MANDEL: Schoolgirl killer Paul Bernardo remains behind bars – for now
As predicted and as hoped, the notorious serial rapist and murder has been denied parole but was told he has 'made progress'
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Third time was not the charm.
As predicted and as hoped, notorious serial rapist and school-girl killer Paul Bernardo will not be leaving his new medium-security digs at La Macaza, Que.
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MANDEL: Schoolgirl killer Paul Bernardo remains behind bars – for now Back to video
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With his sandy hair worn long over his years like some sad reflection of his high school yearbook, the paunchy 60-year-old sat slouched in a chair and took the news with resignation but not anger. “Step by step,” the cunning manipulator said so many times during the day-long hearing.
He’d given it his all: spewing a more focused version of his previous psychological gobbledygook he’s learned after more than three decades behind bars to convince the panel that he can be trusted out in the community — ideally on day parole to a halfway house or at the least, on temporary absences to attend a 12-part sex offender maintenance program.
His parole officer warned the board it’s premature to grant any release because Bernardo is still considered above average risk of sexual recidivism.
Not true, he insisted. “I’m 60. I’m pretty old,” he chuckled. “I haven’t been violent for 30 years.”
What a farce it all was — after gutwrenching victim impact statements delivered by the families of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French as well as by one of the more than 14 women he attacked as the Scarborough Rapist, the sadist who committed unspeakable evil dared to explain his crime spree by casting himself as the victim.
A victim of child abuse. A victim of low self-esteem. A “lesser than,” illegitimate son born of his mom’s affair — rejected by both his biological dad and the only father he knew. “I had no one to turn to. I just cried and I cried and cried,” he said.
“I was lonely, I was lost, I was degraded, humiliated, all the high levels of hurt. Why? It’s unfair, the world’s unfair,” Bernardo recalled thinking. “I caused the offending by taking the victim stance, and therefore I went out and punished other people.”
For good measure, he added a new one to his pity party — that he was the victim of intergenerational trauma after learning his mother had been sexually abused while growing up in foster homes, and he became determined to seek revenge on her behalf.
How convenient that both parents died in 2022, so his latest excuse can’t be verified.
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Parole board member Tanya Nouwens challenged him on his new theory. Why rape and kill young women when it was men who sexually abused his mother?
“Well, I’m not gay,” was his nonsensical answer.
After reconciling with his parents while in prison, presto, Bernardo said he’s now cured. No more need for power and control or “to overcompensate with exaggerated aggressiveness.”
“My self-esteem is so strong now,” he boasted.
Designated a dangerous offender by Justice Patrick LeSage, Bernardo is serving an indeterminate life sentence for the kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of Leslie and Kristen in the early 1990s. He also pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of his sister-in-law Tammy Homolka and confessed to raping 14 young women.
“You have no right ever to be released,” LeSage declared during his sentencing. “The behavioural restraint that you require is jail. You require it, in my view, for the rest of your natural life.”
The trial judge must have thought he’d done everything he could to ensure Bernardo stays behind bars.
But then we never imagined he could be transferred out of maximum — but that shocking move came one-and-a-half years ago, and he positively beamed as he described how he loves being a groundskeeper and making friends at the medium-security prison after three decades of his “solitary confinement torture.”
The real torture is what he did — and continues to do — to the French and Mahaffy families.
“It has been more than 32 years since my daughter, Kristen, was abducted, sexually assaulted, beaten to within an inch of her young life, tormented, humiliated and murdered, then dumped by the side of a road like a piece of trash,” Donna French said in her statement delivered over a glitch-plagued telephone line. “As of this date, it has been 11,680 days that I have had to live without my sweet, beautiful daughter.”
Ryan Mahaffy was just seven when his sister was abducted, raped, dismembered and encased in cement by Bernardo.
“Leslie had to endure three days of his unconscionable brutality,” he said in a statement that moved so many of us to tears. “My family and I have been left to relive it, over and over, with every hearing, news article or fleeting thought.”
Yet this monster had the absolute audacity to tell the hearing, “I didn’t want them to suffer.'”
Denying him any kind of release was the only right call, but the parole board did offer Bernardo some hope. “You have made progress,” Nouwens he told him.
And so he will torture the families yet again in two years time.
Donna French Victim Impact Statement by Cynthia McLeod on Scribd
Ryan Mahaffy Victim Impact Statement by Cynthia McLeod on Scribd
Deborah Mahaffy Victim Impact Statement by Cynthia McLeod on Scribd
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