SQLFusion - Courts get it wrong on victimized children

Courts get it wrong on victimized children

The Montreal Gazette

Sunday, 02 November 2008

Martin Kruze killed himself four days after the man found guilty of sexually abusing him was sentenced. Gordon Stuckless, ultimately convicted of abusing 26 boys at Maple Leaf Gardens, was sentenced to two years less a day. Now he's teaching hockey in Spain.

At the trial, Kruze had testified that Stuckless abused him from 1975 to 1982, starting when he was 13 years old. At trial's end, in 1997, Kruze threw himself off Toronto's Bloor Street Viaduct.

When experts in Canadian law talk about sexual abusers who also breach the trust of their victims, the heart-broken, desperate Martin Kruze could serve as the face of those victims.

Another obvious case of abuse of trust is that of hockey coach Graham James, convicted of the sexual abuse of several of his former players, including Sheldon Kennedy.

Abuse of trust coupled with sexual abuse should, in the minds of most Canadians, lead to greater sentences for those convicted. Abuse of trust should always be considered an aggravating factor.

Children who would run screaming from the sexual overtures of a complete stranger can become confused, and more vulnerable, when a known, loved or admired figure makes advances.

So it comes as an unwelcome surprise that in fact sexual assailants who traded on trust are usually given lighter sentences than are assailants who strike randomly.

In a large-scale study conducted for the Cornwall, Ont. inquiry into an alleged pedophilia ring, researchers found that in the past 10 years, convicted assailants who had been in relationships of trust with their victims were sentenced on average to lower jail sentences than other assailants.

The lower sentences were handed down despite the fact that abuse of trust was put forward as an aggravating factor. It was not, in other words, as though the subject hadn't been broached at trial or sentencing. This suggests that either the courts don't believe that abuse of trust is an aggravating factor, or they think such cases are so rare as to not need special measures.

The Cornwall study should set the courts straight: Citing Statistics Canada, the study says that 11 per cent of cases of child sex abuse involves a stranger. Family members were the perpetrators in 34 per cent of cases and 43 per cent were perpetrated by someone known to the child. (In the remaining cases the relationships was not known.)

In Quebec, the average sentence for an abuser acting in a relationship of trust was 28 months, nearly half a year less than for non-trust cases. Colleen Parrish, director of policy at the Cornwall Public Inquiry, told the Globe and Mail that Canadian society is "still coming to grips with the profound damage this can do." Parrish said witnesses said their trust in other people was destroyed.

Canadians' understanding of the damage child sexual abuse can do has improved. We know that it matters enormously that society recognizes a child's victimization. But if today our courts are failing to acknowledge that the abuse of trust adds harm to an already terrible experience, then we are once again failing these children.