Prison isn’t the right place for Budd
She may well be the next Ashley Smith, this young woman who was sentenced in Ottawa this week to federal prison for her part in using two teenage girls as sex slaves.
It was a sordid, depressing story — told by my colleague, the great courts reporter Gary Dimmock of the Ottawa Citizen — and there’s no doubt Caroline Budd (or Budd-Kenny, as she is sometimes known) was a participant in the confinement and sexual abuse of the two girls.
What is very much up for grabs is whether Budd has the capacity — intellectual, emotional — to understand the gravity of what she was doing, and how on earth anyone could imagine that jail is the place for her.
Ashley Smith, of course, was the teenager who died, a ligature around her neck, at Kitchener’s Grand Valley Institution after spending months in isolation being shuttled from prison to prison as she wore out each institution’s resources and burned out its staff.
From an unhappy, occasionally out of control apple thrower (the original offence for which she was first sent to a youth facility), in prison Ashley morphed into an ever more disturbed and chronic self-harmer. She got worse, sicker. She tied upward of a half dozen of those ligatures around her neck, sometimes until blood vessels in her face burst, every day.
She was 19 when she died, of asphyxiation, on Oct. 19, 2007.
Consider Butt, at 22 a few years older, but with many of the same problems: As her lawyer, James Harbic, told Ontario Court Judge Kent Kirkland, quoting from a presentence report and two psychiatric/psychological assessments, she has a long list of mental disorders.
In no particular order, Butt had a chaotic childhood, marked by constant bullying, a long pattern of being sexually abused that began at an early age, habitual self-medication with daily marijuana use, several failed suicide attempts, eating disorders and a whole range of crippling anxiety disorders.
Naturally, all of this left her with the “V” for victim tattoo on her forehead that only the predator can see — and can spot at 20 paces or in a crowd.
She had a succession of abusive, cruel boyfriends — most of whom knocked her about one way or the other, and several of whom her parents allowed to live in their home. (As one of the assessments puts it, kindly, “Her parents as well have had difficulties seeing red flags regarding her associations…”) She also had the predictable succession of miscarriages and abortions.
And then she met Tony (Antonio) Comunale, now 33, who was convicted with her of eight offences for their Victoria Day, 2014, assaults on the teenage girls.
He has yet to be sentenced, but is painted, in all the assessment reports, not only as the overwhelming driving force of the pair, but also as a peculiarly narcissistic creep.
He cheated on her, pressured her for threesomes, denigrated her, threatened her, wanted them to have sex in public places or to be videotaped having sex.
One incident says it all it about Comunale.
According to what Budd told a forensic psychologist, when he was digitally penetrating one of the teenage girls, he asked Budd to pass him gloves (of course she did). After all, as Budd said, he didn’t “want to ruin his manicure.” He was very fussy about his nails; oh good, a modern man and an oldschool sexual predator rolled into one.
As for Budd, she has the emotional capacity of a 13-year-old. Her long-term plans, she told the forensic psychologist, include making $500 billion, bio-engineering wings and dying young; that sounds about right for a twentysomething, doesn’t it?
Her lawyer was seeking a suspended sentence, with probation and treatment. The judge, on his last day on the job, was having none of it, and sent her off to prison.
When Budd was sentenced on Thursday, and the handcuffs were going on, she begged that someone put up her hood; she wanted to hide her face from the cameras, not realizing, even then, at the very last moment, that she was going first to the cells and then to prison.
As someone who has talked to her at some length told me, “it’s not quite like talking to Donald Duck, but there’s a cartoonish aspect to it.”
These were serious, genuine crimes, with genuine victims. But it looks to me very much as if Caroline Budd may have been one of them. Pity those poor correctional officers at the Grand Valley Institution, where she will almost certainly end up: Another mentally ill kid who doesn’t belong in jail is heading their way.
ALL OF THIS LEFT HER WITH THE ‘V’ FOR VICTIM TATTOO ON HER FOREHEAD THAT ONLY THE PREDATOR CAN SEE . — COLUMNIST CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD