Notorious killer Paul Bernardo moved to a medium-security prison | 24CA News
Convicted teen killer and serial rapist Paul Bernardo was quietly moved to a medium-security jail in Quebec on Monday, the lawyer for his victims’ households says.
Bernardo has been serving a life sentence for kidnapping, torturing and killing Kristen French, 15, and Leslie Mahaffy, 14, within the early Nineteen Nineties close to St. Catharines, Ont.
“He’s been transferred from Millhaven to a medium penitentiary in Quebec,” Tim Danson, lawyer for the French and Mahaffy households, informed Global News on Friday.
“For the (victims’) families, it’s very, very distressing.”
Danson and a supply with information of the switch each stated Bernardo was moved from maximum-security jail Millhaven Institution, situated roughly 20 kilometres west of Kingston, Ont., to La Macaza in Quebec.
The supply, who wasn’t approved to talk publicly, stated La Macaza, in Quebec’s Laurentians, is a jail for sexual offenders and people prone to being harmed by different inmates, and informed Global News they believed the transfer was executed “secretly.”
A spokesperson for Correctional Service Canada wouldn’t remark “on the specifics of an offender’s case,” however careworn that “this offender” is serving an indeterminate sentence, which means there is no such thing as a finish date to the sentence.
“Public Safety is the paramount consideration in every decision made by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC),” an emailed assertion reads.
“We assure the public that this offender continues to be incarcerated in a secure institution, with appropriate security perimeters and controls in place.”
Global News has additionally contacted Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino’s workplace and is awaiting a response.
Bernardo has repeatedly sought and been denied parole since his conviction, along with his subsequent listening to set for November 2023. Danson stated the timing makes the switch worse for households.
“A situation like this, just as it is when we’re preparing for parole hearings … it kind of transports the families back to the beginning and it kind of ignites all the horrible feelings, you know, that they’ve been trying to address and deal with and get on with life,” he stated.
“It just tears them apart. There’s just a high level of pain and sadness and despair and anguish.”
Danson stated that, as counsel for the households, he was notified about Bernardo’s transfer after the actual fact.
“The call isn’t to say it’s going to happen on a certain day and time. The call is that it just occurred.”
He added that he requested Correctional Service Canada (CSC) what the premise was for the choice to maneuver Bernardo however didn’t obtain a solution. He additionally inquired about whether or not Bernardo could be in segregation or protecting custody or on a specific vary.
“None of that would be answered. We don’t know anything other than them saying that, ‘Well, there’s a criteria that we have in Corrections Canada and he met it and so we moved him.’”
He says he careworn to Correctional Service Canada that if Bernardo ever had been to flee, there could be a severe danger to public security, however he was assured that “medium security is still significant security.”
“But, you know, that’s not really the point. This individual committed unspeakable crimes against innocent children, teenage girls.”
Bernardo’s intercourse crimes over a number of years within the late Eighties and early Nineteen Nineties, a few of which he videotaped and which fashioned a part of the proof towards him in courtroom, sparked widespread terror and revulsion.
Among his acts, he and his then-wife Karla Homolka kidnapped, tortured and killed Mahaffy, of Burlington, Ont., in June 1991 at their house in Port Dalhousie, Ont., earlier than dumping her cement-encased stays in a close-by lake.
They equally kidnapped and, after ignoring her agonized pleas over three days, killed Kristen French in April 1992.
Bernardo in the end admitted to raping 14 different girls. He was additionally convicted of manslaughter within the December 1990 dying of Homolka’s youthful sister, Tammy. The 15-year-old woman died after the pair drugged and sexually assaulted her.
Homolka pleaded responsible to manslaughter and served a 12-year jail sentence earlier than launch in 2005. She went on to remarry and grow to be a mom.
— with recordsdata from The Canadian Press’s Colin Perkel.
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
