The Parole Board of Canada says it’s “working to accommodate” the households of the victims murdered by infamous serial killer and rapist Paul Bernardo to seem at his upcoming parole listening to in individual, after the households’ lawyer stated that they had been barred from attending.

Bernardo, who’s serving a life sentence and was transferred from maximum- to medium-security jail final yr, is scheduled to seem for a parole listening to subsequent week at Quebec’s La Macaza jail.

“The Board is presently working to accommodate the in-person presentation of statements by victims on the November 26 listening to of Paul Bernardo, for these victims who want to take action,” stated a press release from the Parole Board of Canada to World Information late Wednesday.

The assertion got here hours after World Information reported on a letter from Tim Danson, the lawyer representing the households of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, who have been murdered as youngsters by Bernardo, that claimed his shoppers’ authorized proper to attend the listening to and browse their sufferer influence statements in individual had been denied.

The letter, shared with World Information, was dated Tuesday and addressed to Joanne Blanchard, the chairperson of the Parole Board of Canada, Correctional Service of Canada commissioner Anne Kelly and Public Security Minister Dominic LeBlanc.

“We have now simply been suggested that the households’ statutory proper to be bodily current at Mr. Bernardo’s November 26, 2024 parole listening to and to learn their Sufferer Influence Statements in individual, within the bodily presence of Mr. Bernardo and the Parole Board panel, has been denied,” Danson wrote within the letter.

“Apart from a bald reference to the PBC being ‘unable to make sure security and safety of all listening to attendees,’ we now have not been supplied with any additional particulars.”

Danson argued that this doesn’t meet the standards said within the Corrections and Conditional Launch Act.

In keeping with the act, the parole board can deny an individual from attending a assessment listening to if the “safety and good order of the establishment through which the listening to is to be held is more likely to be adversely affected by the individual’s presence.”

The parole board’s assertion Wednesday didn’t say why the households’ requests to talk in individual have been denied. It stated the board “should take into accounts a variety of things” when scheduling hearings, together with “the Board’s capacity to accommodate all observers” in a listening to room, “to make sure the protected proximity of all attendees through the listening to, or operational issues corresponding to listening to administration.”

The assertion stated victims who want to take part remotely can even accomplish that by videoconference.

“Sufferer statements, whether or not submitted in writing, by way of video or audio recording, or offered at a listening to in individual or by videoconference, carry the identical weight and are thought of in the identical approach by Board members of their decision-making,” it stated.

Danson wrote the denial of an in-person look was “unacceptable” and “remarkably insensitive” to the Mahaffy and French households.

“It was nothing wanting gut-wrenching to expertise the painful and heartbreaking response of Debbie Mahaffy and Donna French once they realized that the PBC was prohibiting them from representing their daughters (and themselves), and denying them the correct to confront Paul Bernardo, in individual, by the studying of their Sufferer Influence Statements,” the letter stated.

“This was really a shock to their system. It was bone chilling – an insult so deep and hurtful that, (figuratively talking), it set victims’ rights again to the stone age.”

“It’s unbelievable how the ‘system’ is there to help and profit Canada’s most infamous sadist, sexual psychopath and assassin, however not his victims, who are suffering on daily basis,” Danson wrote.

Danson urged that Bernardo’s parole listening to be adjourned to December or a later date to accommodate the households and counsel to allow them to journey to La Macaza.

In an emailed assertion to World Information Wednesday, Gabriel Brunet, a spokesperson for LeBlanc, stated the parole board is an arms-length quasi-judicial physique and its “choices are made independently.”

“Our hearts exit to the households of the victims, who proceed to reside with the trauma attributable to this particular person’s abominable crimes,” Brunet stated.

“Minister LeBlanc has been assured by the Chairperson of the Parole Board she is reconsidering and exploring all potential various choices to make sure the victims have the power to learn statements in individual.”

Throughout query interval Wednesday, Conservative Chief Pierre Poilievre accused the Liberal authorities of “blocking” the French and Mahaffy households from the listening to and requested why LeBlanc didn’t intervene within the parole board’s resolution.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded by saying Poilievre was utilizing the problem for political functions.

“The chief of the opposition is aware of full nicely these are choices taken by the arms-length parole board and the minister is engaged on this subject,” Trudeau stated. “Nevertheless it gained’t stop him from instrumentalizing the grief and anguish of households who’re victims of crime for his personal slender private achieve.”

Bernardo has been serving a life sentence for the kidnappings, tortures and murders of French and Mahaffy within the early Nineties close to St. Catharines, Ont. He and his then-wife Karla Homolka additionally killed her youthful sister, Tammy Homolka.

Bernardo, 60, was transferred to a medium-security jail in Quebec in June final yr, a transfer that set off a firestorm throughout the nation, and engulfed the Liberal authorities in controversy.

Bernardo had been residing out his sentence in maximum-security prisons till then.

A assessment into his controversial switch concluded that the choice to maneuver Bernardo was “sound.”

On the time, Danson stated his shoppers weren’t informed in regards to the transfer beforehand. The incident in the end prompted a assessment into the Correctional Service of Canada’s sufferer companies, together with its notification protocols.

—With recordsdata from World’s Shallima Maharaj