By Lindsey Parry
When Suzanne Banks’ nine-year-old son was paired with a Big Brother, she quickly noticed changes in his self-esteem.
“Right away, he thrived on it,” she says. “He’d never had a confident male role model. He really wanted to find his male identity. Now, that’s not an issue.”
She looks at the positives now, but Banks remembers her caution two years ago when the local agency began screening potential volunteers. She realized that she and her son would ultimately have the final veto on the stranger who had applied to mentor the young boy.
“Touch on wood, I’ve been very lucky and my son’s experience has been very beneficial,” Banks says of the eventual outcome. “So I guess you could say I’m a ‘good news’ story.”
Not all stories, however, have been “good news.” For although organizations such as Big Brothers and Scouts Canada require intense screening procedures before volunteers can work with their children, there is still always a chance that a sex offender can slip through the system.
In 1996, Richard Paquette, a Big Brother in Drummondville, Que., shocked his community after being convicted for the second-degree murder of his Little Brother, 15-year-old Stephane Houle. The boy’s mother testified her son had told her in 1995 of being sexually abused by his mentor for eight years. Paquette had been a teacher, involved with Big Brothers since 1980, and also named community volunteer of the year only a few years prior to the incident. He had no previous criminal record.
Marilyn Box of Big Brothers of Ottawa and District says the organization’s screening process is constantly being strengthened.
“We always regret harm to any child,” she says, referring to Houle’s death. “But I have to reinforce the message that we do everything possible with the information we have…and we self-improve with each new piece of information we receive, not just because there’s been a case like this.”
Both Big Brothers and Scouts Canada require volunteers to go through a criminal record check, lengthy interview, reference checks, sexual assault awareness workshops and habitual monitoring of their relationship with children using the agency.
The entire procedure, which investigates an individual’s family history, education, and values, can be rather invasive. But as the Paquette incident shows, all that is done to protect children is still no guarantee that a dangerous person won’t be accepted.
One element of a screening process has only recently come under public scrutiny. For two years, Reform MP Eric Lowther has been lobbying the federal government for Canadian parents’ “right to know,” about the facts behind criminal record checks. A record will only disclose if an applicant has been previously convicted of a crime. Whether that person has pending charges, been suspected, or acquitted of a sexual offence is not made public to the screeners.
The biggest flaw in the criminal check, Lowther believes, is that a pardoned convict is not disclosed as ever having a conviction at all.
“Our government is holding back information that could help these organizations,” he says. “They have it there, in the central CSIS computer. To make it available to organizations in the right circumstances is not a big deal. Why hold it back if the check itself is intended to help children?”
Last year, Lowther presented a private member’s bill to the House of Commons. The bill proposes to allow a “more complete disclosure” of an individual’s criminal history if the record includes a sexual offence against a child, if he or she also applies for a position of trust over children.
A 1996 study by the Correctional Service of Canada indicates that sex offenders with a conviction are more than twice as likely to commit further sexual offences. The study also states that pedophiles are at greater risk to reoffend than are rapists.
Gary Rosenfeldt’s story is testimony to these claims. Serial killer Clifford Olson was on bail in 1981 when he abducted, raped, and murdered Rosenfeldt’s 16-year-old son, Daryn, in Vancouver. He had 94 previous convictions for sexually assaulting a number of children.
Since then, Rosenfeldt has lobbied for children’s rights through Victims of Violence, a national organization that now supports Lowther’s bill.
But Rosenfeldt also believes sex offenders should not be eligible for pardons in the first place.
“It takes away the intent of the justice system. We all assume that once a person’s been convicted of a sexual offence, that person’s not going to end up in a children’s organization.
“We’re talking about the most vulnerable citizens, people who can’t defend themselves. So to some degree, parents do have a false sense of security.”
Not all organizations use the same intensive screening process as Big Brothers and Scouts Canada. When a household expresses interest in volunteering, Nepean Block Parents run criminal checks on everyone over 12 years of age in the home. Yet while they also do annual audits, these are only done by phone.
“We don’t make visits,” says chairperson Anne Moulton. “So yes, someone could lie when we call and ask if there’s anyone new living there. But in this world we live in, we have to have a little faith that these people just want to help their fellow man.”
Vounteers Sharing in Education, spanning across all four school boards in Ottawa-Carleton, allows adults to run homework clubs, tutor, and conduct reading programs within local schools.Volunteers are interviewed, often over the phone, and are required to supply two references.
Because volunteers are discouraged from working with children in isolated areas, program manager Sarah Cook says a criminal check is not usually run “unless warranted.”
“Sometimes a person may be new to town and not have any local references,” she adds. “But sometimes, on more than one occasion, I’ve felt more and more uncomfortable about a person, so I’ve asked their permission to have the check done.
“If someone commits a crime, like throwing a rock through a window, that may or may not say something about how that person interacts with children. It may say something about how they serve as a role model. But you also have to realize what the record’s impact has on someone. When was the crime? People grow up and do develop changes.”
Regardless of the risks involved, Rosenfeldt says parents should not avoid signing their children up for activities and organizations.
“I’m not sure we have to live in constant fear, but we should realize we’re all taking chances with today’s laws,” he says.
“Parents do have some responsibility here too. Don’t just ship your kid off with the hockey coach to small-town Ontario. Go along, volunteer, and pay attention to where your child is.”
Meanwhile, Suzanne Banks is following Rosenfeldt’s advice but will never assume a screening process is foolproof.
“You can’t do that when it’s about somebody else.”