Accused child abductor Randall Hopley is led out of the Cranbrook, B.C. courthouse on Wednesday Sept. 14, 2011. Hopley was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation during his first court appearance Wednesday, a day after his dramatic arrest in the disappearance of three-year-old Kienan Hebert. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Bill GravelandBill Graveland/The Canadian Press
Paul Hebert of Sparwood, B.C., says the court system failed his son, his family and his community in the kidnapping of his three-year-old son, Kienan. It even failed the alleged kidnapper, Randall Hopley. "The judges and the system failed us. Hopley needs help."
Mr. Hebert has good reason to criticize.
In 2008, Mr. Hopley received a sentence of just 18 months, plus three years' probation, in eerily similar circumstances. He tried to snatch a mentally disabled 10-year-old boy from his bedroom. He pleaded guilty to a break-and-enter, with intent to commit an indictable offence: the abduction of a child, according to Neil MacKenzie, a spokesman for the B.C. Ministry of the Attorney-General.
That case should have raised red flags. Mr. Hopley had a conviction in 1985 for sexual assault in "matters relating to children." He had been held till the end of his sentence after a psychiatrist said he was likely to reoffend, according to a published report. So there was reason to suspect a long-term problem with pedophilia. And Mr. Hopley's 2008 excuse was far-fetched; the boy was in foster care, and Mr. Hopley said a natural parent or parents were paying him to return the boy to them.
It is unclear what was done to check this story out. Was the system too easily fooled by a simple deception, as it seems to have been this month when the child was returned to his home without his kidnapper being detected? No parent was charged in the 2008 case in connection with an offer to pay for a kidnapping.
On the face of it, 18 months is ludicrous for attempting to kidnap a child from his home. (We don't even know if he served his whole sentence; B.C.'s Ministry of Public Safety won't say, citing privacy legislation. Perhaps it should be called the Ministry of Privacy Safety.) Eighteen months is not enough time to offer useful treatment, given a problem that has lasted or at least recurred over a 20-year period. Eighteen months is not commensurate with the damage to society: a loss of security for one's children in the home.
This is the kind of case that drives the Conservative government's tough-on-crime agenda – the type that leaves Canadians baffled and furious. Mr. Hebert has a right to wonder why the system was not up to the challenge.