WHY KARLA HOMOLKA HAUNTS US STILL
WE CAN HARDLY FAULT THE RESIDENTS OF CHÂTEAUGUAY FOR THEIR SHOCK AND FEAR ABOUT DISCOVERING THIS WOMAN WAS IN THEIR MIDST. — PAULA TODD
HER LAWYER’S PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER AS A BATTERED WOMAN TRAPPED BY A PSYCHOPATH STILL RINGS HOLLOW FOR SOME.
We can’t shake Karla Homolka, not her past, and now not her future. When news broke this week that the convicted serial killer and her children had been discovered living in a Montreal suburb, reporters were immediately calling for reaction, taking me back to that afternoon in Guadeloupe when I’d been as troubled as the parents in Châteauguay are today.
I’d come to find Homolka out of a serious concern that she was teaching girls on the Caribbean island the same age as the ones she’d helped her then- husband, Paul Bernardo, kidnap, sexually torture and kill. Some Canadians said good riddance when she’d disappeared five years earlier because they believed she was still dangerous. If she was, surely we were culpable of putting other people’s children at risk — even if they lived far away? As an investigative journalist, I knew these were the problems we were supposed to solve.
Sitting in her small living room that day, her youngest boy toddled over to me, reaching up to sit on my lap. Nervous about heightening Homolka’s wrath ( she was angry with me for tracking her down), I gently stilled his hand. “See,” I said, “I’m not bugging your children.” Homolka’s face was fierce, her voice threatening. “Good, because you’ll be very quickly out of here.”
I nodded at her. “You see? I get it. I have no desire to hurt anybody here.”
She tightened her glare on me and seemed totally oblivious to the irony: she was the only one in the room who had tortured and killed children. Having done that, she knows better than anyone why parents might worry about their precious wards.
Time blurs facts, and it’s been a worrisome experience this week to be contacted by a few reporters who criticized Homolka’s neighbours for their concerns, and tried to get me to do the same.
But then, Homolka has always been divisive, and the truth, elusive. Was she a willing participant in the horrifying crimes she and Paul Bernardo committed against girls, including the rape- death of her baby sister? Or was she a victim herself of a psychopath?
This week, there’s been something of a Homolka fatigue emerging, a desire to let her alone and keep her out of the press where her presence re- opens painful wounds. Make it all go away, some say, and let us forget the horrible discovery — too late — of the videotapes that showed Homolka actively taking part in unspeakable sex crimes against terrified girls.
Despite the discomfort, the questions about Homolka still matter today because living with a convicted serial killer in your midst — who may or may not also be a sexual predator, or at least a woman who tolerated marrying a rapist — is a risk some parents don’t want to take. And the defence lawyer’s portrait of a serial killer as a battered woman trapped by a psychopath still rings hollow for some.
After years of investigation, more than two dozen doctors and psychiatrists couldn’t agree on the Homolka psychological dilemma, instead offering an array of diag- noses from post- traumatic stress and battered women’s syndrome to a “cold and distant” narcissism. “Karla Homolka remains something of a diagnostic mystery. Despite her ability to present herself very well, there is a moral vacuity in her which is difficult if not impossible to explain,” one psychiatrist concluded.
Even Justice Patrick Galligan, after his judicial inquiry minutely examined unprecedented legal and psychiatric evidence, couldn’t decide whether Homolka voluntarily engaged in “unspeakable atrocities” or not. “I am unable to answer that question and ... it was a question that divided the jury,” he wrote in 1996.
When I learned a few years ago that Homolka was back in Canada, I wasn’t surprised and I didn’t go looking for her. The fact she’d come home decreased the possibility she could do anything untoward without raising red flags. I knew that some members of her husband’s family in Guadeloupe had always been displeased about the marriage, and an island is a hard place to keep a secret. In fact, it was one of the extended family who posted a clue about her whereabouts online.
We can hardly fault the residents of Châteauguay for their shock and fear about discovering this woman was in their midst, her children at their schools.
And if Homolka is to be cast as the victim by some, perhaps her supporters should consider what she thinks about a parent’s right to protect her children. I found that out firsthand during our testy encounter in her island hideaway.
No one wants her innocent children to pay the price for her crimes, but neither should anyone else’s children.