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Victims Speak Out: Finding a Voice in the Canadian Justice System

Note to Reader: This overview was commissioned by the Policy Centre for Victim Issues who enlisted award-winning journalist and freelance writer, Laura Eggertson, to put together a short overview of the history of the victims' advocacy movement in Canada. It was developed in response to feedback received on the 2006 National Victims of Crime Awareness Week Resource Guide. It is designed to be a complementary piece to “The Evolution of Federal Initiatives to Support Victims of Crime.” Together, the two histories demonstrate how the victim advocacy movement has evolved and impacted government initiatives.

This overview highlights some of the early pioneers in victim advocacy in Canada, but is by no means comprehensive.

When victims of crime speak about their interactions with society and the Canadian justice system over the past 25 years, their stories are deeply personal. Yet universal themes emerge: suffering, courage, empathy and action. Above all, the journey of the victims' advocacy movement in Canada has been about victims' struggles to find their voices and to carve out a role in this most human and inhumane of experiences.

Sharon and Gary Rosenfeldt were early founders of Victims of Violence, one of the longest-surviving advocacy groups in Canada. Their journey began in April of 1981, when Sharon handed her 16-year-old son, Daryn, some dry cleaning. At 11:00 a.m., she sent him off to a mall a block and a half from their home in Coquitlam, B.C. He never returned.

As the Rosenfeldts later learned, serial killer Clifford Olson abducted Daryn from that Coquitlam mall. He then sexually assaulted and murdered the teenager - one of at least 11 deaths for which Olson has since been convicted and is serving life in prison.

For several agonizing weeks after Daryn's disappearance, the Rosenfeldts had no idea what had happened to their son. They felt isolated, and helpless. At the time, there were no national missing children's organizations in Canada, no support groups to help.

Gap in services

Although women's groups and shelters for victims of domestic violence had begun to emerge in Canada in the 1970s, by the early 1980s there was still little public recognition of victims' needs. Governments had not yet awoken to this gap in services. The professionals investigating and prosecuting crimes often gave families and victims the impression that they were to blame, particularly in cases involving sexual assault. This was the climate in which the Rosenfeldts struggled to cope with Daryn's abduction.

Because of Daryn's age, the police treated him as a possible runaway. Gary Rosenfeldt took his son's picture to merchants at the mall where he disappeared; the police had not yet questioned them. His efforts to make sure the investigation got high priority were pushed aside.

“There was nothing for us - zero,” Gary Rosenfeldt remembers. “We got help from nobody, except for some friends of ours.”

When the Rosenfeldts did try to get information from the police, they were brusquely informed that their son was not the only case they were working on. Or they were ignored. “The hardest part to deal with was that people never phoned us back,” Gary Rosenfeldt says.

In May, police called the Rosenfeldts seeking dental records. They had found a boy's body. On May 10, an RCMP officer from the Mission, B.C. detachment called to speak to Sharon. The officer told her they could rest easy - it was definitely not her son's body that they had found. On May 11, the phone rang again. This time, the police officer told a horrified Sharon: “I guess that was your son's body we found after all.”

When Gary Rosenfeldt picked up the phone Sharon had dropped, the police officer had already hung up. Shortly afterward, two police officers from Mission arrived, surprised to learn that someone had already notified the Rosenfeldts about their son's death.

Throughout the difficult and frightening days that followed the discovery of Daryn's body, as police questioned the family, Sharon Rosenfeldt's reaction was one of relief: “At least someone was paying attention.”

Forming an organization

As the Rosenfeldts continued dealing with police and RCMP officers, reporters, and later with Crown attorneys and Justice Department officials, their initial bewilderment and frustration hardened into a firm resolve. They never wanted another parent or family member to endure what they had gone through. Their grief and anger was exacerbated by their encounters - collisions - with the justice system. To their shock and surprise, they discovered, as have other victims, that they had no prescribed role in the investigation or the prosecution that followed. The Crown acted for the state; the defence lawyers for the offender. No one acted specifically for them. No one listened to their questions or wanted their opinion.

“It's unimaginable stress,” says Gary Rosenfeldt.

Sharon Rosenfeldt began reaching out to the parents of other missing children in British Columbia. Her only source was the phone numbers on the bottom of Missing Children posters plastered to telephone poles or tacked up on bulletin boards. Eventually, she connected with many of the parents of Olson's other victims.

“The first call was out of sheer necessity - wanting to reach out to someone,” Sharon Rosenfeldt says. “I just wanted to talk to someone who was feeling like we felt.”

In July 1981, the Rosenfeldts and the other parents formed one of the country's first victims' support groups: Parents of BC Child Murder Victims. It provided them with a service that wasn't available, at that time, through any level of government or community group: the chance to talk, to listen, and to share their grief and frustration.

After Olson was arrested on August 12, 1981, the Rosenfeldts endured further indignities. While helping her younger son on his paper route, Sharon found out from a newspaper headline that Olson had sexually assaulted Daryn. None of the investigating officers had spoken to them about the assault, despite Gary's requests to know any information ahead of reporters. The families of Olson's victims were also kept from knowing about the payments the RCMP made to Olson to get him to divulge the locations of some of their children's bodies.

The families' anger when they learned about the payments had to do with the process, not the means that officials used to locate the bodies, says Gary Rosenfeldt. “It wasn't about the money,” he explains. “We would have done anything to assist in the recovery. It was about explaining to the families what was being done.”

Increasingly, the Rosenfeldts and the other families felt as if they had no rights in the storm that followed their children's murders. The only person who seemed to have rights, advocates, and a role was the offender.

Making a promise

When Gary and Sharon took Daryn's body back to their hometown of Saskatoon to bury him, they stood beside his grave and made a vow. They told their son they wouldn't come back to see him until they had done something to make sure they changed the system so other families did not have to suffer as they had.

“We were going to fix things, because of the way he in his little life was treated, and nobody else cared,” Sharon Rosenfeldt says.

They didn't go back to his grave for 16 years.

The same year that Olson's arrest brought his killings to a halt, another grassroots citizen's group was forming to lobby for changes to the Parole Act (pre-cursor to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act). Sparked by parolee Paul Kocurek's murder of 15-year-old Lise Clausen in Duncan, B.C., the Clausens, local residents and politicians formed Citizens United for Safety and Justice, on September 14, 1981.

Throughout the years that followed, the Rosenfeldts, Inge Clausen and others affected by violent crime continued to organize. The Rosenfeldts moved to Edmonton. They were drawn to the plight of other families whose children disappeared or were murdered. “Both of us said, we just can't have these people be treated in the same way we were treated,” Gary Rosenfeldt remembers.

In 1983, after meeting with local MPs and Don Sullivan, who had formed an Ontario group called Victims of Violence (in February 1982), the Rosenfeldts recognized the need for a national organization to advocate for victims' rights. In March of 1984, they registered Victims of Violence as a national charitable organization. Gary Rosenfeldt began lobbying police chiefs, the Solicitor General and Attorneys General across the country, asking for a standard protocol for the way police notified families about deaths. They began raising the profile of victims, and offering services.

The Alberta government provided Gary Rosenfeldt with an office in the Edmonton courthouse. Despite opposition from some defence lawyers and offenders, Victims of Violence began serving victims they met in the courthouse. They lobbied for the use of victim impact statements. The people affected by violent crime wanted the opportunity to tell their stories and to have a role in the justice system.

Lobbying for change

Across the country, other victims were also organizing and lobbying for legislative and program changes. Some focused on victim impact statements and on sentencing. Others responded to victims' needs for practical, emotional and financial support. Still others concentrated on needed reforms to the parole system. The plight of women victimized by domestic violence or sexual assault motivated other groups. Some victims' responded to their grief by creating programs focused on forgiveness, rehabilitation and restorative justice.

Not all of the organizations were comprised primarily of victims. In Quebec, Renée Collette, a former parole officer and criminology professor, and Micheline Ball joined colleagues and professionals in various sectors of the criminal justice field to start the Association Québecois Plaidoyer-Victimes in 1984. The organization was inspired in part by the Federal-Provincial Task Force on Justice for Victims of Crime, which in 1983 produced a report highlighting the need for a more responsive justice and social service system. It was also motivated by the Canadian Urban Victimization Survey, which the Solicitor General conducted in 1982.

“We were a collection of people working in different sectors who came together with victims, to see how we could work better to make sure the voices of victims were heard, that their rights were respected,” says Collette, now Executive Vice-Chairperson of the National Parole Board.

Collette and her colleagues helped to train Quebec police officers on how to work with victims of rape. They also began a pilot program in St. Hubert, in Montreal's south shore. They worked with the provincial Health and Social Services departments to support victims of crime and to gather data about their needs. The pilot project eventually resulted in Quebec's Centre d'Aide au Victimes Criminales, a community-based approach to assisting victims.

Attending parole hearings

The climate for victims was beginning to change, as victims' advocacy began to find its voice. Citizens United for Safety and Justice had one of their first successes in early 1983, when chairman Dan Hughes and Inge Clausen were invited to attend parole hearings at a medium security prison in Abbotsford, B.C. They were there to represent victims, attesting to the impact of violent crime.

In Winnipeg, Wilma Derksen knew the pain the Rosenfeldts and the Clausens suffered. In 1984, her 13-year-old daughter Candace disappeared on the way home from the Mennonite school she attended.

As with the Rosenfeldts, the Winnipeg police initially believed Candace was a runaway, despite Derksen's insistence that she was not. With the help of the Mennonite Central Committee, the Derksens organized their own search for Candace. A week after she disappeared, a stranger stumbled across Candace's body in a shed that had not been used for years. Her killer has never been caught.

At the time, the Winnipeg police had just assigned their first officer to a victims' services office. But they had neither the staff nor the experience to offer the Derksens much help. Like the Rosenfeldts, Wilma Derksen learned, to her shock, that she had no advocate and no defender in the adversarial justice system. The experience felt, to her, like a war.

“I'm not talking against the justice system, because I think everyone is doing their jobs,” she says. “It's just this glaring hole that leaves victims totally defenceless, without a voice, at the time when they're at war. The justice system comes and takes their weapons, makes them totally powerless, and doesn't defend them. It's cruel.”

Derksen began her advocacy work with the organization Child Find. She started the Manitoba chapter in 1985. She then served on the board and as a founding member of Family Survivors of Homicide, from 1989 to 1994. Both of these provincial organizations were based in Winnipeg.

Derksen and other parents kept their support group going, even as Derksen continued to work as a journalist at The Mennonite Reporter. Through her volunteer work and her reporting, she listened to other victims. They described their feelings of helplessness, of loneliness. As they dealt with court cases, plea bargains and sentencing, victims felt their privacy stripped away and their emotions showcased for the world. Their wishes were seldom heard or acted upon.

“It was about silencing the victim. The victims felt sidelined,” Derksen says. “Crime shatters one's image of safety and security, and then by not having anyone advocating for the victim, it is another illusion of safety shattered.”

Criminal injuries compensation

Back in Edmonton, Martin Hattersley also learned about shattered safety. On August 3, 1988, his 29-year-old daughter, Catherine Greeve, was murdered in a washroom at a light rail transit station by a young man on parole who was attempting to rob her. After two months of investigation, police apprehended the offender. He was convicted of manslaughter and is serving a life sentence.

As both a lawyer and an Anglican minister, Hattersley had an advantage over many victims. He understood how the justice system operated. Still, he was unprepared for the scant services available to his family or for what happened when he tried to use the only government program offered him. At the time, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Act was one of the few avenues available to victims to document their experiences. But when Hattersley filled out an application, “I found it very upsetting,” he says.

“It's like - ‘prove to us that you've lost money on this',” he says, describing the program at the time. “It just served to rub salt in your wounds, more than anything else.”

Unlike the Rosenfeldts, the Hattersleys were pleased by the way the police handled the investigation of their daughter's death. “They worked very hard on this and kept us informed quite well on what they were trying to do,” Hattersley says.

Hattersley joined the Victims of Homicide of Edmonton Support Society, which continues to meet regularly, often in the company of a bereavement counsellor. He also began to direct his energy to “trying to straighten the murderers of the world out. It keeps your feet on the floor not to demonize these people,” says Hattersley.

Even before Cathy's death, Hattersley had begun to connect with a prison fellowship group. He began to volunteer with a course called Alternatives to Violence, which is offered in prisons. Eventually, Hattersley became a facilitator. Today, in addition to his support for victims, he continues to work with offenders. “You start seeing these people as people, and it's very therapeutic,” he says.

Beginning in the mid-1980s, and until 1996, provinces and territories began enacting victims' legislation. Many also reformed compensation programs - including Alberta, to Hattersley's relief. The provinces and territories began establishing Victim Services' divisions and directors, or financed court-based, police-based or community-based victim services.

Criminal Code changes

In the mid-1980s, amendments to the Criminal Code regarding sexual assault, child abduction and child sexual abuse were enacted. The Code's focus on rape was expanded to encompass sexual assault, and the so-called “rape shield” laws were reformed. The United Nations passed a number of resolutions creating international instruments recognizing victims' rights, including the Canadian-sponsored UN Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power. Irvin Waller, Professor of Criminology at the University of Ottawa, was instrumental in Canada's sponsorship of the Declaration. He also played a key role in supporting the establishment of the Federal-Provincial Task Force on Justice for Victims of Crime in 1981. In 1988, Canada developed its own set of principles based on the UN Declaration entitled the Canadian Statement of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime.

No single event or organization resulted in the gradual emergence of a more responsive climate for victims' services, says Alan Young, a professor at Toronto's Osgoode Law School at York University. Instead, he credits the increasing crime rate between 1962 and 1990, intense media coverage of crime and a growing feeling of empathy among Canadians, who supported changing the system to make it better. But each specific case, each death and each group that formed in response played an important part in advocating for and securing changes in legislation that closed loopholes in the law.

The victims' associations were critical in ensuring that government response ran deeper than just an expression of sympathy that waned when each new political issue grabbed their attention, says Young. They kept up pressure and ensured that governments of all political stripes stayed focused.

“The survivors or the families weren't going to allow the flavour-of-the-month phenomenon to happen,” Young says.

The women's movement as “mirror”

The women's movement was also critical in the emergence of victims' advocacy, say Young and Joanne Marriott-Thorne, director of programs in the Policing and Victim Services Division at Nova Scotia's Department of Justice. Marriott-Thorne calls the women's movement the “mirror,” and the platform that began to articulate the situation of female victims, and then all victims.

“It was because of the women's movement and women profiling traumas and hardships and inequities for women that women as victims really came to light,” says Marriott-Thorne. Shining the spotlight on the way the criminal justice system can further victimize women in cases of sexual assault and domestic violence began to effect change - and it spilled over into the realm of all victims' rights.

Things were beginning to change, but there remained grave injustices, as Marjean Fichtenberg learned in September 1993. An offender on day parole in Prince George, B.C. murdered her 25-year-old son, Dennis. It later emerged that the offender was an RCMP informant, and the Mounties had used their influence to have him re-released on parole.

Twelve years separated Fichtenberg's ordeal from that of the Rosenfeldts - yet despite the gains the victims' advocacy movement had achieved, she suffered many of the same frustrations.

“When I learned that the guy that murdered my son was on parole, I needed to find out what happened,” says Fichtenberg. “I started learning all I could about the system and how it worked so I would know what went wrong.”

Fichtenberg began asking questions of Correctional Service of Canada and the National Parole Board. Initially, officials stonewalled her.

“The most difficult thing was getting people to talk to me, getting people in the system to respond to my letters,” Fichtenberg says.

Parole issues

It took two years of lobbying the Attorney General of B.C. before she succeeded in getting the province to call a public inquest. After suing the Correctional Service of Canada, the National Parole Board and the RCMP, she eventually won an out-of-court settlement. Even more importantly, for Fichtenberg, the National Parole Board responded to the inquest's recommendation for an independent victims' ombudsman by forming the Victims Advisory Committee in the Pacific region. Fichtenberg sits on the committee. She also joined Citizens United for Safety and Justice, working with Clausen and others on issues concerning victims' rights to attend parole board hearings and to submit victim impact statements.

As Fichtenberg was struggling to get information and answers, another advocate entered the victims' movement. On August 9, 1991, Nina de Villiers was kidnapped and murdered while jogging in Burlington, Ont. Her killer, Jonathan Yeo, was free on $3000 bail after being charged with sexual assault and use of a firearm. An hour before grabbing de Villiers, a U.S. border guard had prevented him from crossing into the United States and had notified Canada Customs that he had a weapon, a bail release form and a suicide note.

Soon after Nina's murder, her parents, Priscilla and Rocco de Villiers, began circulating a petition asking the federal government to amend the Criminal Code and the Parole Act. They wanted tighter bail and parole provisions. Eventually, the petition garnered three million signatures.

The de Villiers also formed CAVEAT - Canadians Against Violence Everywhere Advocating its Termination. CAVEAT focused on changes in legislation, on education and prevention, and on victim's rights. It also was instrumental in raising the profile of victims' issues and bringing advocacy organizations together with police and policymakers. CAVEAT's ultimate goal was to create a peaceful, safe and just society, says Priscilla de Villiers.

One of the areas Priscilla de Villiers also felt most strongly about was that the justice system de-humanized victims. CAVEAT worked hard to personify them, so that the public, the media and the justice system learned to know the people behind the statistics. De Villiers often pointed to the event known as the Montreal massacre, on December 6, 1989. Gunman Marc Lepine shot and killed 14 women in the corridors of Montreal's École Polytechnique.

“After the Montreal massacre, nobody could name the girls. But we all knew who the killer was,” says de Villiers. “This became my watchword. I don't ever want to say my daughter's killer's name. That's not who we want to glorify.”

In 1994 and 1995, CAVEAT hosted Safety Net conferences in co-operation with the Canadian Police Association. The conferences drafted recommended legislative reforms for all levels of government. They included increased services for victims, “truth in sentencing” provisions and tougher sentences for offenders.

A new resource centre

One of the first concrete examples of increased resources for victims was the creation or establishment of the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime. The non-profit organization, established in 1993, is supported by the Canadian Professional Police Association as well as other police organizations and donors. It advocates for victims and survivors of violent crime, and conducts research and provides services for victims and advocacy groups. The Centre also lobbies all levels of government for change in legislation and for services.

The Centre's goals include trying to ensure that the Canadian justice system does not re-victimize people, says Steve Sullivan, now the Centre's president and CEO.

“The justice system can't really make people happy,” he points out. “It's not going to bring back your loved one, it's not going to take away the memories of being sexually abused. The best it can do is not do more harm.”

When the Centre began its work, Sullivan felt that the justice system was harming victims of violent crime, by ignoring their interests and keeping them on the outside.

“Every study on victims shows that information is one of the highest priorities for most victims,” says Sullivan. “Sometimes safety is [also] an issue - but the No. 1 identified need ... is information, because information is power. It's understanding.”

Keeping a promise

In 1997, the Rosenfeldts felt they had finally achieved some measure of understanding. Clifford Olson was applying for early release under what was then known as Section 745.6 of the Criminal Code - the “faint hope” clause. The Correctional Service of Canada invited the Rosenfeldts and the other victims' families to attend the hearing. They read victim impact statements. The RCMP assigned officers to sit with the family throughout the hearing and to talk to them afterward. But most importantly, the RCMP publicly apologized to the families for how the police service had dealt with them at the time of the murders and through Olson's arrest and prosecution.

“That's when I knew it really, really had changed,” says Sharon Rosenfeldt. “It was just an absolute turnaround in the way we were treated.”

After 16 years, the Rosenfeldts returned to Daryn's grave - with their heads held high. They had made a difference.

The fight for victims' rights was not over, however. Many advocates, including Sharon Rosenfeldt, continued their work on the government side. Rosenfeldt became chair of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board in Ontario. She was also hired by the province and served as chair of the Office for Victims of Crime in Ontario. Priscilla de Villiers served as a member of the National Crime Prevention Council (1994-1997). Joanne Marriott-Thorne, who had begun her involvement in the field as a member of the Lunenburg County Women's Group, worked as a consultant with the Nova Scotia government to set up services under its Victims' Rights and Services Act, proclaimed in 1990. She went on to direct programs and services province-wide. Renée Collette took the experience she gained working with women's groups and community organizations and her academic expertise to the National Parole Board, where she is currently the Executive Vice-Chairperson.

Restorative justice

In Manitoba, Wilma Derksen continues to work through the Mennonite Central Committee. She began a program called Victims' Voice, which is based on an alternative justice model. By publishing a newsletter that tells victim's stories, and writing handbooks that are now used in several university courses, she hopes to help train the people who encounter victims in their jobs in the justice system. Derksen also started two programs: Victim Companions and Safe Justice Encounters. Through Victim Companions, she offers a support service that will accompany victims and their families to court, to doctor's appointments, and as they fill out compensation forms. At Safe Justice Encounters, she helps victims who wish to meet their offenders for face-to-face conversations.

Derksen believes that despite the services that the victims advocacy movement has secured, there is much more to be done.

“The only way this whole thing is going to be solved is that after guilt and innocence has been established - there needs to be another session where the victim is looked after,” she says.”

In Derksen's view, after sentencing an offender, the criminal justice system should confront its responsibility to the victim. It should assign victims an advocate who informs them about parole hearings and their right to attend them, offers them the opportunity to talk to an offender in a safe way, and helps them grow through their trauma.

Many other victims' advocates also believe, like Derksen, that the next direction the federal government should take in responding to victims is to establish an independent body to address their needs. Marjean Fichtenberg continues to call for a Victim's Ombudsman. She believes that victims should have a representative with status equal to that of the Office of the Correctional Investigator, which reviews and investigates prisoners' complaints.

Educating the gatekeepers

Victims' issues also need to be incorporated into law school curricula, as well as into programs for offenders, says Fichtenberg. “The best chance they have to be rehabilitated is to realize the harm that they've caused by doing their crimes,” she adds.

At the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime, Steve Sullivan heartily endorses the need to educate the next generation of lawyers and judges. Although victim impact statements are now permitted under the Criminal Code, they are only used in 12 percent of all cases, he says. In part, that is because some victims decline to give them. But many still don't know they have the right to do so - and sometimes, Crown Attorneys who are clearing backlogs with plea bargains and deals discourage their use.

“There's a whole lot of institutional resistance to really implementing them,” says Sullivan about the impact statements. Like Fichtenberg, he believes putting victims' experiences and rights in law school curriculums will help change attitudes.

“It's pretty clear that the people who really control the system are lawyers, whether they're Crowns, defence or judges. We need to get to those people early on, before they get involved in the traditional system, which is based [solely] on the accused and the state,” Sullivan says.

On the legislative front, Sullivan believes the victims' advocacy movement has accomplished a great deal. “I think we're almost there. The problem isn't with the legislation - it's how people deal with it. We've been able to change a lot of laws, but we haven't been able to change a lot of attitudes of the people in the system who are the gate-keepers.”

Victims' remedies

In Nova Scotia, Joanne Marriott-Thorne would agree. What's missing from the legislative puzzle, she says, is recompense for victims when their rights are ignored.

“When I look across Canada, it is absolutely remarkable that there has been a whole new [victims' services] component added to the system,” Marriott-Thorne says. “There has been a tremendous change in the law on paper to give recognition and inclusion to victims in the criminal justice system.”

Unfortunately, Marriott-Thorne says, what's on paper isn't strong enough. “The next wall we have to scale is providing some remedies.” Although the Criminal Code provisions give victims of crimes some rights, such as to make victim impact statements, there is no remedy if they are not accorded those rights.

“From my point of view, at the federal level efforts have to be put forward to bring forth precedent-setting cases in relation to victims not being accorded the rights now embedded in the Criminal Code,” she says.

In Toronto, Alan Young agrees that governments must ensure their responses to victims of crime are not mere “window-dressing.” Despite all of the legislative changes and action from the 1980s to the present, “the level of dissatisfaction among victims of crime remains virtually unchanged,” Young says.

Certainly, Canada has taken a huge stride forward in making it easier for victims of domestic abuse who are under 18 to come forward and testify in a comfortable setting, Young says. But in terms of victim impact statements, legal professionals often neutralize the significance of changes in the law, because they either ignore or minimize them, he adds. In addition, he cites the lack of even a single victims' rights course at a law school in Canada. “I believe that's where the focus has to be,” he says.

Important gains

From her position with the National Parole Board, Renée Collette believes victims' rights have come a long way. The provisions allowing victims to read a prepared statement and to observe hearings related to the offender in their cases is a measure of that progress. “If I compare it to when we started, it's incredible,” she says.

She would like the federal government to implement the parole-related recommendations contained in the 1998 Parliamentary report, “Victims' Rights: A Voice, Not a Veto”. Legislation that was tabled to implement some of those recommendations died on the order paper when the last election was called - but she hopes they will be re-introduced.

Martin Hattersley, who has also worked extensively within the prison system, believes part of the federal government's job is to let Canadians know what they are doing to rehabilitate offenders.

“It's terribly hard for the government to let the public know what the problem is and what the effective solutions are, so that people understand what happens when there is a murder,” he says. “All I can do is try to encourage Corrections Canada to give an account of what they are doing.”

From Hattersley's perspective as a taxpayer, he says “there is this guy who murdered my daughter. Eighteen years' further on - he refuses parole - so it's costing $5,000 a month to keep him in food and shelter. It comes to a point where if you can possibly rehabilitate these people, it's a lot cheaper for everybody, as long as society is safe.”

Although Hattersley knows his thinking runs counter to the “three strikes and you're out” mentality in vogue among a segment of the Canadian public, he believes that attitudes might change if people understood what the Correctional Service of Canada is accomplishing.

“I wish people were more familiar with what Correctional Services are doing, because they're doing an incredibly effective job in making sure that people don't re-offend,” he says.

Changing the Culture

From Priscilla de Villier's perspective, victims' organizations have raised the bar in terms of recognizing the needs of victims. She's also seen a major change in the general acceptance and concern about victims in the media and the attitudes of the general public. When CAVEAT began its work, media stories about trials and about homicides often didn't even carry a picture of the victim, she says. “It was always the offender.”

Today, she points to the trial of a man accused of murdering 27 women in British Columbia. There is a major focus in news reports on the identities of the victims, as mothers, sisters and daughters - rather than on their occupations as sex workers and on their drug addictions.

“We've come a long way in personifying victims - even these poor women in B.C., who I think would have gotten short shrift 10 years ago,” de Villiers says.

However, she believes the justice system still needs to evolve, so that victims' rights and the need to listen to them becomes an intrinsic part of how that system operates, on a daily basis.

“What we really need is to have it entrenched in our education and our daily activities that crime, particularly violent crime, is just not a part of our society. That it's an intolerable part of our society,” de Villiers says.

Victims' ombudsmen

For those whose lives are altered forever by inmates who do re-offend, the question of the role of Correctional Service of Canada and Justice Canada in recognizing and ensuring victim's rights continues to be a complex one. At Victims of Violence, the Rosenfeldts believe that Canada should follow the state of Wisconsin's lead. There, every prison institution has a victim services co-ordinator. The co-ordinator contacts victims, explains the process that continues after sentencing is complete and advises them about their role.

“This isn't about pampering the victims. This is just about treating people decently,” says Sharon Rosenfeldt.

The Rosenfeldts are grateful for the “phenomenal” change in attitude they have seen in police forces and the way officers respond to victims, particularly as they have developed protocols and training for officers on how to notify families of victims' deaths. Many of those changes occurred at their urging. “Police have had a sincere desire to improve things for victims,” says Gary Rosenfeldt.

All of the organizations that continue to work in the field of victims' advocacy spoke of the need for continued commitment at all levels of governments to finance victims' services adequately. Resources are a constant struggle. But the presence of victims in the justice system is taking hold.

“What has been so emotionally healing is to talk to victims in the latter years who said ‘the victims' witness programs' or ‘the police have been so good',” says Sharon Rosenfeldt. “That's really healing.”

Today, the Rosenfeldts can visit Daryn's grave in good conscience. Their work - and the work of victims' advocacy organizations across Canada - is continuing to change attitudes and win services and rights for victims and their families.

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