‘SORRY IS TOO SMALL A WORD’
Killer nurse handed life sentence
Elizabeth Wettlaufer, the worst healthcare killer in Canadian history, finally spoke Monday.
Before being sentenced to life behind bars for 14 crimes, including the murders of eight vulnerable patients in her care, the 50-year-old mass murderer addressed the court briefly after the loved ones of her victims spoke out.
“I caused tremendous pain, suffering and death,” said Wettlaufer, who was unemotional in the courtroom. “Sorry is too small a word. I hope that the families can find some peace and healing.”
Wettlaufer was sentenced Monday to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. By then she would be 75, and it was indicated she “may never be paroled.”
Justice Bruce Thomas told the families — and the surviving victims of Wettlaufer’s failed murder
KILLER NURSE APOLOGIZES, AS THE VICTIMS’ FAMILIES TELL OF THEIR PAIN, GUILT AND ANGER
attempts — that they should be merciful with themselves in the aftermath of the crimes.
“It is a complete betrayal of trust when a caregiver does not prolong life, but terminates it,” he said. “But you cannot blame yourselves.”
Thomas described Wettlaufer’s “free run” on her nine-year killing spree, with no oversight or even an inkling she had committed such calculated murders.
“Without her confessions, I am convinced these offences would never have been brought to justice,” he said, calling Wettlaufer a “shadow of death that passed over them (the victims) on the night shift where she supervised.”
On Monday in statements to court, one after another, family and friends of victims, described overwhelming guilt, anger and profound sadness.
Sandy Millard, whose 87-year-old mother, Gladys Jean Millard, was murdered by Wettlaufer in 2011, told court about the depression she had fallen into. “Finding out she was killed by a huge injection of medication she did not need broke my heart,” she said.
Patricia Matheson glared at Wettlaufer as she read a statement by her husband, whose mother, Helen Matheson, was killed by the nurse in 2011. “I lost my mother for the second time. No funeral this time, just shock, followed by the question why,” Jon Matheson wrote.
But I was most struck by the response of an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who was concerned the case might have a chilling effect on free speech, for example on discussions between a couple, “should one spouse convince the other to commit suicide.”
The normalization of suicide continues apace. Time was when you were supposed to try to talk someone out of suicide, even physically prevent them from trying, especially a young person in a psychologically vulnerable, not to say irrational, state.
But now? Surely what Carter did to — for — Roy was nothing more than assist in his death. He was suffering. She offered relief from suffering. He was unable to go through with it. She helped him — not physically, to be sure, but arguably in a more profound way.
Oh but this is nothing like assisted suicide, is it? It will be objected that Roy was not suffering from an incurable disease; that he was not near the end of his natural life; that he was not in unendurable physical pain; that he was not in his right mind; that she was not a doctor. And if you think those are telling objections you have not been paying attention to the debate.
There was a time when that was what this was about. That was what the Sue Rodriguez case, and others like it, entailed: a patient who was in the worst sort of physical pain, on the road to an inevitable, if not immediate death. Yet though she was legally entitled to take her own life, she was physically incapable of doing so, by virtue of the same crippling disease that was slowly killing her.
Others, not yet in that situation, but fearing they soon would be, were faced with a cruel dilemma: that if they did not kill themselves now, while they were still able to but were deriving some enjoyment from life, they might find themselves unable to do so in future. That’s where the claim to the right to assistance from another person came in. That’s what we thought we were getting into. That’s what many people may still think is the issue.
But it soon became clear that it could not be limited to that, or at any rate would not be. Once you had defined suicide as, not a tragedy to be prevented, but a relief to be provided, then all of the careful limitations its advocates assured us would be placed around it were sure to fall away. The Supreme Court started the process, overturning its own previous ruling in the Rodriguez case. Though the Court invoked the same “cruel choice” described above, it did not attach any of the usual stipulations in granting the right to an “assisted death”: neither that the would-be suicide’s condition be terminal, nor that he be in acute physical pain, nor that he be unable to kill himself. All that was required was that the condition be “grievous and irremediable,” the pain, of whatever kind, “intolerable to the individual.”
Still, the court did at least insist that the patient be a mentally competent adult, as did the government in drafting the law that followed. But it was clear these conditions would be no more likely to survive than the rest. If, after all, relief from suffering were the issue, then what sort of monster would condemn a child to the sort of intolerable pain, physical or psychological, from which an adult would be spared? Why, likewise, should mere mental incapacity be an obstacle? If consent were in doubt, surely the consent of a guardian would be sufficient.
And, indeed, from the moment the law was passed — indeed, from the moment the Court’s ruling was handed down — that is what advocates have switched to demanding. Not a week goes by without some piece in the press calling for the remaining limits on death on demand to be relaxed, or fretting that not everyone will have “access” to the service. It is the same progression, if at rather a more rapid pace, as earlier witnessed in the Netherlands and Belgium — an eventuality that was predicted, but waved away by the Court. So we should not be surprised to find where this line of thinking has led us lately, what troubles our consciences most now: not only that those already determined to kill themselves might be prevented from having others help them, but that others might be prevented from convincing them to do so.