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Axworthy
previous page | Popowich | Scandal of the Century | Axworthy
has now quit politics to practice law and teach it. We hope his
sleep is stirred by a conscience. He's bought
himself a job and left a mess for Eric
Cline. Cline has now been replaced by Frank
Quennell. Corruption is still in the job description for
Saskatchewan Attorneys General
Chris Axworthy
Liar or slow
learner: should Axworthy be teaching in our academy?
Chris Axworthy
announced he may be retiring from politics and go back to teaching
law at the University of Saskatchewan. Can you believe it? This
man is either an outright liar or intellectually challenged,
as we have seen this week as he settled with Popowich and made
an apology in which he stated that at the time of the Martensville
wrongful arrests, the government had not had experience with
cases of this type.
That is an
outright lie.
The foster
parent case, or "Scandal of the Century" as it was
called by the StarPhoenix and the fifth estate
happened a full year earlier. It would appear fairly clear that
the only reason Axworthy settled with Popowich is that he knew
Popowich had the resources to win and the reason he is not settling
with the Klassens and Kvellos is he believes he can starve them
out.
injusticebusters
is pleased to see the StarPhoenix calling it like it is and acknowledging
the media's role in allowing these cases to remain buried for
more than ten years.
 Gov't fickle in response to two false
sex abuse cases: plaintiff
Jason Warick, Saskatoon
StarPhoenix, June 20, 2002
REGINA -- The provincial government
appears willing to compensate the remaining six people affected
by the botched Martensville sexual abuse case, but continues
its vigorous defence against the 13 people whose lives were ruined
by a similar case.
"What's the difference?
These cases are almost identical. We're willing to sit down with
them and talk settlement," said Richard Klassen, one of
13 adult people falsely accused of abusing three Saskatoon children
in the early 1990s.
"This is absolutely wacko.
I'm more angry than ever."
Klassen said he was initially
hopeful after hearing of the apology and $1.3-settlement Sgt.
John Popowich received from the provincial government Tuesday.
Popowich had been wrongly accused of ritual child abuse in Martensville
in the early 1990s.
Justice Minister Chris Axworthy
said Tuesday and again Wednesday that he now expects to settle
the other four lawsuits involving six others from the Martensville
case.
"The Martensville people,
I'm sure we'll hear from them and we will talk together about
a settlement," Axworthy said in an interview late Wednesday
afternoon.
Axworthy declined to comment
on the other abuse investigation that ensnared Klassen and a
dozen others.
"I don't think I can say
anything about those specific cases," he said.
But the more likely the government
is to win, the less likely it is to settle out of court, Axworthy
said.
Axworthy said the Popowich
case could have cost the government far more in legal bills and
other costs had it allowed the case to go to trial. He said the
decision was mostly financial, although the government is also
concerned with doing the right thing.
"There's always a desire
to resolve things for less rather than more," he said.
Axworthy is scheduled to meet
next week with Popowich and his family to apologize in person.
In contrast, the provincial
government is bringing Richard Klassen into court in Saskatoon
next week. For the third time, it will try to have Klassen's
lawsuit dismissed.
"I don't care what Chris
Axworthy says. I think it's inevitable now that we get a settlement,"
Klassen said. While he said he's happy for Popowich, he believes
he's just as deserving of a settlement.
Klassen and 12 others were
charged with ritual abuse by three children in 1991, one year
before the Martensville charges.
All three children have publicly
admitted to lying. They all admitted that the boy, not any of
the adults, was abusing his twin sisters.
Robert Borden, who represents
the other 12 plaintiffs, said the Martensville case is almost
identical to that of his clients.
"There were bizarre allegations
of ritual sexual abuse, the same justice officials and the same
(Saskatoon) city police department, lives ruined, all at the
same time,"
No trial dates have been set
for Klassen or Borden's clients, but the cases are nearly to
the pretrial stage, Borden said.
© Copyright 2002 Saskatoon
StarPhoenix
Martensville
lesson ignored
Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Editorial,
June 20, 2002
"I'd give anything to
wake up and find this is all a bad dream," Martensville
police officer Claudia Bryden said in June 1992, about the massive
child sex abuse investigation she'd instigated in the small town.
A decade later, taxpayers are
finding out the exact price they have to pay for what really
did turn out to be a nightmare, not just for Bryden but for almost
every single person and legal institution that had been involved
in the Martensville case.
The $1.3 million it cost to
settle the malicious prosecution lawsuit by Saskatoon police
officer John Popowich starts the compensation meter ticking,
with four more cases involving six persons harmed by poor investigations
of abuse and overzealous prosecutions yet to be settled.
Justice Minister Chris Axworthy,
whose government is on the hook for $800,000 of the settlement
with Saskatoon and Martensville splitting the remainder, is wrong
in his assessment that justice officials and the province have
learned from this case.
"We know lots more about
child sexual abuse and how to handle those kinds of cases. Our
prosecutors made decisions which today wouldn't have been made,"
he says.
He suggests that justice officials
have since received advice on dealing with young victims and
have set up "protocols and rules and regulations based on
knowledge acquired over time."
While there's little doubt
that the Martensville fiasco took place against a backdrop of
hysteria across North America over Satanist ritual abuse of children,
fuelled by an uncritical media that dug up various "experts"
eager to share their bizarre notions, Axworthy is wrong to suggest
that Crown prosecutors were uninformed about the use of child
witnesses in 1993.
An expert who analysed the
police interviews with the children had concluded that initial
police questioning of the children was improperly done, with
suggestive and leading questions and the improper use of rewards
rendering their evidence highly suspect.
Before Popowich's trial, prosecutors
Bruce Bauer and Leslie Sullivan were warned by an RCMP investigator
that the children who identified Popowich as an abuser likely
were mistaken.
Richard Quinney, the director
of prosecutions for the Justice Department, rejected a request
that Popowich and another accused, former Martensville police
chief Ed Revesz, take polygraph tests because that might create
the impression that the Crown doubted the strength of its case.
So the accused were all dragged
through the ugly and damaging process, with the Crown plodding
on with a case involving 180 charges against nine persons. Only
a single conviction stood for its efforts, leaving in the wake
of the case irreparably ruined lives.
The out-of-court deal with
Popowich took a decade too long, coming only after Queen's Bench
Justice George Baynton made it clear in a pre-trial conference
that the province would be found guilty of malicious prosecution
if it went to trial.
No matter what spin Axworthy
tries to put on it, this wasn't simply a matter of Justice officials
making a mistake. The implication at the pre-trial conference
with the judge was that the Crown would be found guilty of acting
with malice.
Yet, incredibly, Axworthy says
no officials will lose their jobs over their callous disregard
for the consequence of taking to trial on heinous charges persons
against whom they had no real case. There will be no investigation
into the department's conduct.
Instead, the government will
throw a few million at the litigants to make this problem go
away, even as bad odours swirl around the Justice Department
over not only this case but over others such as the jury tampering
in the first Latimer trial and the messy handling of the "foster
kids" sex abuse case.
© Copyright 2002 Saskatoon
StarPhoenix
New provincial policy clamps
down on prisoners: Reduced sentences to be earned under new Act
Saskatoon StarPhoenix, March
20, 2002
REGINA -- The Saskatchewan
government is getting tough on criminals by ensuring they are
clean and sober when they're on early release, and by notifying
victims when criminals are being released from jail.
Crime victims will have the
right to be notified when an offender is being considered for
authorized absences -- for funerals or medical reasons, for example
-- from a correctional facility. And victims will be told when
that absence is granted, according to proposed changes to the
Correctional Services Act.
"(Victims) are entitled
to rights," Justice Minister Chris Axworthy said Tuesday.
"They're entitled to be
aware of various things that are happening and it's important
for victims to be aware that someone who committed a crime against
them will be released into the community."
The new amendments also include
a requirement that inmates earn a reduction in their sentence
by good conduct in a correctional facility, rather than an automatic
reduction based on time served.
"A person will not automatically
be eligible for parole after serving a part of their sentence,"
Axworthy said.
"They will have to earn
their parole by attending programs, successfully completing programs.
Parole, remission of sentence, should be earned by the inmate."
The government is also proposing
the use of urinalysis to double-check an inmate's progress in
substance abuse or other similar treatment programs when on early
release.
Axworthy said the provincial
government wants to "make sure that those people who are
going through the program actually doing it with the right intention,
with the motive of actually improving their ability to socialize
once they return to the community."
© Copyright 2002 Saskatoon
StarPhoenix
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell