Angry in the Great White North

From the Globe and Mail:

Shaun Joshua Deacon is one of the most difficult and litigious pedophiles corrections officials say they have encountered.

In the 1980s, he was sentenced to seven years for assaulting a five-year-old girl, and three boys aged 6, 8 and 13. While awaiting sentencing in Kelowna, B.C., he abducted one of his previous victims and assaulted the child again.

Freed in the mid-1990s, Mr. Deacon was soon caught assaulting an eight-year-old boy in the bathroom of a Dairy Queen.

While paroled for that offence, Mr. Deacon was caught with a 10-year-old boy in his halfway-house room. He was sent back to jail for another two years.

So let's get this straight. He molests four young children. While awaiting sentencing, he molests one of the same children again. He's freed again. He molests again. He's freed again. He molests again.

In 2004, he's freed again.

This is enough to make anyone furious. But then the absurdity that is Canada takes this story into an entirely unexpected direction.

Corrections officials would prefer to keep someone like Deacon in prison:

Federal officials complain that overly lenient laws are causing judges to slap "long-term supervision orders" on certain high-risk sex offenders who have been handed short-term jail sentences. Even though they've served their time, these criminals still have major public-safety concerns lingering around their cases.

In the case of Mr. Deacon, most of the halfway houses in British Columbia rejected him as too risky a prospect, before officials with the Okanagan Halfway House Society in Kelowna agreed to take him one year ago. They did this on the condition he be kept on very short leash.

"If you were to put him in the community unsupervised for half an hour, he'd reoffend," said [Bob] Ens, the society's executive director. "I think his risk is extremely, extremely high."

"People gnash their teeth and pull their hair, without understanding that the law says they get out," [Brian Lang, Correctional Service Canada's director of Community Corrections for the Pacific Region,] says. "They are going to be released, so how do you want them to be released in your community?"

Well, if you can keep Deacon in prison, keep the prison with Deacon!

Mr. Deacon is constantly in the company of one of two taxpayer-funded minders who get paid $20 an hour to shadow him in 12-hour shifts seven days a week to ensure he doesn't attack another child.

They go with him when he meets his parole officer, when he does odd jobs in the community, even when he grabs a bite with a friend. "I go out for coffee with him and usually his sidekick is with him," says family friend Richard Page, who sometimes meets Mr. Deacon -- and his handler -- at the local Tim Hortons.

Mr. Page, who has struggled to support Mr. Deacon in and out of jail, says the handlers are, sadly, probably necessary. He also finds them pretty discreet. "You'd never know. We're all in civilian clothes . . . you'd think we're three buddies from work."

Got that? He has bodyguards. Or to be more accurate, you and your children, should you live in Kelowna, British Columbia, have been assigned bodyguards, who will appear whenever Shaun Joshua Deacon is nearby, ready to intervene when, not if, Deacon makes a move to attack your family.

What does Deacon think of all this? I guess he think it's funny:

Mr. Deacon has launched a Federal Court battle to lift some of the more onerous terms of his supervision order. He argues that they infringe on his rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Mr. Deacon's lawyer, Garth Barrière, refused to comment on the case.

Parole officials soon complained Mr. Deacon was a "manipulative and spiteful" offender who "began a campaign to rid himself of one of his escorts.

"In order to do this, he began to walk for long hours during the day, staying in one store in the community for hours doing nothing, ignoring the escort and not returning to [the halfway house] to eat."

Officials say that early this month, they temporarily "suspended" Mr. Deacon's freedoms and sent him back to jail for being too difficult. He is to return to the Kelowna halfway house -- and to his paid handlers -- this week.

Garth Barrière is, of course, trying to protect you. Well, not you and your children specifically, of course. He seems satisfied to have Deacon fondling Kelowna youngsters as long as it means that the more important issue of personal liberties is preserved.

Barrière works for the BC Civil Liberties Association. It is not clear if the BCCLA is backing Barrière's important work to have Deacon run around playgrounds unsupervised. The BCCLA website has no mention of Deacon or his lawsuit.

So Deacon will prowl the streets of Kelowna, being shadowed by guards who are never distracted, never cut off crossing the street by a bus, never jostled by a pedestrian, or forced to dodge a messenger speeding by on a bike. They are perfect machines, never blinking, always with Deacon in sight and within arms reach. No need for defence in depth: no need for a cell with bars, a cell block with security doors, a wall topped with barbed wire, a ditch covered by spotlights. No, a guard on foot on the streets of Kelowna is enough.

And even that is too much according to Barrière.

I can't blame Barrière -- he's clearly blinded by his own ideals. Deacon is a monster and enjoys the role. Corrections officials are doing the best they can. The guards have a thankless job and suffer the stress of knowing they have no room for error.

But the judges and the prosecutors -- they are the ones in the best position to make this an issue. They are tasked to follow the law, of course. But they have opinions too. They have voices. They can make it clear that the situation has become a dangerous farce.

I think we should consider making judges and crown attorneys elected officials. Not because I want to punish them (though bad ones should be tossed out). But because as an elected official, they would be expected to voice their opinions and to take a stand on the law. It would free them to become truly public officials, and maybe then the public would be better informed and better protected.