a very high profile person convicted of pretty sick crime ... and to then hear is allowed to get a pardon, sits the wrong way,” he said.
Richards’ constituents and staff are gathering signatures for a petition he hopes to table in the House this month.
“In my view, we need to make sure we can protect our vulnerable, our children,” he said.
“Anyone who preys on our children, we have to be aware of who those people are.”
The only requirement for a petition is 25 signatures, but Richards believes he will get multiple times that amount.
He said he hopes other MPs will step forward and do the same but for him, the news of the pardon hit home.
Former Calgary Flames star Theoren Fleury also alleges James sexually abused him, and went to the Winnipeg police in January after publishing a memoir detailing the alleged abuse by the former coach over several years.
“I’ve known Theo Fleury for a long time so it hit home with me,” Richards said, adding he too has children.
“I was disgusted by it and wanted to do something.”
In the wake of the news, Canada’s public safety minister Vic Toews vowed that rules that allowed James to be pardoned will be changed.
Toews wants the National Parole Board to have more “discretion” to refuse pardons, and offenders to have to be good longer before they can even apply.
A man convicted of murdering a police officer in 1980 has finally won some freedom, despite the dead man's now-grown children and remarried wife pleading otherwise in their Victim Impact Statements. Craig Munro, whom Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner Julian Fantino once told me was the worst psychopath he'd ever met, is now receiving unescorted absences from prison. We also have heard recently that Clifford Olson, who was convicted of murdering 11 children and youths in 1982, is getting a government pension. And it has emerged that sex offender Graham James has been pardoned for repeated crimes against teenage hockey players.
Is any of this surprising? Not to me.
I first wrote about Canada's justice system in my 1984 book Victims: The Orphans of Justice, which was about families who'd lost children to murder. Some of those kids were killed by Clifford Olson.
The Olson saga is a litany of all that was and is wrong with our early-release system of violent offenders. Olson had been in and out of jail since the late 1950s. From 1957 to 1968, he had escaped from prison six times, but in 1972 he still got full parole because he wasn't considered a risk. He graduated from robbery and sexual assault to murder -- lots of murders --and we can thank, at least in part, the parole authorities. Olson's 11 convictions ran concurrently -- at the same time -- which is another way of saying the last 10 didn't count.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is apparently upset that sex offender Graham James --who was sentenced to three and a half years -- got an official pardon. Perhaps Harper should get in touch with how Canada's criminal justice system treats such people.
Not too severely, I can tell you.
In the United States, a person convicted of child-pornography possession might be sentenced to years, even decades, in jail. In Canada, the mandatory minimum sentence is 14 days and that's what many offenders get. In this country, a three-year conviction for sexually abusing children-- which means the person can be paroled in 12 months -- is at the high end of sentencing.
Stats say that crime is on the decline, and maybe it is, largely due to demographics. But one thing remains clear: Canada treats violent offenders and sex offenders with kid gloves. What about murderers? Craig and Jamie Munro are a prime example of how we mollycoddle them.
On March 14, 1980, these two brothers, who were already career criminals, bungled the robbery of a Toronto tavern (a crime that itself was motivated by Craig's $1,000 fine for an earlier weapons conviction). At the time, Craig was free on automatic mandatory release, which goes to all offenders (except those convicted of first-degree murder) after two-thirds of their sentence. In the process, Craig shot Michael Sweet, a 30-year-old cop. The brothers kept Sweet hostage while he pleaded for his life, telling them about his three little kids. The Munros didn't care. They taunted him and kicked him as he bled.
After a 90-minute standoff, police stormed the building and shot the Munros. Sweet and the two brothers wound up in the same hospital, but only Sweet died.
Jamie was convicted of second-degree murder and got full parole in 1992. After marrying an Italian national, he moved to Italy where he's lived ever since. Craig was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life with no parole. But after 15 years he could apply for a review because of the "Faint Hope clause" in the Criminal Code. Even serial killer Clifford Olson could apply for that, and Paul Bernardo and anyone else. But Craig didn't go through with it because Julian Fantino always attended his parole hearings to say why he shouldn't be released.
Fantino was a homicide investigator in the Sweet case, along with David Boothby. Both men would go on become Toronto police chief. For almost 30 years, Fantino has tried to keep Craig Munro off the streets, showing up at parole hearings armed with information about Munro's problems with drugs and alcohol and his run-ins with authorities while incarcerated.
But now Munro is out because he's apparently in touch with "First Nations spirituality," and isn't considered a menace. (Munro is aboriginal? That's news to me. Usually, these guys are freed after finding Jesus -- even if they're Jews or Muslims.)
Authorities figure it's cheaper to have these people on the street than in jail. This way, the feds have enough left over to pay Clifford Olson's pension. Craig Munro starts getting his pension in seven years. And so does Graham James. Your tax dollars at work.
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