The Peter Whitmore Dilemma: What Should We Do About Released Pedophiles?
Posted August 2, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The convicted pedophile, who was arrested early Wednesday morning in Saskatchewan after a tense standoff, has been behind bars four times for his crimes.
Each time he’s finished his sentence and been released.
And each time he’s re-offended.
Experts know most pedophiles can’t be cured of their perverse attractions and Whitmore appears to be worse than most – he’s repeatedly refused any treatment to help him deal with his urges.
But to many, Whitmore is simply the poster boy for a much larger problem. He keeps going in and then getting out, before returning to jail for violating his release conditions.
The law allows pedophiles to be declared dangerous offenders. They can be kept in jail for good, but only if they’ve committed a crime worthy of that status and the designation can only be imposed during sentencing.
“Before you can invoke the long term offender or dangerous offender, you have to wait until somebody commits a serious offence of violence against a child,” points out David Butt of Beyond Borders. “And the last few times his offences have been breach of probation, which the law does not consider seriously enough, even though they involve children.”
“The way the legislation is written it only captures a really tiny number of guys,” complains John Muise, a former Toronto Police officer and now head of the Canadian Centre for Abuse Awareness.
So if we can’t keep those who are a danger to our children behind bars and we can’t completely monitor their movements when their sentences are up, what can we do with them?
“I’ll be blunt,” Muise begins. “For that that small number that commit a lot of serious crimes, the best thing we can do is we can lock them up. And that frightens some people but the reality is, when they’re in jail, they’re not going to hurt anybody.”
But what happens once their sentence is up?
“If they’re coming out of jail, then the best thing we can do is have all the best monitoring tools in place, the best orders in place, best investigative aids in place to the best of our ability, society’s ability, to insure that they don’t re-offend. That’s the hard part and that’s not what’s being done.”
“We need a dangerous sexual predator law. We need legislation that deals with sexual predators. They’re in a category by themselves,” argues Tim Danson, who represents the families of Paul Bernardo victims Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy. “And if you are a psychopath…you should not be on the street.”
Ankle bracelets that keep track of where the offenders are may be one solution to monitoring what they’re doing after they’re released. But “they are just so not used in this country,” notes Muise.
A caller to CityOnline Wednesday knows how serious the lapses in the law can be. “John” alleges he was abused by a notorious convicted pedophile named Karl Toft, and has been fighting for years to get charges brought against him. But for now, his tormentor remains a free man.
“There is only one thing that can be done, and that is pedophiles have to be locked up until such a time that a medical board, and only a medical board…can tell society that these people are no longer a threat to our children,” he pleads.
Muise agrees the price of not acting is simply too high.
“I’ve met a lot of adult survivors of child abuse and those kinds of crimes,” he concludes. “And I can tell you that…many of them end up broken people, broken adults.”
