July 30, 2010, By The Canadian Press
CALGARY - A Calgary psychiatrist who has frequently testified in court for the Crown now faces 21 sexual assault charges involving patients, some allegedly during court-ordered visits.
Dr. Aubrey Levin, 71, was first arrested and charged March 23 after allegations that a 36-year-old patient was repeatedly sexually assaulted.
Calgary Police said that following that charge, "the sex crimes unit was approached by numerous people alleging they, too, were sexually assaulted by Levin during counselling sessions or court-ordered visits."
"These assaults allegedly occurred at Levin's Peter Lougheed (hospital) office or examination rooms."
Levin has now been charged with 20 additional counts of sexual assault involving 20 other patients.
Alberta Justice has been reviewing all criminal cases in which Levin offered testimony to ensure there were no miscarriages of justice.
Levin's licence to practise medicine was temporarily suspended by the College of Physicians and Surgeons when the original charge was laid, said spokeswoman Kelly Eby.
She couldn't confirm whether any patients had registered complaints against the doctor, saying those would be confidential unless there were a disciplinary hearing.
Levin earned his degree in 1963 in South Africa and was a military psychiatrist in that country before moving to Canada.
He served briefly as regional director of the federal Psychiatric Centre Saskatoon as an employee of Correctional Service Canada and has been a licensed psychiatrist in Alberta since 1998.
Calgary psychiatrist now faces 21 sex assault charges involving patients
Immigration judge who wanted sex to help refugee claimant gets 18 months
July 29, 2010, By The Canadian Press
TORONTO - A former immigration judge who asked for sex to approve an application from a Korean refugee claimant was handed an 18-month sentence Thursday.
Steve Ellis, 50, was found guilty of breach of trust and bribery in April.
A 2006 meeting was recorded by the woman, Ji Hye Kim, who took the matter to police.
Outside court Thursday, Kim expressed relief that the case was finally over after a "long, long four years."
"It sends a message that this can happen anywhere but we won't tolerate it as Canadians," added her husband, Brad Trip.
In a statement in a Toronto court, Ellis apologized and said he's ashamed. His psychiatrist had told a sentencing hearing that Ellis suffered from bipolar disorder, which leads to errors in judgment.
But the judge said Ellis breached the trust placed in him and that his actions undermine the public's confidence in the immigration system.
The prosecution asked for a sentence of 3 1/2 years, while the defence sought a conditional sentence.
Ellis was the adjudicator at Kim's refugee hearing in 2006.
A Toronto court heard the woman interpreted comments Ellis made as him proposing a physical relationship, which made her uncomfortable.
After he twice visited her at a restaurant where she worked, Kim, then 25 years old, and Trip, who was her boyfriend at the time, planned to secretly videotape her third meeting with Ellis at a coffee shop.
"I want to be good friends with you, and I know you've got a boyfriend," Ellis can be seen and heard saying on the video, which was played at his judge-alone trial.
"I've got a wife, so I mean, if we do things together on the side, that's OK."
Ellis then reassures her he's not going to fall in love with her. But he warns Kim not to tell her boyfriend about him because he might tell someone she was sleeping with Ellis and that's why he approved her application.
Ellis can be seen telling Kim he initially was going to deny her application, but that "for some reason I can't say no to you, I don't know why ... You're a really special person."
As they left the coffee shop Ellis kissed her on the cheek, Kim testified.
Kim, now a landed immigrant, was seeking asylum in Canada because of a physically abusive father and threats from money lenders in South Korea.
Ellis was suspended from his job after the charges were laid. The former Toronto city councillor and non-practising lawyer was appointed to the Immigration and Refugee Board in 2000.
Critics, including the Canadian Bar Association, have said political patronage was rampant at the board for years.
Changes to the selection process for board members were made in 2004 under the previous Liberal government and again in 2007 under the Conservatives.
Supreme Court rejects new trial for serial killer Pickton
July 30, 2010, By Stephanie Levitz, The Canadian Press
OTTAWA - The Supreme Court of Canada has rejected serial killer Robert Pickton's bid for a new trial.
The top court was unanimous in ruling that Pickton's right to a fair trial was not affected by the trial judge's final instructions to the jury, although they split 6-3 on the reasons.
Pickton was found guilty of six counts of second-degree murder in December of 2007 and is charged in 20 other deaths.
His trial took almost a year, but the appeal centres around a question the jury asked the trial judge on their sixth day of deliberations.
The panel wanted to know whether they could find Pickton guilty if they inferred he acted indirectly.
In his answer, the trial judge said if they found Pickton "was otherwise an active participant" in the killings, they could find him guilty.
Pickton's defence had argued that the judge's answer gave the jury an avenue to convict their client without giving them a chance to defend him properly, as the Crown's case rested on Pickton being the only one responsible for the crimes.
In writing for the majority, Justice Louise Charron said that didn't happen:
``The fallacy of Mr. Pickton’s argument lies in the fact that the defence theory itself put the participation of others at issue. Throughout the trial, the defence by its approach urged the jury to consider that others may have actually killed the victims.'
``An inevitable consequence of going down that road is that the jury would have to be instructed on how this could, if at all, impact on Mr. Pickton’s own criminal liability."
In fact, Charron wrote, the judge would have made a mistake if he had not clarified his instructions, because his initial charge was confusing.
``The adequacy of the jury instructions must be assessed in the context of the evidence and the trial as a whole. There is nothing wrong, particularly in complex or lengthy trials, with the trial judge and counsel’s narrowing the issues for the jury by focusing on what is actually and realistically at issue in the case, provided that, at the end of the day, the jury is given the necessary instructions to arrive at a just and proper verdict.
"Realistically, this case was never about whether Mr. Pickton had a minor role in the murder of the victims. It was about whether or not he had actually killed them."
Pickton was convicted of second-degree murder for the deaths of Mona Wilson, Sereena Abotsway, Brenda Wolfe, Marnie Frey, Andrea Joesbury and Georgina Papin.
He was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years.
The former pig farmer had been charged with 26 counts of first-degree murder, but the trial judge split the charges into two groups and a trial on the remaining 20 charges was put on hold pending the top court's decision.
The Crown in B.C. had won an appeal in a lower court that would have allowed them to retry Pickton on all 26 counts of first-degree murder had the Supreme Court overturned the conviction.
It is now expected that the other 20 charges will be stayed.
Pickton's trial followed one of the most massive police investigations in Canadian history, involving thousands of pieces of evidence.
The severed heads, hands and feet of three of the women were found in buckets on his Port Coquitlam, B.C. pig farm, while the bones and DNA of the others were scattered across the property.
The jury heard from Pickton's associates that he bragged about picking up prostitutes and luring them back to his farm to kill them and also heard from Pickton himself, in the form of a lengthy interview with police and with an undercover officer in his jail cell.
In the conversations, he appeared to brag about being the head honcho, and also that he had killed 49 women and wanted to make it one more for an even fifty. He also said he had gotten sloppy towards the end.
In their decision, the Supreme Court also addressed whether the trial judge should have more fully instructed the jury on the issue of aiding and abetting.
Writing for the minority, Justice Louis LeBel said he should have.
``The re-charge whereby the trial judge instructed the jury that they could convict Mr. Pickton if they found he was the actual shooter or `was otherwise an active participant' in the killings clearly opened up party liability as an alternate route to conviction," he wrote.
``That having been done, it was an error for the trial judge not to have left a full aiding and abetting instruction with the jury in order to set out the alternate route properly by which the jury could convict Mr. Pickton for the six murders with which he was charged."
In the end, LeBel said: ``Certainly, this was a long and difficult trial — but it was also a fair one.'
``Despite the errors set out above, there was no miscarriage of justice occasioned by the trial proceedings. Mr. Pickton was entitled to the same measure of justice as any other person in this country. He received it. He is not entitled to more.
Kenneth Klassen has been sentenced! 11 years in prison on 14 counts of sexual interference and one count of importing child pornography.
Cdn sex tourist gets 11 years for sex with young girls in Columbia, Cambodia
at 14:01 on July 28, 2010, EDT. By The Canadian Press
VANCOUVER - A Canadian man who admitted to having sex with young girls in Columbia and Cambodia has been sentenced to 11 years in prison.
A B.C. Supreme Court judge said Kenneth Klassen committed "serious" and "opportunistic" offences in delivering his sentence on 14 counts of sexual interference and one count of importing child pornography.
Justice Austin Cullen rejected the defence argument that Klassen was just a "customer" in a transaction with sex-trade workers, saying the girls were very young and vulnerable.
The judge also noted the crimes may have never surfaced if police hadn't discovered a package Klassen mailed himself of videos showing him having sex with girls the Crown says were as young as eight.
Before his sentencing, the 59-year-old Burnaby, B.C., man stood up and briefly apologized, telling the judge he was "sorry for what I have done with all my heart."
The Crown says the sentence imposed by the judge is the highest so far for charges under Canada's so-called sex tourism law.
Government steps in to quell RCMP infighting amid accusations of bullying
July 27, 2010, By Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press
OTTAWA - The country's top bureaucrat has ordered a "workplace assessment" of the RCMP to help massage internal conflict amid concerns Mountie Commissioner William Elliott is rubbing senior staff the wrong way.
Privy Council Clerk Wayne Wouters will appoint an independent adviser to look into the turmoil after senior members of the force complained about bullying and abusive behaviour by the force's first civilian commissioner.
The adviser, who has yet to be named, will decide the scope and timing of the assessment, to be delivered to the Public Safety Department, the agency that oversees the RCMP. The results will not be made public since the government considers the quarrel an internal human resources matter.
Insiders said Tuesday that two senior members, Raf Souccar, deputy commissioner for federal policing, and Tim Killam, deputy commissioner of police support services, lodged a complaint about Elliott with the deputy minister of Public Safety.
It is believed that five to eight other Mounties one rung beneath the two veterans also signed on to the grievance against Elliott, which quickly made its way to the Privy Council clerk, then to the Prime Minister's Office.
Neither the RCMP, nor Elliott had an official comment on the simmering dispute Tuesday.
But Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said he was troubled by the controversy and that he hoped the assessment moved along swiftly.
"Our government expects this to occur expeditiously and without further rancour," Toews said in a statement late Tuesday. "Frankly, it is unacceptable for individuals in leadership positions in an organization as important as the RCMP to air internal disputes through the news media."
Elliott, who's never been a police officer, was appointed three years ago to overhaul the problem-plagued national institution.
A former national security adviser to the prime minister, he brought considerable knowledge about public safety issues — particularly the fight against terrorism — to the post.
But insiders, speaking on condition of anonymity, say his intimidating ways may have alienated key members of the force's senior executive.
The allegations left one expert wondering whether the damage can be repaired.
The workplace assessment is "too little, too late," said Linda Duxbury, a Carleton University business professor who has done extensive consulting work for the RCMP.
"Can Bill Elliott work with his leadership team any more? Realistically, I would really question that," she said.
"The foundation on which the culture of policing rests is one of trust."
Duxbury said she was surprised the complainants went outside the force to air their concerns. "That is so not the RCMP."
Two sources familiar with Elliott's style rejected the notion he's simply run into resistance from senior police officers to the major transformation he's trying to achieve at the RCMP.
"I don't think change is the friction issue," said one. "I think it's the case of management style."
One source who has long known Souccar and Killam said of the senior officers: "These are not whiners."
"I know there have been rumblings for a significant period of time about the relationship between the commissioner and his leadership team," said another insider who has heard first-hand reports about Elliott's behaviour.
"Bullying, yelling, screaming, disrespect is wrong. And you don't get change by bullying people into it. You get it by convincing people that they want to go where you want to go.
"I think it's the lack of listening that frustrated people the most."
A source also dismissed the idea that senior members are ganging up on Elliott because he's an outsider who hasn't walked a beat.
"I think they actually thought there was some merit in the early days to a civilian being there, that would allow them to look quite candidly at what was transpiring.
"The commissioner doesn't have to run with a gun on his hip and do things. I mean, he's expected to manage and help organize."
The infighting comes as the force struggles to modernize to meet new challenges.
A heavy load and tight budgets have sapped morale, said RCMP Staff Sgt. Mike Harvey, one of the force's staff relations representatives.
"We're understaffed and overworked," said Harvey. "That's a huge issue right across the country."
Supreme Court to rule Friday on whether serial killer Pickton gets new trial
July 27, 2010, By Terri Theodore, The Canadian Press
VANCOUVER - Serial killer Robert Pickton will find out Friday whether the country's highest court will grant him a new trial.
But no matter what the high court decides, a man whose sister's DNA was recovered from Pickton's farm said the families of his victims, proven and alleged, will still be devastated.
Ernie Crey said Tuesday he doesn't want to see a new trial for Pickton because the convictions for six counts of second-degree murder at least gives some families a legal closure.
"None of the families, including my family, will ever have an emotional, spiritual closure, because we have to live with the reality of a missing loved one for the remainder of our days."
Crey's sister, Dawn, was one of six women whose DNA was found during an extensive forensic investigation on Pickton's pig farm but police said the evidence wasn't enough to bring a charge.
Pickton was charged in the deaths of 26 women. In December 2007, after an 11-month trial on six of those charges, he was convicted of second-degree murder in all six.
He appealed those convictions all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada on the grounds that the judge made a mistake in his instructions to the jury.
Pickton's lawyer, Gil McKinnon, argued at a hearing before the court in March that the former pig farmer did not receive a fair trial when he was convicted in the deaths of the sex-trade workers from Vancouver's squalid Downtown Eastside.
But B.C. prosecutor John Gordon told the court that no errors were made by the judge at Pickton's trial — and even if there were errors, they were so minor they do not warrant a new trial.
The Crown contends its case against Pickton was so overwhelming that he couldn't possibly avoid conviction at another trial, so justice would not be served by ordering a new one.
Central to the appeal is whether the initial instruction by the trial judge was adequate, and whether his subsequent answer to a question from the jury during deliberations further muddied the waters.
Pickton still faces charges in the deaths of 20 other women but the prosecution has said that if his conviction is upheld, they will not proceed to trial on the remaining charges. If the convictions are overturned, they want to retry Pickton on all 26 murder counts.
For his part, Crey said a second trial and subsequent conviction wouldn't change Pickton's life sentence.
"It can't make him any guiltier than he is."
Roger Borhaven's feelings about the high court decision are mixed. His daughter, Andrea Borhaven, is on the list of 20 women Pickton stands accused of killing but whose cases have not gone to court.
He would like to see Pickton go to trial for his daughter's death, but he's also worried about a second trial.
"I'd sooner see him convicted. If he goes for another trial then he might get off," he said. "It's a gamble all right."
Crey prefers tosee the decision left alone.
"I hope his convictions are upheld and he faces his future as it is and that's basically a small cell in some federal prison for the balance of his life."
Crey said it's time to get on with a promised inquiry into the police investigation of dozens of cases of women missing from the poverty-stricken Vancouver neighbourhood.
"I think it will cast light into some dark corners about the investigation." Crey said. "For one thing how is it possible that so many women would vanish from the Downtown Eastside right out from under the noses of police."
Pickton is serving a mandatory sentence of life in prison for killing Mona Wilson, Sereena Abotsway, Andrea Joesbury, Georgina Papin, Brenda Wolfe and Marnie Frey. He has no possibility of parole for 25 years.
His 2002 arrest led to a massive search of his property in Port Coquitlam, B.C., where investigators found body parts, blood samples, fragments of bone and the belongings of victims.
The Crown's evidence was among the most grisly ever aired in a Canadian courtroom.
Shooting the messenger
This article from Macleans.ca..SHOOTING THE MESSENGER!
It's courtesy of recently appointed Conservative Senator Pierre-Hugues
Boisvenu, who by all accounts is a fine and upstanding fellow. ...
http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/07/23/shooting-the-messenger
Cdn sex tourist engaged in 'commercial transaction' with abused girls: lawyer
July 23, 2010, By The Canadian Press
VANCOUVER - A Canadian man who admitted having sex with young girls in Colombia and Cambodia was a "customer" of willing participants and not an abuser, says his defence lawyer.
Kenneth Klassen pleaded guilty earlier this year to 14 counts of having sex with underage girls and one count of importing child pornography.
At his sentencing hearing Friday, the 59-year-old Burnaby man's lawyer said the crimes were "consensual" and his prison term should reflect that.
"It would be an error in principle ... to find that (Klassen) is somehow deserving of a more severe sentence because of what is characterized as the abject poverty in some other country or the failure of some other location to provide for its citizens," lawyer Ian Donaldson told a B.C. Supreme Court judge.
It was wrong for Klassen to have sex with girls the Crown says were as young as eight, Donaldson said, but that shouldn't be a factor in his "moral blame-worthiness."
"If (the girls) had ever said 'No,' he would have stopped," Donaldson said.
Court has heard witness statements from several children saying they were given gifts and cash to buy things like new clothes or soap for their family.
Prosecutor Brendan McCabe has asked for at least 12 years in prison.
McCabe said Friday that while he can't prove the girls were not sex workers, he believes they were just "inexperienced" children.
Donaldson told the judge his client will get a "substantial sentence ... no doubt," but he shouldn't get a longer sentence because of the aggravating factors raised by the Crown.
In asking for a more lenient sentence, he said Klassen is willing to attend all rehabilitation programs offered in prison and had no prior criminal record. Klassen hasn't offended in the nearly six years he's been in Canada on bail, either, Donaldson said.
And while he raised no issue with his client providing a mandatory DNA sample or having a weapons prohibition, he asked the judge not to impose a lifetime ban on Klassen attending playgrounds or community centres. Donaldson said the man has children himself and may eventually have grandchildren.
"He sees what he did was wrong, he sees how to avoid doing that," Donaldson said.
Klassen was arrested in 2004 after he was caught trying to ship homemade DVDs back to Canada with images showing him having sex with prepubescent girls.
The father of three pleaded guilty to the 15 charges in May after a failed constitutional challenge to Canada's child-sex tourism law.
Part of exhibit featuring mash-up of guns and violence victims removed
July 21, 2010, By Mary Jo Laforest, The Canadian Press
EDMONTON - The creators of a world-renowned art installation that features a five-tonne cube of small firearms, ammunition and landmines say they are "gobsmacked" that part of their exhibit has been removed because of one complaint from China.
"The Art of Peacemaking: The Gun Sculpture" is on exhibit at the United Nations Vienna International Centre.
Sandra Bromley and Wallis Kendal say they were informed by email that a board showing photos of victims of gun violence from around the world was taken down.
"We don't understand it. We're speechless, we're furious and we feel it's a real violent act to our exhibit," Bromley said Wednesday.
The exhibit has three components — a massive gun sculpture created from 7,000 deactivated crime and military weapons donated from around the world; a large mural with photos of 114 images of victims and survivors of violence from around the world; and a wall-sized blackboard for visitors to leave messages.
Two of the photos were of Tibetan nuns with the words "imprisoned and beaten in prison" and "locked up as a teenager because of violent political beliefs" beside them.
China claims Tibet, which in turn maintains that it has always been an independent country and that China invaded it in 1949.
Bromley says the artists were told that the photos had been removed because a Chinese delegation complained to exhibit organizers.
An Austrian paper, Der Standard, reported on July 13 that "a representative of the Chinese UN delegation in Vienna confirmed that the agency had complained to the UN about the sculpture," but wouldn't comment further.
The Gun Sculpture installation had its world premier at Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany. It then went to the Centennial Exhibition for the Nobel Peace Prize in Seoul and it has also been on display at the UN's headquarters in New York.
"I've been an artist for 35 years and I've never had anyone touch my work like this," said Bromley.
"There has been controversy, but I've never had anyone just walk in and remove something on a weekend, or whenever it was done, and not expect repercussions. It's just staggering to me."
Bromley and Kendal don't know who removed the photos. In a letter to Antonio Costa, director general of the United Nations Office in Vienna, they wrote: "It is ironic that an institution dedicated to protecting human rights should so quickly sacrifice the artist's creative freedom, the right to 'speak' in the memory of those unable to defend themselves from abuse...
"In more than 30 years of exhibiting art in three continents, neither one of us has ever experienced this kind of blatant censorship or disrespect."
Bromley says Costa's reply was that nothing was done to undermine the integrity of the artwork and that the UN supported the installation.
No one at the UN in Vienna could be reached for comment, but an email said someone could reply in two weeks.
Bromley says that removing the voices of violence victims compromises the artwork's integrity and shrouds the truth that is being conveyed.
"Social issues like this, not everybody likes them but most people respect the right to look at issues and discuss issues. I hope the artistic community is riled by this.
"I hope they speak out loudly about it."
No one could be found to comment at the Canadian Council for the Arts.
The exhibit is scheduled to run until July 31 and the artists have asked that the missing component be put back.
Catherine Crowston, chief curator at the Art Gallery of Alberta, says the Edmonton institution was proud to present "The Gun Sculpture" in 2000 and is currently exhibiting Bromley's new work, "FIRE."
N.S. man guilty of 1970s sex crimes against boys in case that took 15 years
July 20, 2010, By Michael Tutton, The Canadian Press
PORT HAWKESBURY, N.S. - A former Nova Scotia businessman was convicted Tuesday of molesting two boys in the 1970s in a case that took more than 15 years to come to trial.
Ernest Fenwick MacIntosh, 67, was found guilty on 13 charges of indecent assault and gross indecency.
Justice Simon MacDonald of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court rejected MacIntosh's claims that the sex was consensual and occurred when the men — whose identities are protected by a publication ban — were in their late teens.
"I just find these actions committed ... to be repugnant," MacDonald said in delivering his verdict, adding that he found the testimony of two of the complainants more credible.
MacDonald acquitted MacIntosh of 13 sex crimes against a third complainant, noting that he took until July 2007 to formally file his allegations and had made changes to his story.
The judge noted that MacIntosh had been convicted in the 1980s of indecent assault and of sexual assault in separate matters. He ordered MacIntosh to be returned to jail until his sentencing hearing on Sept. 14.
"I conclude the nature of these events, the numbers of them, the ages of the people involved — I'm not prepared to allow him to walk out the door."
Crown lawyer Diane McGrath said one complainant was "very relieved the whole ordeal is over and he's just looking forward to moving on with his life and putting this stage behind him."
More than 15 years have passed since the now middle-aged men first reported to RCMP they were sexually molested as small boys in rural Nova Scotia.
During the trial, the complainants testified they were severely traumatized by their sexual encounters with MacIntosh, and did not come forward for years out of fear and embarrassment.
The first complainant told the court he believed there had been more than 100 incidents of fondling or oral sex, saying the encounters were "routine."
Two of the complainants are brothers and the other is their cousin, and all said MacIntosh had been a close family friend who volunteered to babysit the boys and take them for drives.
By the time the men began to come forward with their allegations, MacIntosh had left Canada to set up a business and residence in India.
A Mountie who investigated the complaint said he first called MacIntosh in New Delhi in January 1996 to tell him there was a warrant for his arrest.
MacIntosh claimed the phone went dead before he heard of the warrant, and — though he said he was "curious" — never called back. In 1997, he was told his passport wasn't being renewed due to the criminal charges.
Extradition proceedings started in 1997 but were marred by delays. New allegations of abuse came forward in 1999. Prosecutors halted the extradition as police checked into those allegations.
MacIntosh was finally extradited to Canada in June 2007.
"Extradition is not an easy thing to accomplish," McGrath said. "It required a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of paperwork, and that had to run its course.
"In hindsight anything can be done better. If we were involved in another extradition there are things that we would do differently and perhaps more efficiently."
Defence lawyers had applied for a stay before the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, saying MacIntosh's right to a fair trial had been damaged by "abhorrent" delays.
The court refused the application, concluding that MacIntosh was responsible for the delays because he didn't voluntarily return to Canada to face the charges.
The trial is the first of two MacIntosh is facing on a total of 36 charges of indecent assault and gross indecency.
No dates have been set yet for the second trial.
Defence lawyer Brian Casey said his client was disappointed with the ruling, but he didn't say whether he would file an appeal.
McGrath said she will request a sexual offender report be filed on MacIntosh, and that it be presented before his sentencing in Port Hawkesbury.
Police arrest 'person of interest' in missing Alberta couple's case
July 19, 2010, By The Canadian Press
NITON JUNCTION, Alta. - Police have arrested a violent fugitive they have been looking for as a "person of interest" in the case of an Alberta couple last seen more than two weeks ago.
RCMP say Travis Edward Vader, 38, was taken into custody at a rural home near Niton Junction between Edmonton and Edson, Alta., early Monday morning.
Lyle and Marie McCann, both in their 70s, were last seen July 3 on a surveillance video as they gassed up their motor home in their home town of St. Albert, just north of Edmonton. They were on their way to meet family in British Columbia for a camping trip.
The Edmonton RCMP emergency response team, Edmonton city police tactical unit and the fugitive apprehension team were all part of the arrest of Vader, who was wanted on outstanding warrants. The arrest occurred without incident.
Police said Vader, who was in custody at the Edson detachment, was to be interviewed concerning the McCanns. No charges were laid.
RCMP also said the location where Vader was arrested would be the focus of their continuing investigation.
A McCann family member declined to comment on the arrest, but Vader's mother said she was relieved that he had been taken into custody.
Jennifer Vader said she wanted her son to turn himself in.
Police have said Vader was arrested on outstanding warrants unrelated to the McCann case at a rural home near Niton Junction between Edmonton and Edson.
Police received more than 130 tips on the whereabouts of Vader and 170-plus tips on the McCanns and their vehicles.Investigators still want to hear from anyone who may have seen the couple's light-green 2006 Hyundai Tucson SUV between July 5 and 16. They were towing it behind their motor home.
Anyone with information is asked to call the RCMP's Edson detachment.
The motor home was found burned out in dense bush near Edson on July 5. Neither the McCanns nor their Hyundai were anywhere to be found. The SUV was located off a bush trail about 30 kilometres east of Edson on Friday.
Military police records expose domestic violence, counsellors cite Afghanistan
July 18, 2010, By Sue Bailey and Alison Auld, The Canadian Press
Military police records describe spousal sexual assault, hitting, shoving and screaming matches on or near Canadian Forces bases — family violence that counsellors link to repeated tours in Afghanistan.
The case summaries offer a rare view of tensions and conflict that regularly erupt in military homes across the country. They detail 49 incidents from July 1, 2008 to Feb. 1, 2009, in which charges were laid or complaints were deemed as "founded."
Several other reports of assault — physical and sexual — were handled through "alternative" measures or "departmental discretion."
The heavily censored records were released by National Defence eight months after The Canadian Press requested them under Access to Information laws. Names of suspects and victims were removed and specific dates were blanked out.
Charges included aggravated spousal assault, sexual assault, assault on a child, assault causing bodily harm, assault with a weapon and uttering threats.
Frontline counsellors say police reports just scratch the surface because so many victims of domestic abuse don't report it.
In January 2009, the RCMP phoned military police at CFB Shilo in Manitoba to inform them a soldier had been arrested for aggravated spousal assault with a weapon, sexual assault and three counts of uttering threats.
In July 2008, a member of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, was charged in Oromocto, N.B., for assaulting his common-law spouse at their home.
That same month, military police at CFB Borden answered a 911 call from a woman whose common-law spouse was later charged with assault.
"Alliston CAS was contacted as a follow-up," the report says of the child welfare service in the nearby community of Alliston, Ont., about 100 kilometres north of Toronto.
"However, its investigation was concluded due to the fact that the victim and child have moved out of the jurisdiction." The rest of the report concerning that case was blanked out.
At CFB Esquimalt, a summary from October 2008 describes a "common-law service couple" involved "in a verbal argument at their RHU (residential housing unit) which escalated into a physical assault by each on the other." The specific date was censored. Both partners were arrested for assault.
Therapist Greg Lubimiv of the Phoenix Centre for Children and Families in Pembroke, Ont., says the military caseload has soared.
There are now 100 families seeking help from nearby CFB Petawawa with another 20 on a waiting list, up from 12 before the Canadian military entered Kandahar in southern Afghanistan in 2006.
It's a volatile combat zone where insurgents rely more on improvised explosive devices than conventional warfare.
Many of the 150 soldiers who have died in Afghanistan were based at Petawawa. Lubimiv has seen first-hand what happens when those who make it home struggle to cope.
"Our anecdotal evidence is that there is an increase in the amount of domestic violence, and in the amount of children who are seeing violence in the home."
Many military members are now shouldering the residual stress of two, three or four tours in Afghanistan or more, Lubimiv said.
"When a soldier returns home, many have talked about feeling like strangers, not knowing where they fit. And it takes time to close that particular gap. And if there are, on top of that, mental health issues — or if there is already an issue of conflict or discontent in the couple's relationship — then all of that gets magnified by the new experiences that they each have faced."
Most troops will work through their issues on their own and gradually reintegrate, Lubimiv said. "But many don't respond in that way, need additional help or haven't been identified."
Dianne Power, executive director of the Women in Transition House in Fredericton, near CFB Gagetown, said the number of women seeking help seems to rise after their men return from overseas tours.
"They're saying the situation is abusive ... it can manifest itself in everything from increased drug and alcohol usage to violent outbursts."
Power said the shelter doesn't specifically track the number of military-related appeals for help.
She recalled a woman who gave birth at the shelter after fleeing from a spouse who became increasingly abusive following an Afghanistan tour.
Fran Perreault, whose husband was hurt in a roadside bomb blast in Afghanistan, has spoken openly about his struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He used to hit her in his sleep.
Most women are too afraid to speak up, she said from Petawawa, Ont. "The majority of wives are going to lie and say there's nothing because they fear for their husbands' jobs."
Beth Corey, the executive director at the Military Family Resource Centre in Gagetown, N.B., said the arm's-length service offers several programs to help families adjust before and after deployments.
She said she hasn't noticed a spike in the numbers of spouses reporting abuse after Afghanistan tours, but added they're offering more educational campaigns against family violence.
The centres, located on military bases across the country, connect people with community resources and link them to a staff social worker who can intervene in a crisis.
Colleen Erickson, the public education co-ordinator at the YWCA Westman Women's Shelter in Brandon, Man., near CFB Shilo, said more women call when "the honeymoon period" ends — about a month after a soldier returns home.
"Most often the complaint is that he has PTSD and his anger is escalating or has escalated to the point of explosion and they need a safe place to stay."
A post-deployment survey filled out in November 2008 by 8,222 Canadian Forces members found that six per cent — almost 500 respondents — had symptoms of PTSD and/or major depression.
Botched investigation? Mounties face questions over handling of missing couple
July 15, 2010, By Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press
EDMONTON - Canada's national police force has so far botched its investigation of what happened to a missing Alberta couple, a law-enforcement expert and former Mountie charged Thursday as authorities in northern B.C. joined the search for Lyle and Marie McCann.
"It has been a banquet of mistakes, of laziness, of unprofessional conduct — and two lives are in the balance here," said Bill Pitt, an Edmonton-based criminologist, law enforcement instructor and former Mountie.
"I think just about every protocol I'm aware of as far as investigation is concerned has been missed, sloughed off or tried to be explained in some ridiculous fashion.
"It's a blown investigation from beginning to end. Completely blown."
Mounties in British Columbia and Alberta are pursuing leads in both provinces as they probe the disappearance of the 78-year-old former truck driver and his 77-year-old wife.
They left on vacation in their motorhome from their house in St. Albert, on Edmonton's northern outskirts, on July 3rd and haven't been seen since.
Mounties in Prince George, B.C., have confirmed they're running down tips that the couple's green Hyundai Tucson SUV, which was being towed by the motorhome, has been spotted in the community.
Gary Godwin, the RCMP spokesman in Prince George, said a couple came in Tuesday to report seeing the vehicle, but were allowed to leave the detachment before they could be questioned further. Police are now asking that couple to come back.
Godwin said Thursday that civilian staffers took the information from the tipster at the front desk but were likely unaware of the public pleas for help being made by the RCMP and McCann family members in Edmonton that day, pleas that appeared on websites and on TV.
"I don't know if the civilian personnel were up on the file, whether they followed the news or not," said Godwin.
He said the staffers took down the details and the contact information for the tipsters and passed it on to investigators.
"They did the job they were supposed to do," he said.
"Now we're having difficulty locating this couple (the tipsters). We don't know if they've gone on holidays. We don't know if their cellphone died.
"We're having a devil of a job because we do want to speak with them."
Pitt says the miscue, no matter how benign, is indicative of an investigation that was off the rails from the start. He says green recruits, staffing shortages and a culture of hoarding information in the RCMP is beginning to reap a terrible harvest for Canadian citizens like the McCanns.
Problems began shortly after the couple left their home. A surveillance camera at a St. Albert gas station captured them on tape after 9 a.m. Police say their credit card has not been used since.
Lyle McCann, who made his living as a long-distance trucker, was used to logging hours on the road. The pair planned to cross the provincial boundary that day and eventually hook up a week later in Abbotsford with their daughter for a camping trip.
In the end, the motorhome barely made it out of the region. It was spotted two days later at the Minnow Lake campground near Edson, about a two-hour drive west of Edmonton, with the SUV still attached.
The motorhome was found ablaze later that day in remote bush area near the campground. Fire crews doused the blaze. The SUV was gone. There were no bodies inside, but police found the registration linking the vehicle to the McCanns.
Mounties phoned the McCanns' home and Sgt. Patrick Webb, the RCMP lead spokesman on the case, later said officers knocked on the McCanns' door but found nobody home.
Police didn't begin looking for the couple until five days later, on July 10, after their daughter reported they didn't show up in Abbotsford for the camping trip.
Webb told a news conference Tuesday the case didn't immediately set off alarm bells because vehicles are often found burning in the bush and it's not unusual for people to be away from home during the summer season.
That answer doesn't make sense, said Pitt, who has extensive work training police.
Pitt worked for the RCMP in the Maritimes before moving to the classroom. He has trained a thousand police recruits in Texas and Montana, taught criminal investigative procedures for local and state police in the United States, and worked with such bodies as the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. He now teaches at Edmonton's Grant MacEwan University.
The signs were there, he said: an expensive motorhome torched in the bush with a hitch but no vehicle behind it, owned by a law-abiding elderly couple that now couldn't be located.
"There was no instinctive reaction by police officers," said Pitt.
"The whole forensics of that crime scene were adulterated, ignored or sloughed off as just another burnt vehicle down that road.
"Nothing fit from the get-go. And to wait five days for the formal process of a missing persons form to cross your desk before you do anything is a disgrace."
When police couldn't reach the McCanns at their home, said Pitt, they should have knocked on a few doors.
Had they walked next door, they would have found Gottfried Rohmkopf, who told reporters this week he has known the McCanns for almost five decades and that Lyle had told him numerous times about the upcoming motorhome trip.
Once Mounties got the missing person's tip, they issued an alert urging people to report any sightings of the motorhome, even though they already knew it was sitting burned in a field.
Webb initially attributed that to a communication breakdown, then said it was done intentionally to protect the integrity of the investigation.
The McCann's son, Bret, made a public plea for help on Tuesday, leading to the latest tips on Prince George, which is 450 kilometres west of Edson.
Pitt said the public plea for help is justified but smacks of a stalled investigation.
"They're in scramble mode. It's the right thing to do, but (to begin investigating) 100 hours after the fact — it's a very cold crime scene."
Webb has said the force will look at how the investigation has been handled. He couldn't be reached immediately Thursday for reaction to Pitt's comments, but had said earlier in the day that despite the concerns, relations between the force and McCann family remain good.
"I spoke with them last night," said Webb. "Right now they realize the best chance they have of finding their family is to work closely with us."
Bret McCann declined Thursday to comment directly on the police handling of the case.
"This is all new to me, but the police seem fully engaged," he said.
Pitt said the Mounties as a whole have been struggling with a large cohort of senior members retiring in the past few years.
"The RCMP, like all police forces in the country, are incredibly young," he said.
"I think there are a lot of green members out there, operating by themselves who don't have a whole lot of experience. When something like this comes across your path, you may not know what to do."
But he said the force is struggling with a culture that doesn't always promote information sharing.
"The divisions within the Mounted Police are notorious for being highly balkanized. You would think there's a firewall between them. Between Alberta and British Columbia there's very little liaison. I'm not surprised there's confusion on what's going on in Prince George."
Top court is unanimous in upholding Internet luring conviction
July 15, 2010, By The Canadian Press
OTTAWA - The country's top court has upheld the conviction of an Edmonton man charged with luring a 13-year-old boy on the Internet.
In a unanimous 9-0 ruling released Thursday, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed Michell Rayal Levigne's appeal.
Writing for the court, Justice Morris J. Fish said that under the law Levigne is presumed to have believed that a police officer who baited him on the Internet was a 13-year-old boy calling himself Jessy G.
"He is presumed by law to have believed that he was communicating with an underage sexual target," Fish wrote. "The constitutional validity of that presumption is not in issue."
The ruling came as a relief to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, a group that runs a national tipline for incidents of child sexual exploitation. Lianna McDonald, the group's executive director, said the decision sends a key message that adults cannot hide behind the assumed anonymity of the Internet.
"There's such a power imbalance between adults and children and I think this ruling really sends a strong message that children are off-limits. And if you engage in this behaviour there are going to be strong consequences," McDonald said.
Fish said in the ruling that Levigne did not take the "reasonable steps" required by law to determine whether the person he was communicating with was in fact 13 before arranging a sexual liaison.
"The accused’s convictions must be upheld," Fish wrote.
"The 'reasonable steps' invoked by the accused were in fact neither 'reasonable' nor 'steps to ascertain the age' of the person with whom he was communicating by computer for the avowed purpose of his own sexual gratification," he said.
"Rather, they were circumstances which explain why he in fact took no steps to ascertain the actual age of JG. And this despite the latter’s repeated assertion that he was only 13."
Likewise, there is no defence in the fact Jessy G was actually an undercover cop baiting him.
In structuring the Criminal Code provision on Internet luring as it did, Fish said Parliament "recognized that the anonymity of an assumed online profile acts as both a shield for the predator and a sword for the police."
"As a shield, because it permits predators to mask their true identities as they pursue their nefarious intentions; as a sword ... because it permits investigators, posing as children, to cast their lines in Internet chat rooms, where lurking predators can be expected to take the bait — as the appellant did here."
Levigne, 50, was initially found not guilty of Internet luring, but was later convicted on appeal.
Levigne arranged a meeting online and was arrested at a fast-food restaurant in an Edmonton shopping mall in 2006, but he testified he "would have walked out" had a 13-year-old showed up.
Levigne contended he didn't believe the person he was chatting with was 13, even though the undercover officer said repeatedly in the 2006 chats that he was 13 and in Grade 7.
The court agreed with a decision by the Alberta Court of Appeal reversing Levigne's acquittal, and didn't buy Levigne's argument.
The "decisive question," Fish wrote, is whether the trial judge was bound by two provisions of the Criminal Code to find that Levigne believed he was communicating by computer with an underage boy for the purposes of sex.
"Like the Alberta Court of Appeal, I would answer that question in the affirmative."
McDonald said that despite the efforts of police and groups such as hers, she believes Internet luring is a growing problem.She added that victims are sometimes reluctant to come forward because they believe they are partly to blame for what happened to them.
"We see situations where kids may get groomed into a situation where they send an inappropriate picture or something and then they are blackmailed by the individual to go further, or they're threatened to be exposed," McDonald said.
"An adolescent who's going through those teen years feels they've been complicit in this grooming process when really they've been exploited."
Suspect in Toronto cemetery sex attack appears in court with scratches on face
July 15, 2010, By The Canadian Press
TORONTO - Toronto police said the man charged with attempted murder in the sexual attack of a woman in a cemetery this week is "known to police" but disclosed no further details.
Russell Benjamin Kirkpatrick appeared in court Thursday with a slew of cuts and scratches over his head and face, and blood on his prison jumpsuit. He was remanded in custody for his next appearance on Monday.
Kirkpatrick, 44, of Toronto, is also charged with aggravated sexual assault. He was arrested Wednesday in the city's east end, Det.-Sgt. Corinne Bellon told reporters.
"It was a collaborative effort that brought about this successful outcome," she said.
Bellon said the sex crimes unit would like to speak to anyone who has had contact with the accused from Monday up until the time of his arrest, in an effort to gather more information.
The tall, thin man with long, blond hair wore an orange prison-issue jumpsuit when he appeared in the east-end Toronto court.
Kirkpatrick's lawyer, Tyler Smith, said outside court that his client has indicated he was in a great deal of physical pain.
"All that we know for sure is that he does have obvious visible injuries on his face and body, and there is plenty of blood on his (prison jumpsuit)," he said.
Smith said there were cuts and scratches on Kirkpatrick's face, ear, head and cheek, but that he can't say for certain how, when or where he got those injuries. He did say they looked fresh.
Bellon could not comment on the injuries of the accused or his current physical condition.
She said the victim, a 61-year-old woman, was in stable condition in hospital. The woman was attacked, beaten and sexually assaulted Monday at the Pine Hills Cemetery while visiting a family gravesite.
A trauma made worse from The Ottawa Citizen on July 13, 2010
In failing to provide proper care to at least two sexual assault victims, The Ottawa Hospital has let down not just the victims themselves but the entire community, whose safety depends on the hospital's ability to help police catch and convict sex offenders.
One of the cases involved a 21-year-old woman who was assaulted May 23. She ended up at the hospital's Civic campus, but no one trained in examining sexual assault victims was available to see her. The victim was sent home, only to discover some time later that she was pregnant, probably from the assault.
Then in July, another sex assault victim showed up at The Ottawa Hospital. Again, the hospital lacked the resources to help her, so she had to leave town -- for Renfrew -- to be examined and treated.
An enormous and busy institution such as The Ottawa Hospital cannot be expected to do everything perfectly, but clearly there's room for improvement here -- and this includes the manner in which the hospital has publicly dealt with the issue.
So far The Ottawa Hospital has been cautious and circumspect. Like a pro athlete caught misbehaving, the hospital's first instinct was to issue carefully worded statements through public relations officers -- statements that said little beyond what the news media had already reported.
Neglecting to treat properly sexual assault victims is a terrible medical error on several accounts. First, obviously, is the unnecessary anguish that this must cause for victims who already are suffering an emotional trauma. The victim who was sent home May 23 describes feeling "total despair."
Second, the examination of a sexual assault victim has a unique legal dimension, and therefore a special urgency. The medical staff are part of the criminal investigation. It is their job to describe the woman's exact injuries, and often to recover, from the victim's body, DNA and other material that can help identify the attacker. The failure to collect evidence can obstruct the police investigation into the assault.
Finally, the lack of staffing raises bigger health care concerns. Treating sexual assault victims is a very small part of the hospital's mandate, but if doing so represents an unmanageable burden then one has to wonder how the hospital is handling all the other, much more demanding and complex medical responsibilities that it confronts every day.
The Ottawa Hospital addressed none of this in its brief statement, though it did apologize to one -- and only one -- of the victims, and to her family. (The victim who was turned away in May received only an oblique reference. Her case had not yet been publicized when the press release went out late last Thursday, though the hospital knew that a Citizen reporter had called about her.)
The hospital says that its staff of 15 special nurse examiners has been cut nearly in half by illness and unexpected leaves. That's unfortunate, but The Ottawa Hospital should have recognized that this was a gap that needed to be filled immediately.
Alberta Mountie charged in wife's slaying makes first court appearance
EDMONTON - A speedy court appearance and a clerical error over a murder charge marked an Alberta Mountie's entrance into the legal system after being charged in his wife's slaying.
Const. Tirth Sehmbi, 36, was led into court Monday dressed in the blue coveralls issued to all prisoners who are in custody.
He's charged with second-degree murder after his wife's body was discovered in a southeast Edmonton home early Saturday morning.
Sehmbi stood quietly in the prisoner's box for just a few seconds as a judge agreed to a defence request to adjourn the case until Aug. 12.
He appeared to be a little confused as he was quickly whisked back inside a locked prisoner's area adjacent to the court room.
The court appearance was so fast, Sehmbi's uncle wasn't able to catch a glimpse of his nephew because he arrived a few minutes after the proceedings had started.
The unidentified man declined to make any comment.
Later in the day justice officials had to backtrack after a court document said that the Mountie had been charged with the more serious offence of first-degree murder.
"The information that was sworn and appeared in court this morning clearly had a typo or typographical error on it and he was charged with first-degree murder," said Clifton Purvis, executive director of the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team.
"We will have a new information sworn and put in court and we will proceed on the basis that it's a second-degree murder charge."
The team is the provincial body that investigates incidents involving police and is spearheading the homicide probe into the death of Sehmbi's wife.
Sgt. Tim Taniguchi, an RCMP spokesman, said a friend of the dead woman's family had been in contact with them and with the agency investigating the death. Her name has not been released.
He said Sehmbi was to be suspended from his job. The constable remains in custody.
At least initially, the constable will continue to receive a paycheque, but those payments could be stopped pending an internal review, Taniguchi said.
Sehmbi had been working in the traffic services division in Stony Plain, Alta., a detachment just west of Edmonton. He also worked as a dog handler, Taniguchi said.
The constable is an eight-year veteran of the RCMP. He has also served in other Alberta communities including Grande Prairie and Evansburg.
Taniguchi echoed previous comments made by Peter Hourihan, an RCMP assistant commissioner, who said on Saturday that there are programs to help Mounties who have personal or professional problems.
Hourihan said on Saturday that the Mountie was not on duty at the time of his wife's slaying. He said the constable took his service weapon home with him, which is in keeping with police "operational readiness" policies.
While neighbours have said they heard what sounded like gunshots early Saturday morning, the cause of death has not been released.
Having a member charged with murder has been very difficult for Sehmbi's colleagues, who were also coping with the death of another Mountie from the detachment who was killed in a highway collision in June, Taniguchi said
Const. Chelsey Alice Robinson was investigating a report of an impaired driver on Highway 16 west of Edmonton when her police vehicle collided with a semi.
"We have a process in place for critical incident debriefings. All these tragic incidents, especially when it involves our employees, has a toll on all our employees in the RCMP," said Taniguchi.
Help for the victims of crime -- and the offenders
Restorative justice eases victims' post-traumatic stress and reduces re-offending. Yet it remains on the fringes of the system, By Peter McKnight, Vancouver Sun July 12, 2010
Suman and Manjit Virk's daughter Reena was murdered in 1997. Through restorative justice, the couple was able to tell one of their daughter's killers what he had done to them, to hear his remorse and to forgive him.
In 2006, the newly elected Conservative government announced, with much pomp and ceremony, the appointment of the first federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime. Four years later, Steve Sullivan's role came to an unceremonious end.
Upon leaving office earlier this year, Sullivan condemned the Conservatives for failing to address victims' needs. "The tough-on-crime agenda will not meet the needs of victims of crime," he told Canwest News Service, while emphasizing that imposing stiffer sentences on offenders doesn't amount to serving victims.
Instead, Sullivan argued that victims desire greater participation in the justice system: "If they are engaged in the process, if they understand why decisions are made and are given a voice, they are more satisfied with the result, regardless of the sentence given."
This is something victims' groups have stressed for decades. The justice system fails to give victims and their families a voice, because the system is entirely focused on the offender.
And this is something Suman and Manjit Virk know intimately. The parents of Reena Virk, who was murdered by Kelly Ellard and Warren Glowatski in 1997, spent more than a decade following the trials of Ellard. And it was Ellard, rather than the Virks, who was the focus of the justice system's attention.
But that's only half of the story. The other half involves Glowatski, who was convicted in 1999 and last month received full parole. Yet in contrast to other cases involving high-profile murderers, there were no angry protests, no photographs of anguished parents condemning the system for releasing their daughter's killer.
There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is the strength of the Virks. But there is more: Before Glowatski's receiving parole, and at his request, the Fraser Region Community Justice Initiatives Association arranged a meeting between Glowatski and the Virks.
In Heartspeak Productions' The Reena Virk Story, Manjit recalls that this was "the hardest thing" for them, but that they went ahead with the meeting. During the meeting they were able to communicate to Glowatski what he did to them, but also to experience Glowatski's remorse and to accept his apology. Largely as a result of this meeting, they forgave him.
The Virks therefore experienced two kinds of justice: First, the conventional justice system, which focuses on offenders and punishing wrongdoers for their transgressions. And second, the Virks experienced restorative justice (RJ), which focuses on giving victims and their families a voice, on ensuring that offenders take responsibility for their actions and on attempting to heal the harm that has been done by crime.
In the sense that RJ emphasizes healing, of both relationships and the community, it represents a paradigm shift -- an idea of justice very different from the conventional notion that justice means making offenders pay for their wrongdoing. This might explain why RJ remains on the periphery of the justice system.
But in another sense, it's curious that RJ hasn't gone mainstream, since it aims to do exactly what politicians and others claim they want from the justice system. Rarely a day goes by that we don't hear politicians stressing the importance of meeting victims' needs or of ensuring offenders take responsibility, yet the system, focused as it is on punishment, has never been very good at doing either. Restorative justice, on the other hand, aims to make this rhetoric a reality.
Although there are many forms of RJ, the most studied form -- restorative justice conferencing (RJC) -- brings together victims and offenders, along with their families or supporters, and a trained facilitator. Victims and offenders can meet face to face if they so choose, or the mediator can courier information between victims and offenders. Conferences can take the place of conventional justice initiatives -- this is often the case in diversion programs for young offenders -- or can occur in addition to conventional justice, as occurred in Glowatski's case. (Glowatski was still in custody when he participated in RJC.)
Either way, RJC seeks to allow victims to explain the impact the offence has had on them, and to give offenders a chance to explain their actions, express remorse and apologize. Although that might sound soft, it is never easy to face to the person you've harmed. Indeed, the RJC wasn't just hard for the Virks; it was hard for Glowatski, too.
And that's not the end of the matter in any case. Rather, a conference typically results in an agreement about what the offender must do to make amends, and it includes followup to ensure the offender does so.
The aims of RJ are therefore in keeping with what many people say they want from the justice system. But RJ is worthwhile, of course, only if it fulfils those aims. Fortunately, RJ has been the subject of intense study in recent years, and the evidence is promising.
Since the biggest difference between RJ and conventional justice is the former's emphasis on victims, let us consider victims first. The U.K. Restorative Justice Consortium, which has analyzed many studies of RJ and produced a series of reports, notes that well over half of victims wish to participate in RJC, and 85 per cent of those who participate are satisfied with their experience. Indeed, of 152 people interviewed, only six expressed dissatisfaction with face-to-face conferencing.
Not surprisingly, these levels of satisfaction are far higher than those of people who experience only the conventional justice system. But the really dramatic results come from the research of Caroline Angel, a nurse-criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania.
Angel discovered that victims who participated in face-to-face conferencing experienced significantly lower levels of post traumatic stress (PTS) symptoms such as fear, anger, anxiety, irritability and obsession with the crime than controls did. And women were particularly likely to benefit from lower levels of PTS symptoms.
This reduction in PTS symptoms is particularly important, given that, if untreated, such symptoms can lead to both psychological and physical problems.
And while many victims are unwilling to seek psychological help, they are willing to participate in RJC, which could eliminate the need for counselling.
The benefits to victims are therefore significant and ought to be enough to recommend RJ. But the research suggests that RJ also helps to reduce offending: Based on a review of three separate sites in England, the Restorative Justice Consortium found that offenders who had participated in RJC committed 27 per cent fewer crimes that those who didn't.
Since the consortium's review, Heather Strang, of Australian National University, and Lawrence Sherman, of the Universities of Cambridge and Pennsylvania, have conducted a much broader review of 12 studies involving 3,000 offenders in Australia and the U.K.
These studies, which involve randomized controlled trials -- the gold standard in scientific research -- have also found a significant reduction in reoffending among offenders who participate in RJC.
But they have found something else as well.
Common wisdom has long held that RJ ought to be employed primarily in cases involving property crimes and young offenders. This is understandable, since it's reasonable to assume that offenders who aren't "hardened criminals" -- youth and those convicted of less serious crimes -- would be most positively affected by RJ programs. In fact, this attitude is reflected in Canada's Youth Criminal Justice Act, which emphasizes diversion programs for young offenders.
Yet the Strang-Sherman review found that RJC seems to be most effective at reducing reoffending in adults and in cases of violent crime. This is certainly counterintuitive, but it is also positive since it reveals no one beyond redemption -- that adults and even those convicted of serious offences can and do accept responsibility for their actions through their participation in RJC.
Given the enormous cost of crime, one would expect that reducing reoffending would result in a cost savings, both from the cost of the crime itself, and the cost of re-incarcerating the offender. And so it does: According to the Restorative Justice Consortium review, RJ saves the justice system eight times what it costs to deliver.
Restorative justice therefore benefits not only victims, but also helps to prevent more people from becoming victims. And it does so in a cost effective or, indeed, a cost-saving, way. For these reasons, it has been suggested that RJ be extended to forums outside the conventional justice system: Brenda Morrison, co-director of the Centre for Restorative Justice at Simon Fraser University, advocates the use of RJ in schools, and John Braithwaite of Australian National University has suggested it could be valuable in aiding war-torn countries.
Yet at present, RJ remains on the margins even of the conventional justice system. This is curious, given its demonstrated benefits and given the current system's demonstrated lack of benefits. Yet the current system is set to expand exponentially.
So we are at a crossroads here. We can commit to creating more victims and building more prisons, and make everyone pay for it. That is, we can commit to some futile attempt to appear tough on crime.
Or we can commit to reducing victimization and to giving the victims that already exist a strong, clear voice.
That is, we can commit to justice.
pmcknight@vancouversun.com
Former commander and female subordinate charged in Afghanistan sex case
July 12, 2010, By Stephen Thorne, The Canadian Press
OTTAWA - The chief of the defence staff is battling immorality in the ranks as the former commander of Canada's troops in Afghanistan and a female subordinate face charges from their sexual liaison.
The Canadian Forces National Investigation Service launched an investigation shortly after Master-Cpl. Bianka Langlois acknowledged she had an affair with Brig.-Gen. Daniel Menard in Afghanistan.
Menard, married with two children, faces two counts of conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline under the military's fraternization regulations.
The 26-year veteran has also been charged with one count of obstructing justice and a separate count of conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline.
Langlois has been charged with one count of conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline, also related to military fraternization regulations.
A spokeswoman for Gen. Walter Natynczyk, chief of defence staff, said her boss is "very disappointed and seized by these incidents," including recent charges and investigations involving two other high-ranking military officers.
"He has reinforced the fact that leaders in the Canadian Forces are held to a high standard of values, morals and ethics," said Maj. Cindy Tessier.
"In each of theses instances, leaders who have failed to live up to the standards expected by the men and women in uniform under their command are being held accountable."
In speeches, briefings and meetings, Tessier said Natynczyk also speaks about the importance of unit cohesion and esprit de corps. He tells his officers that, while 99 per cent of CF personnel are doing good work, "a leadership climate that undermines the tenets of professionalism, integrity, conduct and honesty" cannot be tolerated.
"Our business of security is by its very nature dangerous," Natynczyk told a change-of-appointment ceremony in Ottawa on Monday.
"In these stressful circumstances, it is the trust and confidence amongst us that enables the teamwork and unit cohesion that are vital for mission success.
"It is only fitting then that we as senior leadership are held to a very high and uncompromising standard. A high standard that reflects the very best morals, military ethos and values of our society."
Menard's case will now be referred to the director of military prosecutions, who will decide whether to proceed with a court martial. Because of her rank, Langlois can elect a summary trial or court martial.
Military regulations bar soldiers — even married couples — from having intimate relations on deployment.
Menard was removed as field commander in Afghanistan last month and ordered home in disgrace. He was slated to assume command of land forces in Quebec but his army boss, Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, said events in Afghanistan shook the military's faith in him.
The Quebec posting went to one of Menard's predecessors in the Afghan mission, Brig.-Gen. Alain Tremblay, who takes over command July 30. Menard was replaced in Afghanistan by Brig.-Gen. Jon Vance.
An army spokesman declined comment on the case, saying it's now a matter for the courts.
But Lt.-Col. Jay Janzen, director of army public affairs, said "morale in the army remains high."
"Our soldiers are very busy, with the key focus being on training and operations."
The investigation and subsequent charges "clearly demonstrate the CF is a professional organization with clear standards of conduct that it is willing to enforce when required," Janzen added.
Nevertheless, they're more salt in the wounds of a military already smarting from the sensational case of Col. Russell Williams, former CO at the country's biggest air force base, in Trenton, Ont.
Williams is facing two murder charges and numerous other counts related to sexual assault and the alleged theft of women's underwear.
Also last month, Canada's most senior-ranking military officer in Haiti was relieved of command and faces a number of allegations, including one allegedly involving an inappropriate relationship.
Military police are investigating Col. Bernard Ouellette, who doubled as chief of staff to the United Nations mission in the earthquake-battered country.
Lt.-Col. Chris Lemay, a military spokesman, said at the time the allegation of an inappropriate relationship did not involve another member of the Canadian military.
Ouellette, who won praise for his cool handling of Canada's relief effort following the massive earthquake that destroyed UN headquarters in Port au Prince, was at the end of a year-long deployment to Haiti.
The decision to cashier Menard in such a public fashion drew criticism and prompted a public debate about the military's strict punishment for fraternization.
Part of the criticism was founded on the fact the Forces refused to immediately release the name of the woman accused of having a relationship with him.
A military source told The Canadian Press the recent actions follow a "sermon on the mount" from Natynczyk early this spring.
The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the CDS assembled all his senior officers and gave them "a very powerful sermon ... reinforcing the values, morals and ethics that he expected from his officers" after the shock of the Williams affair.
Earlier in May, a court martial fined Menard $3,500 for negligently firing two rounds from his assault rifle in March.
The incident occurred as Menard and Natynczyk were about to board a Blackhawk helicopter at Kandahar Airfield. No one was hit and no property was damaged by the burst.
Rona Ambrose speaks out of turn at event condemning so-called honour killings
July 12, 2010, By Dominique Jarry-Shore, The Canadian Press
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - The Conservative government dispatched one of its ministers Monday to the city where a 16-year-old girl was killed by her father and brother to condemn so-called honour killings, but it appears Rona Ambrose may have spoken out of turn.
The event was a statement from the minister for status of women, containing no program or funding announcement, and the news to emerge was that Ambrose said Ottawa is "looking at" amending the Criminal Code to include so-called honour crimes.
She was asked if the government was considering such changes, and she replied that it was under consideration.
"I'll say that it's something that we're looking at," she said. "Nothing more than that at this time."
However, when contacted for more details about possible changes, a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said in fact, that is not the case.
"There are currently no plans to do that," said Pamela Stephens.
"While we're always interested in new input into ways to improve the Criminal Code, currently honour killing suggests a certain motive or conduct. But regardless of the motive the law as it exists in Canada is clear that intentional killing is murder, regardless of the motive."
In an email Monday night, Dimitri Soudas, spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, did not directly address Ambrose's remarks, but offered a comment that the government is always looking at existing laws.
In her statement, Ambrose said honour killings have no place in Canadian society and urged women's groups to submit project proposals for government funding to prevent future violence.
The announcement coincided with the release of a report written by social worker Aruna Papp that explores violence driven by culture.
"In Canada all girls and women are equal to men under the law and have the right to live free from violence and abuse," Ambrose said.
The minister condemned all forms of violence against women, calling such crimes "heinous abuses of power and abuses of human rights."
This city west of Toronto where Ambrose made her statement was home to 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez, who was killed in 2007 by her father and brother after repeated conflict with her family over her desire for some independence.
According to facts entered in court when the two Parvez men pleaded guilty this year, they believed they could keep the family's pride intact by killing Aqsa, rather than letting her have a part-time job and go to the movies with friends.
The announcement also came the same day a Montreal woman alleged to have stabbed her daughter in a so-called honour crime was declared fit to stand trial.
Johra Kaleki, 38, will next appear in court on July 26 for a bail hearing.
She is alleged to have stabbed her 19-year-old daughter in the head.
Papp said she is surprised and shocked that there is domestic violence in south Asian families whose members have grown up in Canada.
She decided to write her report after 30 years working in the south Asian community.
"I think this is a very good start," Papp said of Ambrose's statement.
But one critic said referring to crimes as honour killing creates a double-standard that isolates ethnic communities.
Anisa Ali, chair of the Toronto chapter of United Muslim Women of Canada, said the term honour killing is not used for the same types of crimes committed between white people.
"My question would be, are we using that specifically to identify certain ethnic communities and thereby ostracize certain communities?" she said.
Manitoba doctor used Mrs. X for sex
By DEAN PRITCHARD, QMI Agency
WINNIPEG - A former Beausejour doctor has been stripped of his licence to practice medicine after he admitted having an inappropriate sexual relationship with a mentally ill patient.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba found Dr. David Corder guilty of exploiting the patient -- identified in College documents as Ms. X -- for his own advantage, failing to maintain adequate medical records and failing to maintain an adequate plan for prescribing drugs.
"Dr. Corder had a fiduciary obligation to protect her, and instead of protecting her he exploited her," the college wrote last month following the conclusion of an inquiry into Corder's actions. "Dr. Corder breached his obligations in the most fundamental way possible ... There can be no justification for initiating an inappropriate sexual relationship or for allowing it to continue."
According to College documents, Corder became the woman's family physician in 1990 and continued to treat her until 2006.
Between 1990 and 1995, Corder prescribed numerous anti-depressant and anti-anxiety drugs for the woman, knowing she was at risk of drug dependency .
"The apparent casualness with which this was done was concerning," the College inquiry report stated.
In May and June of 1995, the woman was admitted to hospital three times for drug overdoses and suicidal thoughts.
At Corder's request, another doctor took over the woman's care. Corder believed the woman had become obsessed with him. He resumed caring for the woman in July 2006, "knowing she had a history of instability and a possible obsession with him," the College wrote.
College documents say Corder initiated a one-sided sexual relationship with the woman a year earlier, lasting until 2001. Corder regularly visited the woman's home for oral sex, which was "not reciprocated."
"Dr. Corder acknowledged that he had no feelings of affection for Ms. X," the College wrote.
College documents say the woman depended on Corder to verify medical information for her disability benefits.
Corder also admitted having an inappropriate -- but not sexual -- relationship with a second patient (identified as Ms. Y) following the breakup of his marriage in July 2006.
"Dr Corder used Ms. X for sexual gratification. He used Ms. Y for emotional support. Neither one is acceptable," the College wrote.
In addition to revoking his licence, the College ordered Corder to pay $20,000 in costs.
Jaycee Dugard deserves more than 20 million... from the state!
Report says state parole agents spoke with California kidnapped woman but didn't follow up, July 07, 2010, By Don Thompson, The Associated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A report prepared by the state attorney general's office says California parole agents spoke to the woman who was held captive by a paroled rapist for 18 years and fathered his two children, but never bothered to follow up.
The revelation about how parole agents missed another opportunity to rescue Jaycee Dugard is contained in a report obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press under the California Public Records Act.
Dugard, now 30, says parole agents spoke with her during her captivity, and with the older of the two daughters she bore to Phillip Garrido. Garrido has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping and raping Dugard, who was 11 when she disappeared.
The document was prepared by the attorney general's office and sent to lawmakers in advance of their vote last week to settle with the Dugard family for $20 million.
Dugard and her daughters, ages 15 and 12, claimed that state parole agents failed to properly supervise Garrido starting in 1999 and did not follow up on reports and observations that might have led to their rescue. They finally surfaced last August, after living for nearly two decades in a compound in the backyard of Garrido's house in the eastern San Francisco Bay area city of Antioch.
A previous report said parole agents had discovered one of the girls Garrido had fathered with Dugard but accepted his explanation that she was a niece.
The report from the state attorney general's office gives a stark outline of the reasons the state agreed to settle the family's claim with such a large sum. In part, it says the claim is supported by a number of allegations, including "that agents saw and spoke to Ms. Dugard and her eldest daughter but failed to investigate their identities or their relationship to Garrido."
Attorney general's spokeswoman Christine Gasparac said the allegations were made by Dugard through her attorneys during settlement negotiations with the state. She said she could provide no other details, such as when the contact with parole agents occurred.
Dale Kinsella, Dugard's lawyer, said he could not comment on what was said during settlement negotiations. Dugard's spokeswoman, Nancy Seltzer, also had no comment.
Prostitution-related charges laid against man police say acted as online pimp
July 06, 2010, By The Canadian Press
VANCOUVER - Prostitution charges have been laid against a 31-year-old Vancouver man who police call an online pimp.
Police say Mark Carlisle Humphrey used Craigslist to recruit women as escorts and exotic dancers.
They say once a woman was hired, she was pressured to have paid sex with men, but Humphrey would pocket the money.
After being alerted to the business the police raided Humphrey's home on June 18th.
He's now facing two charges of procuring a person to become a prostitute, plus charges of living on the avails of prostitution and aiding, abetting or compelling a person to engage in prostitution.
Humphrey has since been released on bail and his next court date is July 30.
Get this fiend off Facebbok * CRIME REPORTER KATE KYRIACOU * From: AdelaideNow * July 05, 2010
VICTIMS' rights advocate Michael O'Connell will petition Facebook to remove the profile of a convicted Adelaide paedophile who is using the site to communicate with young people.
Craig Ratcliff was convicted in 1991 of seven counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 14-year-old boy.
In 2008, he was given a suspended sentence for telling "scandalous lies" about a serving MP, claiming in a series of TV interviews that the politician had been involved in homosexual activities in the south parklands.
Mr O'Connell, South Australia's Commissioner for Victims' Rights, said it was "inappropriate" for a convicted sex offender to use a social networking site.
"As commissioner, I'm unhappy that convicted sex offenders are allowed to use a community page to seek friendships with people of all ages," he said.
"In becoming aware of this I will, in consultation with police, write to Facebook to ask that the page be removed. "I've done it before when someone set up a mock website under the name of Bevan Spencer Von Einem. I wrote to them and they removed that page."
Related Coverage
* Facebook stalker could face 100 charges Adelaide Now, 7 days ago
* Bid to ban net creeps Herald Sun, 12 Jun 2010
* Teen's body 'found in shallow grave' Adelaide Now, 3 Mar 2010
* Murderer updates Facebook from cell Adelaide Now, 12 Jan 2010
* Teen guilty of Facebook slur Adelaide Now, 21 Nov 2009
Many of Ratcliff's 69 Facebook friends are young people - although none appear to be children.
He has been using his profile to play a Harry Potter game and post photographs of himself with his family. In one, he wears an Eminem jumper and is making obscene finger gestures at the camera. He also used the page to lament the death of killer Carl Williams.
"Oh well, life goes on even after Carl Williams died in prison yesterday aged only 39 years old, my condolences to his father and daughter, he may have made mistakes in life, but every one has a right to live, at least now he is in peace," he wrote in April.
A police spokeswoman said yesterday there was no law preventing a convicted sex offender from using a social networking site - unless it was used to procure a child.
Federal Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor said the Government was committed to preventing child abuse both online and in the real world.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/get-this-fiend-off-facebbok/story-e6frea6u-1225887834909
'Forgotten' kids forced into prostitution: Report
Countless “forgotten” children are being trafficked within and across provincial borders and Canada has no clear plan to help them, says a new RCMP report obtained by the Toronto Sun.
The perception of choice — that a child can choose to enter the sex trade and then choose to leave — is clouding Canadian minds from seeing that young people are part of a booming flesh trade within Canadian borders, Marlene Dalley, a research officer with Canadian Police Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, noted in the report, “Hidden Abuse Hidden Crime.”
A disclaimer at the top of the report says the expressed views are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the RCMP.
“In essence, the findings showed the urgency and necessity to protect children’s rights with national, regional and municipal plans, which will combat this hidden crime and hidden abuse of children,” Dalley writes.
Domestic sex trafficking in Canada is an issue that has been chronicled through several Sun stories, many of which focused of human trafficking charges laid around the Greater Toronto Area.
Ontario, like Canada, has no official plan to combat human trafficking.
Dalley’s report highlights groups of children found to be at “particular risk” of sex trafficking in Canada. They include runaway children, “throwaway” kids — whose parents don’t want them and likely won’t report them missing — teens living independently and children communicating on the Internet.
While Dalley’s report mostly refers to trafficked teens, it mentions children as young as six are forced into prostitution in Canada.
Some mothers force or coerce their daughters into sex work so they can buy drugs or pay off drug debts, the report notes.
“As well, some family members consciously force children as young as six years old into the sex trade. These children are given drugs to ease the pain and awkwardness of the situation — a practice that exposes them to drugs at an early age, and consequently may create an addiction situation,” Dalley writes.
Sparse as information was in 2008, Dalley found more than 400 children, some as young as 11, were reported as working for pimps in Calgary.
Some traffickers prey on victims at parties, shopping malls and bus stations, while others attend community events frequented by children and teens. Some pretend to be in love with their victims — a tactic seen several times throughout the GTA — and others recruit girls as part of an invitation to join a gang. Once they’ve got the girls working, pimps take their earnings.
Since there has been little research on the issue, authorities do not know exactly how many kids have been victimized.
Moreover, because many missing children are never reported missing, they become lost in a system that even fails to adequately help trafficking victims sought by police.
“The problem is so much bigger than we will ever know,” said Joanne Paterson, psychology professor at the Durham College School of Justice and Emergency Services. “They become Canada’s forgotten kids. They’re consistently trafficked. They’re consistently re-victimized.”
Paterson helped out former Toronto juvenile task force cop Dave Perry at Investigative Solutions Network with GTA research for Dalley’s report.
“This is not a Toronto or a Montreal or a Vancouver or a highly urbanized environment issue. This is a national Canadian issue. Children are being exploited and children are being abused,” Paterson said. “It’s this whole perception of choice that just drives me crazy. This is not choice. This is guys who go out to strip clubs and go, ‘Oh wow, they’re making $1,500 a week.’ Well actually, no they’re not ... They’re trafficked. And most of them are drug-addicted.”
Since human trafficking legislation came into effect in 2005, police have redirected their focus from the “old” procuring and living-on-the-avails charges to trafficking, Dalley writes.
“Obviously, and most disconcerting, is the fact that it seems that police and law enforcement organizations continue to view prostitution in an indifferent manner. It could also be argued that few police and law enforcement personnel fail to fully understand the seriousness and therefore, fail to understand the intent, of the trafficking legislation,” the report notes.
Not only must Canada develop a tool to measure incidents of trafficking beyond those reported to police, but there is also a need for police and community organizations to work together to help runaways and more vigilantly investigate their disappearances, Dalley found.
The misconception that the only trafficked people in Canada are those brought into the country with fake passports makes Canada’s exploited children “more vulnerable to victimization,” Dalley writes.
“Secondly, the perception that children can exit the sex trade when they wish, as occasionally reported, reflects a rather narrow view of the child’s circumstance. These children are minors, under the age of 18, who are controlled, and sexually exploited by adults. Factors, such as low self-esteem, early child abuse, behavioural problems, family problems, drug addiction, immaturity, lack of family support, and sex trade workers, to name a few, render them more helpless, therefore more vulnerable.”
On Tuesday, a private member’s bill calling for mandatory minimum sentences for child traffickers received royal assent.
But there is still no national strategy to combat human trafficking in Canada, even though a motion calling for just that was passed by unanimous vote in the House of Commons more than three years ago.
tamara.cherry@sunmeda.ca
'Virginity test' helps free 3 in Vietnam rape case
By TRAN VAN MINH (AP)
HANOI, Vietnam — An acupuncturist who claims she can detect a man's virginity based on a small dot on the ear has become a minor celebrity in Vietnam, where she is credited with helping to free three convicted rapists from prison.
Traditional medicine practitioner Pham Thi Hong started lobbying for the men's release, pleading their case all the way to the president, because she believes all three men are virgins and therefore could not be guilty of rape.
"They all had small red spots on the back of their ears," said Hong, 54. "The spots should have disappeared if they had had sex. My many years of experience told me that these men did not have sex before."
Her claims are unusual even for a country where acupuncture and traditional medicine are still common remedies, but Hong's determination to have the case reopened — even threatening to light herself on fire — led to prosecutors re-examining the case. The convictions eventually were suspended due to flaws by initial investigators.
"Thanks to her efforts, investigators revisited the case which otherwise could have been buried," said Nong Thi Hong Ha, a lawyer for one of the freed men.
Hong says she discovered the spot on Nguyen Dinh Kien's ear the first time he visited her for treatment four years ago. He was brought to the hospital from prison, where he was serving a 16-year sentence after being convicted of gang raping a 20-year-old woman in 2000.
After seeing the spot on Kien's ear, Hong believed his insistence that he was innocent. She later examined his two alleged accomplices and began a campaign for their release. Eventually, President Nguyen Minh Triet ordered that the case be re-examined.
Investigators who revisited the case discovered flaws, including the fact that testimonies of witnesses indicating their innocence were not included in the case's files, according to the local Pioneer newspaper. The three men, having served 10 years in jail, were released in January.
Vietnamese newspapers have dedicated profiles to Hong and her virginity test, crediting her with helping to free the men while not expressing any skepticism of her ability. Earlier this week, she went on an online chat on Pioneer newspaper where readers expressed their "great admiration" for her efforts.
She says she was first taught how to determine if a man has ever had sex by feeling their pulse. She later developed the ear-spot method on her own. She says the spot will only disappear after heterosexual intercourse and is not affected by gay sex or masturbation.
"I never thought that one day I would use this method to help the three men prove their innocence," said Hong, while treating a patient in her home on the outskirts of Hanoi.
Her virgin-detecting claims have drawn skepticism from other traditional medicine practitioners, who work with needles, herbs and other methods using centuries-old techniques to manipulate energy, or chi, in the body.
"I have never heard of this method before," said Nguyen Van Hao, 60, an acupuncturist who has practiced for 14 years. "From the medical point of view, it's impossible to determine whether a man has had sex or not by feeling the pulse or examining the red spot on their ears."
Hong, however, said she's convinced her method works after years of testing it on her students.
Hong says her reputation has now prompted other convicted rapists to seek her help in appealing their cases.
"I'm not planning to launch a campaign to clear innocent people who were falsely convicted of rape," she said. "But I'm willing to help people to prove their innocence, if they really are."
