CKNW Editorial
for May 10, 2000

We now know a good deal more about the David Trott case and now that we get a clearer picture it's obvious that there was a systemic failure here that must be addressed.

The judge did all she could under the constraints that bind her. The amount of time Trott has spent in custody was in line with what the judge was bound to give by way of sentence. And at this point it's useful, I think, to remember that judge's don't have carte blanch in the disposition of cases. .They are bound by the Criminal Code of Canada and what the superior courts have laid down as appropriate punishment. Moreover they simply cannot bind prisoners over indefinitely for psychiatric assessment nor should they be able to.

It's also worth noting that despite John Reynolds pathological ability to play Monday Morning Quarterback, especially when it gives him a chance to hit a judge from behind while playing to the peanut gallery, the fact remains that there was nothing in the evidence before the judge that would indicate that within two days of release he might strangle a nine year old girl. The only evidence of violent behavious before the judge was his pushing his girl friend's mother who said "he didn't hurt me ... it wasn't a violent assault". More than that, even if there had been a report in front of her that predicted just such behaviour - and that's highly dubious - the judge probably still would not have been able to do much. What could she do?

Sentence him to prison for a crime a psychiatrist thought he might commit? It's truly time we all got real, here, folks. There was no way anyone could have anticipated that David Trott would do this terrible deed.

Ah, but the Reynolds fans say, there was lots to indicate he might re-offend. And yes, that's very, very true. But it is also very, very true of most people like Mr Trott - of whom there are an alarming number - who appear before judges all across this land every day. So what are we to do?

Every time there is a repeat offender send them to jail for life lest they strangle a child? Or seek a committal under mental health laws?

The judge, unlike John Reynolds and the bottom feeders, has to deal with every day life and its problems. I seem to recall that Clifford Robert Olson had a record, was it the judge who dealt with his last case who was  responsible.

Let's deal with the real world here. There is no end of young potentially violent men going through the judicial system every day. Judges know - and if the Trott case does nothing else it proves this - that the facilities for psychiatric examinations are utterly inadequate to handle anything but the most serious of cases, which David Trott's was not. They also know that their ability to do much about anything the psychiatric assessment might recommend is limited. So let's get off the judge's back and look at what's wrong here.

The first thing we have to face is that there will always be tragedies. No system on earth is going to prevent them.

Secondly, we have to look at what this is happening and a huge panoply of reasons hit us. The breakdown of the family, family abuse leading to abused children becoming abusive adults, fetal alcohol syndrome, widespread use and abuse of drugs by the young - the list goes on.

Thirdly, we have to look at our system. That it is woefully inadequate to meet the needs is obvious. That we haven't got a handle on Mental health - and this is clear from Mental Health Advocate Nancy Hall's recent report is obvious.

The plain fact is that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of David Trotts perpetually going through the system and we can't even begin to deal with the mental health aspects of that conveyor belt of offenders. We don't have the facilities to assess them, the laws to confine them, nor places to put them.

But here is the hard part ... no matter how good a job the justice system and the health care system do ... there is not enough money available and never will be to prevent all the future Jessica Russell tragedies from happening.

Let me use a silly example to make my point. You could probably cut traffic deaths in the city by having stop lights at every single intersection all manned by a policeman. You could end most of the carnage on the highways by having speed bumps every hundred meters or so. You get the point. In order to prevent the tragedy of Jessica Russell you would have to assess and incarcerate, sometimes forever for who knows when a time bomb will go off, all those who have records with any violence in them.

The answer, as with the answer for traffic, is surely to put more resources in place and make the system work better. But the fault lies not with the judge - who I believe paid a lot more attention to this case than her bare duty required - but with ourselves.

It's always fun to beat up on authority figures - I do lots of it myself. I have taken a lot of runs at a lot of judges in my time and have the lash marks from the Law Society to prove it. But Judge Susan Antifaev is only the messenger here telling us all that no matter how hard the bench and the court system try, they will never be able to insure against the death of little girls at the hands of those they have recently released from custody.