Kienan Hebert near his home in Sparwood, B.C., Sept. 12, 2011. Kienan was returned safe and sound to his home four days after he was abducted.John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail
Kienan Hebert's father is angry, with that anger directed not at police – whom he praises for helping to get his abducted three-year-old son back safely – but at the justice system, which let a known sex offender with 26 years of criminal activity roam the streets.
"The police wanted him in. The judge and the system failed us," Paul Hebert said on Monday, sitting in the same plush chair in the family's home where he and his wife, Tammy Hebert, found their son sleeping early Sunday, four days after he was taken.
"[Randall Hopley, the suspected abductor]needs help and the system didn't give him that help, and because of that, we have been offended, our rights have been taken away and my family got hurt."
Mr. Hebert, 36, revealed that he left the doors unlocked when leaving the family home, hoping to create an opening for Mr. Hopley to bring Kienan back. "I'm not upset that Hopley came back into our house," he said. "He didn't break into the house. We left the doors unlocked hoping he would bring him."
RCMP are loath to discuss tactics, but Corporal Dan Moskaluk has said police never would have thought Kienan would be simply taken home.
But that appears to be what happened 12 hours after Mr. Hebert and his wife made an emotional appeal to Mr. Hopley, the 46-year-old Sparwood man suspected of taking Kienan from his second-floor bedroom overnight on Sept. 6.
While there's great relief for Kienan's safe return, the community is also on edge as an intense search for Mr. Hopley continues.
Police believe he returned the boy before 3 a.m. on Sunday without being intercepted or even noticed.
After an anonymous phone tip, police entered to secure the house. Then, Mr. and Mrs. Hebert went in. Mr. Hebert spotted his son in the same chair, with the blankets that vanished with him. He said he felt every part of his body go numb. This, he said, was better than winning the lottery.
"Kienan was sleeping in the chair. When I woke him up, it was unreal. He wasn't sure what was really going on. Once he realized what was happening, he knew he was home. He was safe," Mr. Hebert said. "He just held on tight," he added.
While others have criticized police for the apparent lack of surveillance on the Herbert family's upscale subdivision, Mr. Hebert is not one of them. "If there was police watching him, Hopley wouldn't have dropped him off here," he said.
However, Mr. Hebert said he is upset that Mr. Hopley is not in jail. "I really think it's more on our judicial system and how it failed to protect a family like ours."
Mr. Hebert didn't specify which of Mr. Hopley's court cases he found disconcerting. In 2007, Mr. Hopley was charged with breaking into a home and attempting to snatch a 10-year-old boy. The more serious charges were dropped due to lack of evidence, but he was convicted of breaking and entering and sentenced to 18 months in jail.
Bill Pitt, a criminologist at Grant McEwan University in Alberta and a former Mountie, said Mr. Hopley is likely in the woods near Sparwood, where it has been reported that he feels safe. "This guy is a walking caught man."
Kienan finished his police interviews on Monday. Mr. Hebert said he and his 41-year-old wife hope their child will have only vague memories of the ordeal. "We're kind of hoping it was a like a road trip for him maybe for four days and he was with some strangers. And from the looks of it, he was well taken care of," Mr. Hebert said.
But for a tight-knit family that chose home schooling for their eight children and does not use babysitters, the past week has left its mark. "There's definitely a trauma in the home now," he said.
The worry is not restricted to the Hebert household. Michelle Kaus, who lives down the street, said police are investigating an attempt to abduct one of her children.
Wendy Christensen, manager of the investigation unit for the Missing Children Society of Canada, said the RCMP did a good job in challenging circumstances. "Our organization is absolutely thrilled with the work that the RCMP did," she said.
She noted that police quickly identified a suspect. "Oftentimes in suspicious disappearances, we're chasing a ghost, but police were able to get a person of interest out to everybody, and he wasn't able to go anywhere," Ms. Christensen said from Calgary.
She said the fact that the RCMP was not monitoring the Hebert house is not a surprise. Police would have been criticized for assigning officers to watch the house on the improbable assumption that the abductor would return, she said.
"The whole abduction is different than, historically, anyone has ever seen. I don't think anyone would have anticipated the person who took the child would have brought the child back to the same address."
Ian Bailey