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Sermonette: December, 2004

Waiting for justice while watching injustice

We are waiting. . .and waiting. . .and the Crown is still at it!

In the darkness of secrecy, sinister interest and evil in every shape have fullswing. Only in proportion as publicity has place, can any of the checks applicable to judicial injustice operate. Where there is no publicity there is no justice. . . . . Publicity is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion and the surest of all guards against improbity. It keeps the judge himself while trying under trial'. -- Jeremy Bentham

As we wait for Judge Baynton to elaborate on his initial findings of malice against two senior Crown prosecutors, we have evidence that the office of public prosecutions is not worried in the least. Prosecuter Cameron Scott is poking around, intimidating a family that has already been through the mill as a result of improper disclosure, arrests based on no reasonable and probable cause, and a social worker who feels safe and protected under colour of law.

Melfort is out in the boondocks. News from there is hardly ever reported unless it is something exciting like the trial of the three men for raping a 12 year old aboriginal girl last summer. Social worker Susan Pasieka was involved in that one, too. She immediately apprehended the girl and was part of the chain of custody for the girls' panties, which Crown prosecutor Gary Parker announced, in open court, contained DNA evidence, not from any of the accused on trial, but from the girl's father. Later, this girl was trotted out to testify and was reported as being quiet and equivocal. The judge would acquit two of the men and convict the third, giving him a conditional sentence because it seemed the girl was "a willing participant."

In February, 2002, the preliminary hearing was postponed while the family of the girl was asked to wait outside because, according to Crown prosecutor Cameron Scott, "the evidence was not ready yet." That evidence would have been the DNA evidence. Later, we would learn that the RCMP had watched the girl's father smoking outside the courthouse and grabbed his cigarette butt after he had extinguished it on the ground. This was used to compare with material from the girl's panties, which were turned over to police after the girl got out of hospital three days after the rape. In the meantime, her baby sister had been apprehended by Susan Pasieka. No one protected the interests of the girl in the court room. No one. The Campeau family was destroyed. This was a reserve family with problems which arise from poverty. Their situation became a rallying point for organizations who protest in support of the general principles that racism and violence against women are abhorrent; the specific wrongs which were done to them were not addressed.

And nobody is protecting the rights of the children who were apprehended from the Vopni family in September, 2001. This apprehension was carried out in broad daylight, but it was out in the boondocks, there was a rumour of sexual abuse and chldren were involved. No one heard about it.

The very nature of the allegations in these cases almost guarantees that no one will ever hear about them. It is embarrassing to the family it happens to and anyone who has ever lived in a small town understands that the rumour mill and social pressure effectively keep covered the facts of what has happened.

The above photograph shows the family -- Mom and Dad, their biological children and the five FAS children they adopted. That's right. The Vopnis adopted five children. At first they had decided that they would like to adopt two children. They placed no restrictions on "what kind of child" they would like to adopt. They had a strong fundamentalist Christian belief and were ready to share their love and their resources. They were a self-supporting family. After they had agreed to take two, they were told there were two more, and then one more. After giving great consideration to what this would mean and how they would manage, they agreed to take them all. It was hard work and they all pitched in together.

As a musical, dancing and sports-minded family, they travelled and won many awards. They became experts in the difficulties of FAS children and devised individual strategies to work around each's limitations. A more comprensive list of their many accomplishments can be found here.

The roof fell in when, at a Bible camp, one of the girls confided something of a sexual nature to one of her campmates. It is not clear just what the confidence was, but by the time it made its way through assorted children and adults to the police, and then to social worker Susan Pasieka, the concensus was that it was actionable. The girl was apprehended and two RCMP along with Pasieka showed up at the Vopni doorstep to apprehend their children.

Charges were laid and several family members went to trial. Eventually the only charge to stick was to one of the sons. The lawyer who defended the charges died shortly after the conviction. It took the Vopnis a while to find a lawyer to appeal that conviction which has now been postponed until March.

Rebecca Vopni got in touch with injusticebusters and also organized a meeting to bring false allegation expert Dean_Tong to Saskatoon to speak and run a seminar. It was at this seminar where I met Rebecca face to face. We agreed to put the story together for the internet. I conducted a lengthy e-mail interview with Rebecca which she then asked me to withhold from publication for fear she would jeopardize the appeal.

This is a case where investigation techniques -- or lack of investigation -- by police is similar to those used in the Klassen/Kvello/Ross/White arrests and apprehensions of children. For the first several weeks, the Vopni family was kept in the dark. They did not know what allegation(s) had been made, by whom or what might have been done to substantiate them. The most obvious fact, that this was an energetic family which took part in the community, that neither parent had any criminal record, was obviously of no consequence to either the police or the Crown. They had taken an allegation (that they later found out to be mischievous) and used it to blow a family apart.

The Vopnis believed that justice would be done in court. They were wrong. They were certainly relieved that charges against Derek, the father were stayed, and perhaps grateful enough for that small mercy that they did not want to make too much of a fuss about the one conviction which they are now appealing. As we know, a stay is not an acquittal. An acquitted person does not have acquiantances greet them with surprise --"Oh, I thought you were in jail."

I had almost forgotten about the Vopnis until two weeks ago when I posted the story of Tim Sandfort and was thinking of similar cases to link it to. There was the Bice family in Ontario -- and the Vopnis.

On Sunday afternoon, December 14, I received an interesting telephone call. It was from an RCMP constable in Melfort and she had some questions for me about this website. I asked her if there was any particular story she was interested in and eventually she told me it was the Vopnis. She had called me at the Crown's request. Prosecutor Cameron Scott had asked her to look into this. As I pressed her, I understood that he had wanted to establish whether I was in violation of a publication ban. I told her that I was not aware of any ban, that any information I had posted did not come from court documents. She said that she would give my telephone number to Cameron Scott and I told her I would certainly be willing to talk to him.

That got me thinking. What on earth in this case should be subject to non-publication orders? Certainly, everyone in Melfort must have noticed already that the Vopnis no longer had their adopted children. This should not be news to anyone.

The families or institutions where the children are now placed know where the children came from. A great deal of public money is being spent to keep these children in foster or institutional care -- children who were formerly being fully supported by an adoptive family. Maybe the auditor general would be interested in this and the Crown and Social Services don't want him to find out.

The role of prosecutor excludes any notion of winning or losing; his function is a matter of public duty that which in civil life there can be none charged with greater personal responsibility. It is to be performed with an ingrained sense of the dignity, the seriousness and the justness of the judicial proceedings.  -- Mr. Justice Rand (R v. Boucher, 1955)

Cameron Scott wants to make sure that he secures one conviction out of this mess. He wants to be able to justify the illegal apprehension of the children and the malicious prosecutions of members of the Vopni family. There is another prosecutor on this case. Gary Parker is apparently away until March and that was given as the reason for postponement of the appeal hearing. These are the same two prosecutors who were involved in the Tisdale rape case. Are they some kind of tag team? If they have both looked at this case, they both know that the whole thing was manufacured, in the same way the charges against the 16 people arrested by Brian Dueck, and prosecuted by Matt Miazga and Sonja Hansen, with evidence they knew was no good, with cases for which they had no reasonable and just cause. I would find it hard to believe that they did not conspire.

During the Klassen/Kvello civil trial, both Hansen and Miazga stated that the problems which existed in the prosecutor's office in 1991 did not exist today. Balderdash! The 2001 dismantling of the Vopni family and the laying of criminal charges based on hearsay evidence has happened exactly according to the way things were done in 1991. They are out to gain convictions at all cost, including presenting the court with evidence any reasonable and prudent person would know to be incredible. They are carrying off this enterprise in a shroud of secrecy. They have intimidated and continue to intimidate the Vopni family.

And now they are trying to intimidate me. The RCMP constable who called me -- her name was Pam -- was exceedingly polite. I asked her if this was part of an investigation and she said it was not. I told her that I was not aware of any publication bans regarding the material I had published and that if such existed, I could hardly be expected to know about them. After she mentioned the Vopnis, she then asked me about another website for which injusticebusters had provided a link. This is a cross-Canada site put together by Rebecca Vopni and others who have been badly treated by Social Services with regard to their children. And, I suspect, this was the site that Cameron Scott was more interested in. This is a website put up by people who want to defend themselves, to stand up to injustice.

And nothing scares the Crown more than individuals who decide to fight back and expose their high-handed and illegal tactics.

injusticebusters was started by people who set out to do just that. Although there were 16 members of his extended family falsely charged, Richard Klassen was the only one who wouldn't back down and take the advice of their defence lawyer, Daryl LaBach who told them not to piss in the Crown's cornflakes. When we first established injusticebusters, unidentified powerful people had our first efforts removed from the Sympatico server. Before and after we found The Fifth Estate and persuaded them to take up the story and turn it into a documentary which was shown all over the country, we have received warnings and threats. We have not succumbed to these threats and have continued to bring forth stories which we believe it is in the public interest to know.

The disgraceful actions of Melfort prosecutor Cameron Scott, even as he knows two of his colleagues have been the subject of initial judicial findings of mailice, make clear the need for severe punishment for prosecutors who step over the line of balancing the rights of the public and the accused, to that greedy, self-serving side where they must win, even if it means forsaking the principles they claim to stand for. Just as it will be a great relief for many honest Saskatoon cops when Brian Dueck is finally toppled, there are many honest Crown prosecutors who would breathe easier if their dishonest colleagues were weeded out.

Many innocent citizens have been suffering the consequences of the malicious acts of police, Crowns and social workers. Some have gone to jail, some have had their children removed from them, some have been branded as murderers or sex-offenders, as pornographers or child molesters, with not so much as a "We're sorry." Even in cases where these innocent people have received monetary awards, there have been no consequences for the Crowns who prosecuted the cases. New York City has finally agreed to pay $5M to Albert Ramos in a case going back to 1984. The money could in no way make up for being branded as a child molester and enduring the treatment that label provoked. Yet Crowns conspiring with police and social workers have been branding Saskatchewan citizens with this label as casually as if the charge was shoplifting. In fact the rights of the accused are much more strictly preserved in charges of theft under $5K.

Society is doubly damaged as real child molesters are given the opportunity to raise a reasonable doubt about their guilt while innocent people are put in the almost impossible position of crawling out from under the label. The authorities who take part in this criminalizing of the innocent did not stop doing it in 1991; they did not stop doing it in 2001 and they have not stopped now. They have to be stopped --not with warnings, or stern lectures, but with charges and jail sentences.

We have been watching over the last several years as people who have been convicted of murder and rape have had their convictions overturned because the evidence which judges used to convict them was insufficient. These cases receive publicity because they are so serious. When material which should have been made public finally sees the light of day, we are all properly outraged.

Now Manitoba is inquiring into "what went wrong" with Greg Lawlor and George Dangerfield, who prosecuted James Driskell while they were in possession of exculpatory evidence and knew they were dealing in junk science. What went wrong was they went wrong. And they did wrong. They went from being officers of the Court sworn to uphold the law to common criminals, conspiring with other common criminals under colour of law.

Cases involving the illegal apprehension of children and the laying of sexual abuse charges, which in many cases and certainly in the case of the Vopnis are lame to begin with, but numerous enough that the Crown can hold them over the accused only to stay them after the charged persons have spent a lot of money for a defence lawyer -- these cases just float through the courts in the boondocks and all the public hears are the rumours.

On November 20, Justice Minister Martin Cauchon appointed Mr. Bernard Grenier as Special Advisor on the criminal conviction-review process. This was long overdue. It tells us that we now have enough wrongful convictions in Canada, that have managed to work their way through the process, to require a Special Advisor to handle them.

The situation of convictions and prosecutions which have put the administration of justice into disrepute is not one which can be fixed from the top, unless the guy at the top, in this case Mr. Bernard Grenier, is willing to provide serious and meaningful sanctions against the court officers responsible for miscarrying justice. That means being suspended, fired, and jailed, depending on the seriousness of the malice. Yes, malice. It is always malice when those sworn to uphold the law act within their roles to any other purpose.

But I doubt that the Special Advisor has been given the authority to administer sanctions. Advisors give advice. And we know what bad cops, bad prosecutors and bad social workers do with advice: they ignore it and keep right on doing what they are doing. Dueck rose all the way to the top echelons of the Saskatoon Police Service.

No, the punishing of these people has to come from closer to home. -- Sheila Steele, December 16, 2003

Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.
William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell

Truth suppress'd, whether by courts or crooks, will find an avenue to be told. Sheila Steele, injusticebusters.com

If you hold the mouth of Truth, It will burst out its rib-cage. Somali proverb

Truth crushed to earth will rise again. --William Cullen Bryant

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Who we are:

Publisher Sheila Steele

Co-founder: Richard Klassen

New: injusticebustersblog. Participate!

Our activism contributed greatly to the good vibes which happened around the civil trial.

www.flickr.com

More Sermonettes

 

early commentaries mixed in with news reports

2001

January: Legal Treachery to keep Dueck's lies safe

September: Hatchen and Munson trial

2002

March, 2002 -- Gay Bashing still a legal sport in Saskatoon -- Even when it turns to murder

First conscious sermonettes

2003

 

Feb. 1: Where we stand

Feb. 15, 2003: Has Saskatchewan learned anything?

March 1: Connecting the dots

March 23, 2003: From Micro to Macro

March 25, 2003: About libel and malice

March 27 : Gangs of Saskatoon: the police and prison guards

April 28, 2003: The Naked Truth

May 5: How low will they go?

May 15, 2003: Come clean Calvert, Cline!

May 30: Still smearing Milgaard - defamation is alive and well on the lawn of the Regina legislature and Precendent has been set as we reclaim our institutions

June 11, 2003: --Eric Cline carries on a corrupt tradition

Nov 7: Courage -- the only reward is justice

November 20: Just following orders

November 24: Mayor Atchison, community policing and graffiti

November 25: Michael Jackson

November 30: Corrupt officials must be severely punished: otherwise they just keep on putting the administration of justice in disrepute!

December 1: Christmas comes early for injustice warriors

December 4: Wide open Saskatchewan?

December 16: Crawling through the tunnel of justice since 1991

December 24: The Crown keeps right on breaking the law

December 30: Who will find justice under their tree?

 

2004

 

January 1. 2004: Unprecedented publicity and Happy New Year

January 8, 2004: Malice still afoot

January 10, 2004: Shame and mugshots

January 14, 2004: Telling more truth about the undefamable: McKillop and Quennell, the static duo

January 17, 2004: Fifth Estate returns and A working class hero is something to be

January 22,23, 2004: Justice is still prevailing -- it is just taking longer and Bits and pieces are now coming together to tell the story of the century

January 27, 2004: Telling the truth about the undefamable, restoring reputations to the defamed.

February 5, 2004: Negotiations and strategies: getting an intransigent government to remedy its damage

February 10, 2004: How many lawyers does it take to ruin a province? and Lawyer continues to treat people's lives as a cruel game: monopoly?

Febrary 16, 2004: Calvert is not King Arthur

March 29, 2004: Counting down to the damages trial

April 16, 2004: The internet, the courts and now the movies -- We will so what it takes to get justice

May 1, 2004: If Frank Quennell is any example of what former Justice Minister Chris Axworthy called "evolving," Saskatchewan is ready to kiss justice good-bye!

May 27, 2004: Some observations on Saskatchewan and justice

June 7, 2004:Media coverage of Monique Turenne's story illustrates journalistic laziness

June 8:, 2004 -- The police not only failed to serve and protect Don and Lorna Smith and their children but set them up for false charges and community shunning

September 2, 2004: A tale of three cops: Dueck, Gobeil and Schinkel -- with an update on how they get away with criminal obstruction of justice

November, 2004: Wilfred Hathway, Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns -- RCMP stings offensive to community standards

November 11, 2004: Rogue Platoon? Identifying the rotten apples in Saskatoon Police Service and why we need a full public inquiry into our whole justice system

November 28, 2004: Can Justice Minister Quennell take a few more steps? The Prosecutors' office is still harbouring crowns who put the administrative of justice in disrepute

November 12, 2004: Saskatchewan Justice in chaos: The Stonechild report suggests it is.

November 28, 2004: The price for being a good judge or a good prosecutor

December 30: When the government interferes with the judiciary, we know a Police State is a dangerous possibility (The government appeal of the Klassen/Kvello decision)

 

2005

 

Jan 1, 2005: Chewed up digested and spit out

Jan. 5, 2005: More on chief Sabo

February 18, 2005: Tunnel vision: Darren Koehn, Wilf Hathway and Leon Walchuk

March 2: Fixing the system: Time to quit talking and implement previous commission recommendations

March 19, 2005 : Injustice as ShowBiz

 

 

 

Revitalizing the archives From 1998 until 2002, injusticebusters was in the throes of identity crisis. What was it? What were we doing? We grappled with editorial policy at the same time we were learning the nuts and bolts of building and posting a website. Once we had a secure, paid site I had full editorial control, although I talked regularly to Richard Klassen who was forced to move his family several times and did not always have access to the internet. Rick's pages: one | two We posted our earliest and later actions. Early versions of the site can be found on the Wayback Machine. I began following other threads to stories of police and prosecutorial misconduct and the site's character took on another facet: a newsclipping scrapbook where stories could live longer than they would in print form. I also began picking up other stories of wrongfully convicted people. It was an explosion. By 2003 there were over 700 pages. I also had contact with several other people (Don Smith, Leon Walchuk, Monique Turenne, the Vopnis) and kept these stories going. It was the story of the Ross children's treatment at the hands of the Saskatchewan government which grabbed the attention of The Fifth Estate. The civil claim (The $10M Lawsuit as we called it) was only mentioned briefly at the end of their show which aired in November, 2000. When Richard Klassen began to make progress in bringing his civil claim to court, the government and police defendants alleged he was breaking the rules of court by publishing discovery material on the internet. MacNeil clinic (the document which started it all) The Thompson Papers Carol Bunko-Ruys reports This claim was absolutely false. However, rather than risk being thrown out of his civil claim, Klassen undertook before Judge Mona Dovall to sever all ties with the website. The court fights: Les Perreaux report QB271 These pages have links which lead to other pages from that era. Now that some of the dust has settled, I have been going back through the material we had posted in the early days. In the spirit of keeping the scrapbook alive, I have been reformatting and placing links. The original material remains intact. I hope the information, which chronicles our struggle is useful to you. The identity crisis is over. We know who we are --Sheila Steele, March 28, 2005

 

Blogging

Blogging has been in the news. It is the new, trendy thing with 40,000 new blogs being created each day. I established a blog for this website last September and it is now "taking off." These are a few of the pages with ongoing discussions.

Tasering Mary Lutz

Saskatchewan Centenary

Quint Blog discussion

Rotten apples in the Saskatoon Police

Blogging for choice

Michael Cardamone witch hunt

Implement recommendations of public inquiries

Stealing from the poor

Vancouver's killer cops

Tisdale rapists appeal

Winnipeg police misdeeds

Milgaard Inquiry

Chief Sabo: can he be trusted?

The Old Boys' Club Must Go!

Vancouver activists

John Hudak: Falsely accused mountie

City of intolerance

Constable Larry Lockwood: Exciteable!

Eric Cline

This is a great way for like-minded people to communicate and share our views. It is easier than making a website and marginally more difficult than a forum.

People who want to contribute simply have to punch the "comment" link and they will be taken to a page with a box which allows them to write their comment, preview and post it. It takes a while for the comment to show up and some people get impatient and repost. That's fine, I trash the duplicate posts and no harm done.

Please, please give it a try. The internet is distinguished from other media in that it is really and truly interactive. Blogging makes it possible to express your viewpoint even if you don't have a computer. You can go to the library or a friend's place or an internet cafe. Once you've mastered the basics (and believe me, if I can do it, you can do it) you will be participating in one of the most democratic -- and potentially powerful -- media the world as we know it has ever seen.

Come on. Don't be shy. Join the Weblog World! -- Sheila Steele, March 20, 2005

Toronto Police paid out $30M in secretly resolved claims over last five years