‘We’re just all pawns in the show’
As COVID-19 shuts down trials, victims say they feel forgotten by courts
Lisa Freeman and Catherine Riddell don’t know each other. But both women believe the justice system has failed them during the COVID-19 pandemic, victimizing them all over again. Freeman is still reeling from the fact that not only did social distancing restrictions keep her from attending last month’s remote parole hearing for the man who bludgeoned her father to death in Oshawa almost 30 years ago, she wasn’t allowed to participate virtually. “I had mentally prepared myself through the winter to face this guy,” Freeman said last week from her home in Osha- ww wa. “I was 21 when my dad was ww killed. I identified his body at the morgue — he was axed to t death, so you can imagine what my life has been. “He’s been incarcerated for 29 years, so I know my opportuni- yy ties to face him are getting reduced,” she added. “Never would I have thought … a global ww pandemic would affect all of this.” Riddell, meanwhile, spent her winter getting ready to go to ww court to face Alek Minassian, a the man who drove a rented van into pedestrians on Yonge Street on April 23, 2018, killing 10 people and injuring 16 others, 11 including Riddell, a lifelong North York resident. It took a lot to prepare just for “the thought of going to a courthouse for the first time,” Riddell said. She had even postponed surgeries to her injured hip and knee— enduring extra pain after two months in hospital — so she could attend the trial at a downtown Toronto courthouse. But then COVID-19 shut down all trials, including Minassian’s judge-alone case set for April. Ridell has been told it might go ahead in November — “but that’s tentative,” she said. Adding to her frustration is the fact the trial had already been postponed several times to determine if Minassian’s mental state made him criminally responsible for the carnage. Even before the pandemic, the trial had been due to start two years after the attack. “To me that alone is unacceptable,” she said. “I’m, can I say, pissed? I’m really angry about it,” said Riddell, almost 70. On the phone, she aa sounded energetic, friendly and upbeat, frequently erupting with laughter, despite the situa- ww tion. “I can only talk about my personal experiences in this case, but I know it applies in all cases, we don’t matter ... justice is a ww game,” she said. “It’s a contest g between defence and prosecution and who can outwit each other, and we’re just all pawns in the show.” Victims of crime often feel their interests have been ignored and that the criminal process itself exacerbates their trauma, said Aline Vlasceanu, executive director of the Ottawa- based Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime. “Victims have always been in this position, the pandemic is simply highlighting an imperfect system,” Vlasceanu wrote in email.
The public health emergency has also underscored that crime victims have no recourse if their rights are infringed. The Canadian Victims Bill of Rights, made law in 2015, is “a great start” but doesn’t have any teeth, she added.
“This creates an imbalance as offenders have very real, legislated, enforceable rights.”
Freeman feels she has been denied her statutory right to participate in the criminal justice process.
Last fall, the Parole Board of Canada notified her that John TTTerrence (Terry) Porter had ap- plied for day parole at a hearing with a date to be announced. In March, she learned it was scheduled in early April at the William Head Institution in B.C. She wrote and submitted a victim-impact statement about vv the anguish of losing her father tt in 1991. Roland Slingerland was 58 when Porter bludgeoned him to death in an Oshawa rooming housing after going there to hunt down a woman he had earlier beaten. Slingerland was minding the home for the ww owner, who was away. o Porter was convicted of firstdegree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole eligibility for 25 years. Freeman also booked a plane ticket to Victoria for the hearing —using her vacation time from her job as a nurse at a longterm- care facility. Then the pandemic hit. She soon received word that due to COVID- 19, penal institutions were V closed to visitors, so no “observers” — a term she finds offensive as a victim — would be allowed to attend the April 3 hearing. She sent a flurry of letters and emails to the parole board and correctional officials urging them to include her, or postpone it until it was safe for all parties to attend. As a victims’ advocate, Freeman says she is aware of “countless” of other crime victims who were also unable to attend parole hearings.
She was told an offender has a legislative right to have a hearing six months after his parole application.
The Parole Board of Canada confirmed in an email to the Star that “legislated time frames” meant the hearing couldn’t be postponed.
The hearing came and went; “I wwwasn’t there, he was granted day parole,” Freeman said. She received a written decision and audio recording after the fact.
While an audio recording of her victim-impact statement was read at the hearing, Freeman feels her voice wasn’t heard.
“This was my opportunity for him to listen to me and face me,” she said.
“This pandemic will end, my opportunity is gone forever. What is even worse, in six months time the parole board has authority to grant full parole without a hearing, so I will miss that opportunity again,” she said.
“It’s retraumatizing and revictimizing and it’s just so unfair.”