Was the world populated before Adam and Eve arrived? (an essay by Dahn Batchelor)

The King James version of the Holy Bible says this about the creation of Adam and Eve in verses 26, 27 and 28 of chapter one of Genesis; “Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them; Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

A question that has been asked by millions of Christians, Jews and Moslems alike is; was the world populated before Adam and Eve arrived.


In chapter two, the Bible says in verse 7; “then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” In verse 19 of Chapter 3 of Genesis, God says to Adam and Eve after they ate the forbidden fruit; “ In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Truly it would be a miracle for any living thing to be suddenly created from a non-living entity, such as dust. Living things, such as humans, animals and even trees must have the following major elements within them for them to be living things. I am speaking of, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and proteins --- long chains of amino acids. Without these four main elements, especially proteins, a living entity, be it a tree, bird, fish, insect or a human being, wouldn’t exist.


A fundamentalist will argue that God (if there is a God) was capable of creating a man from dust and that by itself is the miracle. If that happened, it truly would be a miracle. However, how would a fundalmentalist define a miracle? According to fundalmentalists of many religions, a miracle is an intervention by God in the universe --- a marvellous event manifesting a supernatural act of God. In one sense, most people would conclude that if they can't adequately explain a phenomenon according to their ideas of how the world works, it's must be supernatural.

For many centuries after the birth of Jesus, no-one ever believed that Man would fly above the trees and yet if they saw such an event, they would believe that it was a miracle when in fact, in reality, there is a logical explanation for the possibilty of seeing a human being flying above them in some form of craft as the so-called miracle unfolds before them. It is a logical event that takes the event out of the realm of the supernatural. No-one believed that it was possible for humans to create diamonds and yet, in the last century, scientists were able to create diamonds from the bones of deceased human beings. That is not a miracle brought about by God but instead it is brought about by Man through the efforts of scientists. The early Christians believed that after the birth of Jesus, a star shone directly over the manger he was born in and guided the three wise men from the east. They say that that was a miracle. In actual fact, what the three wise men (who were not kings but astrologers from Babylon) saw overhead far away in space was the conjunction of two planets (Saturn and Jupiter) which even then they knew was not a star. To them, Saturn represented a king and Jupiter represented Jerusalem and that’s why they went to Jerusalem to search for the new king. They knew that if a king was born in Jerusalem at that time, their predictions after seeing the bright light (reflections of the sun bouncing off the surfaces of the two planets) would have come true. The brightness of the two planets was not a supernatural event. It was extraordinary but not miraculous and certainly not a star.


What I am trying to say is that whatever the people who populated the Earth after the onset of human beings believed were miracles, there was a logical explanation for the occurances or alternatively, many were myths that were told over and over again by the early human beings for many centuries even when the myths had no possibility of reality to them. It is far too easy for fundalmentalists to simply say that if the event cannot be explained, it must be a miracle brought about by God. In other words, if the first human being was created by dust, (and that event can’t be explained) that it must be a miracle, in other words, a supernatural act of God.


Without attempting to be disrespectful to fundalmentalists who honestly believe that the words of the Holy Bible should be interpreted literally, the possiblity of a human being (homo sapien ---- thinking man) being created from dust is pure undulterated nonsence ---- it is a physical and scientific impossiblity that defies logic.


The natural world is all-inclusive, and even if our world and the universe includes elves, spirits, honest politicians and space beings, then all those things are natural. It's just that our conception of what's natural is what is often eroniously referred to as miraculous.


'Adam' is very often understood simply as the proper name of the first human being. But 'Adam' is identical with the Hebrew word for human being (adam = 'human being') The Hebrew definition in the collective sense means ‘humanity’ or ‘mankind’. The Old Testament uses the Hebrew term ‘adam’ many times in the sense of ‘man’ or ‘mankind’. Most recent translations of the Bible, such as the New Revised Standard Version, makes the point that the ‘man’ in this verse was meant to encompass all humanity, rather than a single individual.


From verse 7, one is being asked to consider that Adam was the first human being that lived on earth because the authors of the Bible used the word ‘man’ which is singular rather than use the words, ‘a man’ which could imply that he chose one of several or one of many men to form a human man in his own image.


This could mean that the correct interpretation of the word ‘Adam’ is ‘mankind’ and that the verse 7 in chapter two of Genesis is to be read as; “....then the LORD God formed mankind out of dust from the ground, and breathed into their nostrils the breath of life; and mankind became living beings.” The word ‘Adam” is a derivative of the word, ‘adamah’ which means ‘ground’ or ‘earth’ which may have been the clay that would have to be used to mold a body of a human man since a figure couldn’t be molded from dust. The words, ‘breathed into their nostrils the breath of life’;could simply means the air which God made earlier for mankind and the animal kingdom to breathe.


I refer you to chapter one, verse 26 of Genesis. "Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”


The use of the word, ‘our’ is an august or regal term used by kings, emperors and the papacy so the authors of the Bible wrote of God in august or regal terms. But we are forced to ask ourselves, did he form human beings after his or her or it’s own image and likeness? If we are willing the accept that proposal, then we have to presume that God is both a man and a woman or is one or the other.


I will quote from the Concise Revised Bible Dictionary which has an answer to that question. It says in part; "The creation of Adam in God’s image and likeness is best understood as creation with all those qualities which make a being truly a person as God is a person ---- with spiritual, aesthetic, rational, emotional and moral capacities." This implies that, according to the authors of 'The Abingdon Bible Commentary' “its is more probable that the expression ‘in the image of God’ has no physical implications but is meant to suggest that man differs from all the rest of creation in the possession of self-conscious personality, in which he alone of all creatures resembles God.” unquote


It’s ironic when one thinks about it. According to the Old Testament, God made man in his own image. But mankind believing that it is supreme over all living things (which mankind is) makes the presumption that God is made in the image of a man since the early writers never saw God and therefore believed that God must be like a human male. God’s image in paintings is as an old man. In the paintings, he was never pictured as a female because in verse 25 of chapter 2 of Genesis, God said that he would make ‘man’ in his own image. Could he have meant ‘mankind’? If so, why didn’t he choose to make the angels in his own image since they existed prior to him making mankind? Angels are painted as human beings with large wings. That really adds to the confusion.


Kenneth C. Davis in his book Don’t Know Much About the Bible, on page 50, said; "The universe was created by some force ---- call it the Big Bang or God or Allah or Vishnu or simply Energy ----- that set in motion the cataclysmic string of events that brought the earth into existence 4.5 billion years ago. So began the long line of events that brought the chemical chain reactions that created the spark of life on earth. That incredible process resulted in the appearance, a brief moment in time, a two-legged creature that walked upright. This creature (eventually) held tools in hand and his hands were no longer needed for moving through the trees. He built fires and eventually held a short, pointed stick that made intricate symbols in pieces of hardening mud, It was the beginning of the (written) word."


Somewhere in that early stage of evolution, Adam was supposibly created. According to The Bab,(the holy book of the Bahai faith) Adam lived about 10,500 B.C. When looking at the Christian Bible and then extrapolate back from the date of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, (1446 B.C.) and calculate the ages of the main characters in the Bible prior to that time, Adam came into existence approximately 4000 B.C. That premise conflicts with the conclusions of scientists world-wide who agree amongst themselves that the first species of the genus Homo (humans), evolved in South and East Africa in the late Pliocene or early Pleistocene period.(1.81 million to 11,550 years before the birth of Jesus.


Man began walking on his legs about 1.8 million years ago. Homo sapiens (Latin for humans with intelligence) has lived from 200,000 years B.C. to the present. It follows then that human beings existed almost two million years before the biblical Adam came into existence. It also follows that human beings in that period of time had a self-concious personality long before the biblical Adam arrived.


There is another way to look at the question of Adam and Eve being the first human beings on earth but was Eve the first woman on earth? In strictly biblical terms, Eve was the first woman on earth and as such, was Adam’s wife. But Hebrew legend has another story about his first wife. As recorded in the medieval Alphebet of of Ben Sira, Lilith was Adam’s first wife who preceded Eve. In this version, Lilith was created from the earth, just as Adam was.

I point this out to illustrate that it is conceivable that the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis is simply another story that has been passed from one person to another for thousands of years.


Cain, the first born was a farmer and his younger brother, Abel was a shepperd. But were they really human beings?


In Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, S.H. Hooke writes on page 181; "Cain and Abel represents two different types of community, the agricultural and the pastoral, each carrying out its regular ritual of sacrifice. In the story, one ritual is successful and the other is not.; that is what is implied when it says that Yahweh (Hebrew word for God) accepted Abel’s offering but rejected Cain’s.”

It is the belief of many (and myself included) that the two sons of Adam and Eve as depicted in the Bible were in fact two groups of people ( planters of plants etc and shepperds ) living side by side in one gathering of human beings. At some period in time, someone in the agricultural community killed someone in the pastoral community which resulted in the killer or perhaps his clan being evicted from the community."


Genesis 5:4 tells us that Adam and Eve had many sons and daughters. Jewish tradition has it that they had 56 children altogether. They base that figure on the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus who wrote;(in the time of Christ) "The number of Adam’s children, as says the old tradition, was thirty-three sons and twenty-three daughters.” According to the Old Testament, Adam lived for 930 years (Genesis 5:5) although I don’t think that any scientist or most Christians, Jews and Moslems alike nowadays really believes that any human being could live that many years. Justification for this doubt is the fact that the Old Testament also states that God created the heavens and earth in six days. No right-thinking person believes that either.

If Adam and Eve were the first humans, and all people have descended from them (Acts 17:26) ‘And hath made of one blood all nations of men . . .’), then somewhere on earth, brothers had to marry sisters. Many people believe that after Cain killed his brother Abel and was ordered out of the garden of Eden, he married one of his sisters. I don’t believe this is what happened considering the fact that there were already over a million human beings on earth at that time.

If you look at verse 14 in chapter 4 in the book of Genesis, you will see the first hint that there were other human beings on earth before the death of Abel at the hands of Cain. After Cain murdered his brother, God told him that he had to leave the garden of Eden, Cain then said to God; "Behold, thou hast driven me this day away from the ground; and from thy face I shall be hidden; and I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will slay me." Who was he speaking about when he used the words, ‘whoever’ during his communication with God? Since there is no mention in the Old Testament that Adam and Eve and any of their children (other than Cain) that were born after Cain, was ordered out of the garden of Eden at that time, then who was Cain afraid of? Obviously he was afraid of being slain by other human beings who were not in the garden of Eden after he left but rather, were outside the garden.


Verses 16 and 17 of chapter 4 of Genesis says; "Then Cain went away from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, east of Eden." Cain knew his wife, (meaning he had intercourse with her) and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch."


Who did Cain marry? Were there not other people on the earth before he met his wife? Who lived in the land of Nod that was east of Eden when he met his wife? We don’t even know her name and yet she is the most talked about wife in the entire world. Many people believe that for Cain to find a wife, there must have been other ‘races’ of people on the earth who were not descendants of Adam and Eve.


To many people, this question is a stumbling block that obstructs their acceptance of the Biblical account that states that Adam and Eve were the first human beings on earth.


Defenders of the words in the Old Testament must be able to show that all human beings are descendants of one man and one woman. (Adam and Eve) Thus, believers need to be able to account for Cain’s wife and show clearly that she too was a descendant of Adam and Eve. That is not possible.

I realize that a lot of people say that Cain's wife was his sister, but that is impossible. Why? Because if you know anything about Anthropology, you will know that in all primitive societies, it was a general rule that brothers did not marry their sisters. The strictest of taboos were applied to this particular form of incest. They were aware of the physical and mental problems that were inherent when brought about by incest. Secondly, if you read the story carefully, Seth (Adam’s 3rd son) was not born until after Cain was banished, and thus after he spoke of whoever (Genesis 4:14) would slay him, who was Cain speaking about?

After Seth was born, Adam (according to the Old Testament) lived another 800 years, producing more sons and daughters. This obviously shows that there was Cain, Abel, Seth, and THEN other daughters and sons followed. Thus the explanation that Cain's wife was his sister cannot be correct, because females (other than Eve) did not enter the current population until after Seth was born, and by that time, Cain was already banished.

God planted a garden in Eden according to the scriptures. Note: the entire earth was NOT Eden, only a very small portion of the earth was Eden. What does the Bible say was outside of Eden? It doesn’t say anything about what was outside of Eden at the time Cain was banished from Eden.


But there was desert and wilderness in that area if we believe that the land of Nod was in the middle east. And WHO lived in this wilderness? It was Australopithecus, Homo-Erectus, Neanderthal man, and Cro-Magnon man, who roamed the wilderness outside of Eden. Remember that this all occurred over a million years ago.

These beings were very tall, broad-faced, had retreating foreheads (indicating a small brain - unlike humans today) with massive brow ridges, and their bodies were covered in very course dense hair. This means that Cain was fearful to leave the place of his birth, because he knew there were other people out there who would kill him.

That is very strange considering that God marked him as the "first murderer?" If that is so, how did he know that others would kill him? The reason is because this type of very violent behaviour was typical throughout the species of Australopithecus, Homo-Erectus, Neanderthal man, and Cro-Magnon man, hence, Cain was not the first murderer amongst these beings.

Where did Cain get his wife from? She was one of these very primitive "creatures" roaming the wilderness. As a result of this successive hybrid inbreeding over thousands of generations, we get what we call the "other races." ie. Negroes, Orientals, Caucasians, etc. I refer you again to Verse 17 of chapter 4 of Genesis which says; “Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch.”


From this, we are to understand that after Cain’s first son (Enoch) was born, Cain built a city which he named after his son. The word, ‘city’ is defined in The Revell Concise Bible Dictionary to mean; “a large or important population center, usually (especially in the Old Testament) walled or fortified.” Somehow, for Cain to build a large and important city that was fortified against the enemies of its inhabitants, there would not only have to be a great many people building the city, but also a great many enemies of the inhabitants outside of the city that necessitated the need for the inhabitants to build walls to protect them from their enemies. We are not talking about a few hundred people but perhaps thousands of people both inside the city and outside the city.

It follows that Cain had every reason to build a city of that size considering that there was approximately a million people on earth at that time and many of them in the area where he lived.


Now true believers of everything that is said in the Bible is to be accepted as absolutely true, may argue that Cain lived a long time, just as Adam did. Unfortunately, there is no record in the Old Testament with respect to the age of Cain before he died. This being as it is, there is no way that we can conclude that the city comprised of a great many of his sons and daughters. In fact, the only mention of his offspring is found in verse 17 of chapter 4 in which it says; "Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch." That is the last time Cain is spoke of so we have no way of ever knowing whether or not Cain had other children.


If this is so, then this means that his city was not populated by his children other than Enoch and it hardly makes sense that he would build a city just for himself, his wife and his son. He would however build a city for other humans in Nod (with their assistance) and name it after his son and this means that there were many human beings in Nod when he arrived thereor at least, after Enoch was born. And if that is so, then Adam and Eve could no thave been the first humans on earth.

Pictures of Adam and Eve are painted as if they are human beings like we are so we are led to believe that Adam and Eve looked just like we do. Unfortunately, the first appearance of man did not look like us.


It seems beyond doubt that primitive man had religious beliefs. For instance, the Neanderthal man, who lived 50,000 years ago, is known to have buried his dead with ceremonies that clearly suggest a belief in a life after death.

There existed at that time the pre-historic custom of dusting corpses with red ocher (a mixture of clay and iron oxide) which is found throughout the prehistoric world. It is thought that the red pigment was a ritual substitute for blood, hence a symbol of life. Belief in survival after death would seem to be confirmed a fortiori by burial, since nothing else could explain the effort involved instead of simply abandoning the corpses of their loved ones.

The Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis) or Neandertal was a species of the Homo genus that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia. They walked and their bone structures and skulls were almost identical to that of modern man. The first proto-Neanderthal traits appeared in Europe as early as 350,000 years ago and by 130,000 years ago, full blown Neanderthal characteristics had appeared and by 50,000 years ago, Neanderthals disappeared from Europe, although they continued in Asia up to 30,000 years ago. As I mentioned earlier, if you extrapolate back from the time of the exodus of the Jews, according to the Bible, Adam was allegedly created only 4000 B.C. That is far too late in history for Adam to have been created as the first human being.


Mankind (at the Neanderthal stage in history) would not have the ability to build a city such as the city built by Cain, the son of Adam and Eve. That being as it is, mankind did not begin with Adam and Eve.


The difficulty we have finding the truth in Genesis is trying to discover where the source originated from. It was not God since it is written in the third person, not the first person. In a book written by Kenneth C. Davis called 'Don’t Know Much About the Bible', he gives a good explanation on page 16 when he wrote; "...researchers have learned that some of what appears to the most ancient sections of the Bible, including some of the stories in Genesis, was probably ‘borrowed’ from other more ancient civilizations, particularily those of Egypt and Babylon."


For example, various aspects of the ‘Laws of God’ given to Moses in Exodus are similar to Babylonian laws known as the ‘Code of Mammurabi’, which is a few centuries older than when the Old Testament was first written.

In Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, that has 62 authors, S. H. Hoke, one of the contributors wrote on page 177; "What we have called as origin-stories represents a type of literature which is not peculiar to the Hebrew people. In the earlier literature of Egypt, Babylon, and Caanan, and indeed most so-called primitive peoples, similar stories are to be found, purporting to give an account of the beginning of things." unquote


What this means is that before opinions and stories were put to writing on hardened mud and later on tablets, they were passed oraly from person to person and anyone familiar with the popular game in which people sit in a circle and one says something to another and the second person passes that information to the one sitting next to him or her, they will realize that as the story is passed on from person to person, the more it will be changed. I believe that this is how Genesis came about; various stories passed about from one person to another until the original stories were vastly altered.

Although the purpose of the Book of Genesis is to give us some idea as to how the earth as we know it came about, it is not historically, scientifically or chronologically correct.


The story of Genesis was handed down by word of mouth for thousands of years before the coming of Jesus and obviously, during the retelling of the story, it got twisted about until finally in the time of King James of England, the body of scholars he appointed to revise the Bible,( The King James Bible ) printed it into what it is today.


When I was a child, I accepted the writings of the Bible as being literally true. But as I got older and more knowledgeable about life, history and science, (just like many millions of other people around the world) I realized that not everything written in the Bible is to be taken as fact. And one of the things I am truly convinced of, is that Adam and Eve were not the first human beings on earth. It’s a great story but like many stories, the creationist view of the first people on earth is in fact, a myth. Although myths have some basis of truth in them for the most part, I find it difficult to really believe that the myth with respect to the origins of mankind, as defined in Genesis, has any semblance of truth in it at all.

Spousal abuse case - Don't shoot flies with a shotgun

Don’t shoot flies with shotguns( A paper on spousal abuse )
By Dahn Batchelor
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From 1983 to 1986, federal and provincial Attorneys General and Solicitors General in Canada adopted policy directives that required police and Crown prosecutors to charge and prosecute all incidents of spousal abuse where there were reasonable and probable grounds to believe that an offence had been committed. These measures included the establishment of dedicated domestic violence courts. This is a big step forward from the days when the police were instructed to ignore the plight of wives who were beaten by their husbands unless the police actually saw the assault or the wife’s injuries were so serious, they required stitches.

In 1983, the Federal Provincial Task Force on Justice for Victims of Crime recommended the development of written guidelines directing that wife assault be treated as a criminal offence and the decision to charge or prosecute this offence should be made independently of the victim’ s wishes.

For the most part, these policy directives and written guidelines are appropriate because spousal abuse is an ongoing evil that must be eradicated if couples and their families are to have a decent and happy life together.

But you don’t shoot flies with shotguns as a means of getting as many people as you can with one pull of the trigger. Unfortunately, these policy directives and written guidelines have resulted in the police and the prosecutors firing in all directions and in some instances, hitting the wrong people. The end results can have terrible consequences on families undergoing these processes.

To prove this point, this writer refers you to the case of Regina v. N.N of Brampton, Ontario who was arrested, charged and tried with the crime of assault, to wit; assaulting his wife in April 2003.

To appreciate the significance of this issue this writer is attempting to point out that the reader has to know what occurred on that particular night. The particulars became known to this writer after he interviewed the parties and attended the trial of N.N as his court advocate.

N.N and his wife ( they have been married for twenty-two years and have two children ) got into a loud and angry argument about whether or not their daughter could go to a dance out of town with her friends. N.N finally went into the bathroom to avoid any further confrontation with his wife.

His wife attempted to push the bathroom door open so that she could continue with the argument and he attempted to keep it closed and in doing so, his hand slipped off the edge of the door and struck her face, which according to her statement to the police at the time of her husband’s arrest, seemed to her like it was a slap. Later in court, she testified that she realized that it wasn’t a slap and that when his hand slipped off the edge of the door and struck her, it was merely an accident.

In any case, she went to the phone and dialed 911. Before the police answered the phone, she hung up. She testified that while she was waiting for the police to come onto the line, she wondered why she was calling 911 in the first place. But as everyone knows, the police will immediately call back and for good reason. The victim may have been forced to hang up the phone.

The 911 operator told the wife that the police were on their way. She then asked if everything was OK. The wife said that everything was OK and that she didn’t need any assistance. The 911 operator continued to ask questions and finally the wife said that her husband had slapped her on the face but that she wasn’t hurt.

This, in this writer’s opinion is the correct procedure. The 911 operator can assume that when someone calls 911 in the first place, it is quite conceivable that there is a problem and the caller saying that everything is OK without investigating to make sure that everything is OK, could have consequences that can result in a loss of life or serious injuries.

The police arrived and N.N’s wife told them that everything was OK. She said that she and her husband had been arguing and that he slapped her once in the face. That’s was all that the police needed to make the arrest. Despite the pleas of the wife, the police handcuffed her husband and put him in the police cruiser after patting him down for weapons.

On the way to the police station, he complained that the cuffs were too tight around his wrists and asked that they be loosened. His plight was ignored. To this day, he has scars on his wrists from the cuffs being too tight.

When he arrived in the police station, he was ordered to strip naked while a nearby video camera was filming the search. The close circuit television receiver was behind the front desk where anyone, including female police officers could see N.N slowly rotating while naked. N.N is a Moslem and being stripped naked in front of anyone other than his wife is an insult to his way of life as it is to all Moslems.

He was then taken to a common cell, which was quite cold, and since he didn’t wear any warm clothes and didn’t have his shoes on, he laid on the cold floor. When he asked if he could have a blanket to lie on, he was reminded by a police officer that he wasn’t in a hotel.

Three times he made a request to make a phone call so he could retain a lawyer and three times his request was refused. At no time did anyone in the police station offer to connect him to duty counselwhich is required by law in Canada. Later at his trial, the court observed that his charter rights with respect to his right to contact his lawyer had been violated but since he hadn’t said anything to the police that could incriminate him, therefore his application for a stay of proceedings was denied.

The next morning, he was brought before a justice of the peace and the condition of his bail was that he was to have no contact with his wife until after his trial.

Shortly thereafter, his wife had written a letter to the judge which invariable ended up in the hands of the Crown’s office in which she stated that her husband was not a violent man and that she didn’t want the police to come in the first place and that she wanted her husband to be returned home to her and their family. She added that she only called 911 because during their verbal confrontation, she thought the matter might get out of hand.

Later when N.N’s court advocate attempted to get the Crown to consider a peace bond, there was a negative response from the Crown because N.N was not willing to admit that he purposely struck his wife in the face.

The trial was scheduled for December 22nd 2003 but the morning and early afternoon was spent dealing with N.N’s Application for a stay of proceedings. Then the assistant crown attorney asked for an adjournment before the afternoon really got underway.

A request was made by N.N’s court advocate that his client be permitted to return to his family for Christmas. His request was denied after the Crown argued against the request.

The matter was adjourned to January 20th 2004 but because the crown had neglected to bring N.N’s wife back into the courtroom on December 22nd to bind her over to January 20th, she didn’t appear and the matter was adjourned again to February 4th 2004.

When N.N’s wife was called to the stand, before the Assistant crown began to examine her, she said that she wanted to make a statement to the court. The judge permitted this.

She complained that this matter had gone on far too long. She said she never wanted the police to come in the first place. She pointed out that for almost ten months, she and her husband had been separated from one another and couldn’t even communicate with each other on the phone. She said that it was hurting her family that her husband couldn’t return home.

It was when she finished with her statement that the judge asked the assistant crown as to why the crown couldn’t considered a peace bond as an alternative to proceeding any further in the trial. The response was that if a peace bond is to be considered, it should be after her testimony was heard. The judge agreed.

During her testimony, N.N’s wife said that she was satisfied in her own mind that she wasn’t slapped by her husband and that his hand struck her in her face purely by accident when it slipped off the edge of the door. The crown suggested that she was making that up and that her original complaint was the truth---that her husband had really slapped her in the face. He asked the court to consider her as a hostile witness and the judge conceded to his request.This means that the assistant crown can ask leading questions of the witness, something he normally couldn't do when questioning his own witness.

It was at this point that the judge made an interesting observation. He said that it was most unfortunate that wives under circumstances such as in this case should find themselves being compelled to falsely testify under oath in order to protect their families from enduring more hardship caused by their husbands being separated from their homes.

The assistant crown spent the better part of an hour trying to get the wife to recant her statement that the slap was an accident and that her original written statement to the police that her husband really slapped her in the face was the truth but she kept maintaining that she was at fault and that the slap was an accident. She said that it was she who had instigated the problem in the first place, that her husband went into the bathroom so that the arguing would stop and that it was she who tried to force the bathroom door open so that she could continue arguing with him and as a result, his hand slipped off the door and struck her in the face and that it was nothing more than an accident. Incidentally, the police wrote in their notebooks that there was no visible mark on her face when they arrived on the scene.

No questions were asked by the defence and the accused was not put on the stand. The judge asked the crown to begin its argument.

As it became apparent to anyone in the courtroom following this case that the crown’s case was weak to begin with and the fact that the crown even suggested that when the accused tried to push the bathroom door closed, that that too constituted as assault, the weakness of his case was even more apparent.

The hopelessness of the crown’s case then became obvious when it was then the turn of the defence to address the court and the judge told him it wasn’t necessary.

The judge said that he didn’t believe everything that N.N’s wife had said but that he added that he wasn’t totally convinced that her husband deliberately slapped his wife and he further added that when N.N was pushing the door against his wife’s body to keep her out of the bathroom, that didn’t constitute an assault at all. The charge was dismissed.

As a cruel irony, the defence had repeatedly asked the Crown to consider a peace bond as a means of resolving this matter and was repeatedly rebuffed, month after month by the crown, but after N.N was acquitted, the crown then asked the judge to order a peace bond. The judge asked N.N’s wife if she wanted a peace bond against her husband, She told the judge that it wasn’t necessary. The judge then refused the crown’s request.

Now one is forced to ask this rhetorical question. “What benefits did society gain from all of this?” The answer is obvious. Nothing. As a result of this terrible incident in the lives of this family, the family was almost destroyed. They underwent financial hardship because the husband had to pay over four thousand dollars for his defence and he had to pay additional money for living quarters for himself over and beyond what he had to pay in mortgage payments towards his family’s home. Further, he and his wife suffered loneliness and anxiety as a result of their almost ten months of separation.

Should there have been a better way to deal with this so-called case of spousal assault? Absolutely. But how?

To begin with, we have to accept the reality that all families experience some form of conflict. For the most part, it is verbal but unfortunately, in many thousands of instances, it can become violent.

But there are degrees of violence and even then, there is some doubt that violence at the extreme lower end of the spectrum is really assaultive in nature. For example, if both a man and his wife get into a minor shoving match, is that to be construed as an assault, especially when neither partner is hurt in any manner whatsoever? Can exerting any form of pressure against another human being’s body be construed as an assault” Technically yes but should such a person being charged with assault? If a man points his finger in the direction of his wife’s face, is that to be construed as an assault? Technically yes but should he be charged with assaulting his wife? Hardly.

There is a Latin legal term which best describes this kind of physical activity. It is, ‘de minimis non curat lex’. Simply put, it means, ‘The law does not bother itself about trifles.’ But in N.N’s case, the law bothered itself for ten long months. It interjected itself into this family’s existence and in the process, almost destroyed it. There is an adage that says that absence makes the heart grow fonder but there is another truism that says that absence makes the heart forget. If it wasn’t for the love that both N.N and his wife had for each other, this separation could have resulted in a divorce.

Admittedly, there are times when society has an interest in the goings on of families and in N.N’s case, this may apply. Obviously, what occurred on that night in April 2003 between N.N and his wife shouldn’t have happened.Both children were crying during the confrontation between their parents and this isn’t conducive to raising children in a happy environment.

It is this writer’s belief that an alternate way to resolve this problem would be first, after the police had been called, they would take a very close look at the situation before deciding to arrest the husband. If they were satisfied that the wife was in no danger and that she didn’t want her husband arrested or charged, they would back off and follow it up with a female community officer who would interview the wife separately to satisfy herself that everything really is OK.

Second, if the police have reason to believe that if the husband remains in the home at that time, the problem may continue after they have left, then they should arrest him and as a condition of his release on his own recognizance, he should find a temporary place to live until a resolution can be brought about as soon as possible. A temporary restraining order can be in place so that there is no contact between the spouses.

Having the husband undergo an interview with a psychologist experienced in spousal abuse cases and the wife being interviewed by a victim services person also experienced in spousal abuse cases who can ascertain in the mind of the interviewer whether or not, the wife isn’t in a state of denial, can bring about a satisfactory resolution for both the husband and the wife.

If, as a result of the interviews, the professionals determine that neither spouse is at risk, then the matter can be stayed by the crown and a peace bond can be ordered if that is the wish of the complaining spouse.

Tarek Haddad, a probation officer in the Brampton courthouse included in his paper on ‘Family Mediation in the Presence of Spousal Violence’ that there are some who will argue that mediation involving spousal assault is inappropriate because the process would serve to legitimize violence rather than sanction the perpetrator and that mediation isn’t enough to ensure the safety of the abused spouse.
In this writer’s opinion, there is some truth in such a view however, it would hardly apply in cases were the assault is of such a minor nature that no injuries are sustained and it is a one-time incident as it was in N.N’s case.

He does point out that proponents of therapeutic family mediation insist that all parties have legal representation while engaged in the mediation process. This ensures that both parties receive a fair and just settlement of their problem that led to the confrontation in the first place.

Erickson and McKnight in their book, ‘Mediating Spousal Divorces’ (1990) said in part;

“We believe that mediation sessions with both spouses present can reduce the likelihood of future abuse. We believe that because a mediation process encourages cooperative interaction, it should be used as an additional method of treatment modality to end spousal abuse after divorces.” unquote.

It is this writer’s opinion that mediation sessions with both spouses present can be used as a form of an alternative dispute resolution. This will free the courts from the time-consuming process of trying cases that shouldn’t be in the criminal courts to begin with and thusly freeing up the courts so that other criminal cases aren’t held up as long as they are.

Most importantly, it will make it possible for spouses to reunite again as soon as possible so that the family can begin living a normal life together.

To keep a husband away from his family for ten or more months when all the time he is innocent of any criminal wrongdoing is a mockery of justice. To call that form of interference in the lives of families as being justice, then justice had better apply for a name change.

NOTE: This writer was the court advocate for the accused husband.

Should violent young offenders be punished harshly?

Should violent young offenders be punished harshly?
by Dahn Batchelor--article sent to a law journal in 2002
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In the July 30, issue of Law Times, lawyer Helen Conway made some comments in her piece on young offenders which I feel compelled to address.

She takes issue with automatically trying and sentencing 16 and 17-year-olds as adults when they are charged with serious offences.

Why does she feel that when a 16-year-old murders an old lady, that that young killer should be treated as a wayward youth? Would Ms. Conway still have compassion for the young killer if the victim was her own mother?

Sixteen-year-olds are permitted to drive cars, they often live on their own, many have a grade 11 education and many are given fairly responsible jobs. We as a society have every right to believe that a 16-year-old knows the difference between right and wrong and that they know that when they stick a knife into someone’s chest, in all probabilities, their victim will die.

To quote Ms. Conway, “Part of being a young person means that they should be allowed to make mistakes…” unquote.

No-one should be allowed to make mistakes but if their “mistakes” involve deliberately stabbing or shooting human beings to death, then we as a society have every right to punish such killers by imprisoning them, irrespective of their age.

She is against mandatory jail time for anyone using or threatening to use a weapon.
She feels that a judge should have the discretion to assess the peculiar circumstances of the offence and the level of development of the young person.

I ask my readers this rhetorical question. If a 16-year-old shot you in the back during a robbery and you are a quadriplegic for life as a direct result, will you really care about the fact that he hated his father or mother, that he didn’t mean to cripple you, he merely lost control and that he quit school in grade nine? More importantly, will you feel that justice has been served if he gets probation because the judge feels that he is remorseful for what he did to you and he has agreed to return to school and it is his first offence?

Ms. Conway feels that 16-year-olds are different from adults and should be treated differently. Why, I ask, are they different? Do they not know that when they shoot someone, it is morally and legally wrong? Do they not know that people die if they shoot, stab or strangle them? Do they not know that when they sell drugs to other teenagers, they may bring death to these other teenagers? Do they not know that when they sexually assault a child or a woman, they are causing their victim great anguish and probably great pain also?

I am amused at the part in her piece in which she maintains that these wayward 16-year-olds, “are still learning, less mature, and should be held accountable differently than adults.” Try telling that to your thirteen-year-old daughter who was violently sexually abused by a gang of 16-year-olds to such an extent, it will take years of therapy to get her back to normal.

Ms. Conway maintains that there is evidence that tougher laws and harsher sentences for our youth do not work and yet in the same paragraph, she admits that youth crime is consistently decreasing. Do you think it is possible that Ms. Conway has not fathomed the fact that because our laws are tough and sentences are harsh, this is the reason why youth crime is consistently decreasing?

She objects to the publication of the identity of 14-year-olds found guilty of a serious offence. If a 14-year-old is found guilty of murder, he isn’t going to remain free in society so by the time he is released, his features will have changed in any case so her concerns are moot. As far as the publication of his name, ask yourself, how many people in Canada, know the name of the serial killer who killed 11 young people in Canada? It is my contention that most adults rarely remember the names of a young person who murders one person after a few years and by the time the young killer is released, very few people will connect his name with that which they read in the papers years earlier.

Just as most murderers who killed as adults are eventually released into society and manage to live normal lives after that, so will young offenders who kill and are eventually returned to society as young adults. Most people will have forgotten who they were, except for sex offenders, of course but that is only if the police publish the details of their offences after they are released.

For years and years, we have consistently listened to sob sisters who propose wishy washy solutions to problems that seem to get out of hand. It is my contention that when the problem gets out of hand, we have to exert more pressure on those who offend through violent means. We cannot remove this blight from our society by gently stroking it with a feather. We can only succeed in eradicating violent crime by scrubbing hard at the roots of the problem and if that means that young offenders who commit violent crime are going to feel the pain, so be it.

COMPULSORY RETIREMENT Is it really necessary?
Presented by Dahn A. Batchelor to the Ministry of Labour in Ontario in 2002
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I can remember the days when I was in my forties and was refused jobs because the prospective employers stated that due to pension policies, they weren’t hiring anyone over 39 years of age. Fortunately, those days are behind us. Some companies however are still refusing to hire anyone over 65 because they feel that anyone over that age is more likely to quit and permanently retire in a year or so.

I have yet to hear of any company refusing to hire anyone over 65 on the basis that such seniors are unable to do the work because of their inability to grasp the complexities of their occupation, work that they have been doing competently for years.

Fortunately for myself, as a senior, I am not faced with this problem of being too old to work as I am self-employed and have been for the last fifteen years. I began practicing law in January 1964. I have conducted thousands of trials. In 1975, the Secretary General of the United Nations accepted the nomination by the Solicitor General of Canada for me to be one of Canada’s active participants in United Nations crime conferences as a criminologist and advisor to the UN on criminal justice. I have addressed United Nations crime conferences nineteen times in South America, Europe and Africa.

Next month, I will be seventy-one years of age and I have just recently been advised by the UN, that next month, I am being formally invited to address a UN crime conference in Bangkok, Thailand in April of next year. I will be speaking on the subject of international terrorism and my paper is to be published under the auspices of the United Nations and will be made available by the U.N. to 150 member countries for their perusal prior to my speech.

Anyone who thinks I am too old to work, is a fool. Anyone who thinks that Justice Ferguson who did the police study for the Toronto Police Service at the age of eighty-two is too old to work at his age, is a damn fool. Anyone who thinks Hazel McCallum, the mayor of Mississauga and who is eighty-three, is too old to work, is an incredibly stupid fool. And anyone who thinks Honest Ed who is ninety, is unable to cope with the business aspect of his enterprises, should, without a doubt, be institutionalized for being an idiot beyond any hope of recovery.

There is an old saying that no-one should ever forget. It pertains to our minds. “Use it or lose it.” Most human beings when given the opportunity to continue using their minds to their fullest capacity, do so and the number of people who do this when they are in their seventies, eighties and nineties is enormous.

There is no justifiable reason why any employer should dismiss an employee who is capable of doing his or her work simply on the basis that that person has turned sixty-five.

I can assure you that by the time most people reach sixty-five years of age, if they have been working in a particular field of endeavor in sales or office or administrative work for many years, they are in a prime condition to continue in their work. To discard such people is foolishness.

It’s not likely that anyone can honestly justify dismissing a competent sixty-five year-old employee from his or her job simply on the premise that, that person has turned sixty-five.

I don’t intend to belabour this aspect of this issue because I know that to do so is akin to preaching to the choir.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, I still have some concerns however about people working past sixty-five when their work is that of a labourer. Admittedly, there are some very strong individuals, who at seventy, can give twenty-year-olds a run for their money. Over the years, they have built up their muscles and their muscles are still firm enough to do heavy work. A close friend of mine is seventy-nine years old and he still lifts weights and teaches weightlifting every day to weightlifters and body builders in his gym.

But alas, there are more men, such as myself who had hour-glass figures when we were younger, and have sadly watched the sand shifting in the wrong places over the years. I remember when I was in my twenties, lifting hundred pound sacks over my shoulders. I can still do that but the idea of being buried this far from home doesn’t appeal to me very much.

It saddens me to think of a sixty-five-year-old man who works as a labourer, being told that he is too old to do the work any more. I can envision the tears in his eyes as he tries to explain that he can lift the boxes or sacks if he is just given a little more time to do it.

But at the same time, I can sympathize with the employer who has patiently watched over the years, his long-time employee, struggling with those boxes and sacks and knowing all along, that the work can be done much easier and faster by the young men who had applied for the job.

I don’t envy such employers. Firing a long-time and faithful employee because he can no longer to the heavy labour, must really be painful to decent employers who are concerned about the welfare of their employees.

These sixty-five-year-olds should be given alternative work within the firm if it is at all possible. The employer should begin training the older employee in the area of work he may wish to put him into when he turns sixty-five.

Of course, this may be possible with big firms but in smaller firms, this may not be possible at all. It is conceivable that when the employee turns sixty-five years old, there is simply nothing else in the company that he can be assigned to do. And that being as it is, the employer has no other choice but to fire his faithful long-time employee when he turns sixty-five.

Perhaps what we need is mandatory employee pension plans so that when a sixty-five-year-old employee retires at that age, he will reap those benefits and not suffer the financial consequences that follow when one becomes unemployed.

To make such a plan work, it should be set up in such a manner that the older the employee is when he starts working for a firm, the more he will pay into the plan so that when he retires, he will reap the full benefits of the plan. The plan should follow him, wherever he works.

Based on the fore mentioned, I think our government should seriously consider implementing a compulsory retirement age limit, as well as a compulsory saving of retirement benefits for the employees when they reach the retirement age.

What should be done with police officers, firemen and paramedics who reach the age of sixty-five? Many of them are quite capable of working past sixty-five. But if the work is too physically strenuous for them, they should be given an opportunity to work in office or administrative work if they have the capabilities of doing it.

The scenario of a paramedic at sixty-seven years of age being unable to help his partner lift a patient into an ambulance is frightening. The scenario of a fireman of the same age not being able to climb fifty floors is equally frightening. The scenario of a police officer of the same age needing to be rescued by fellow officers because he cannot wrestle down a small teenage criminal doesn’t look any better. These situations must not be allowed to happen. But sometimes they do occur.

Obviously, special circumstances require special remedies and if an employee of one of these professions is unable to cope with the physical aspects of his job, he has to retire if he can’t find a less strenuous job within the service that employs him.

The question that must be answered is, “Is the firing of an employee at the age of sixty-five, contrary to the employee’s human rights?” I don’t think there is one answer. One has to consider many factors before arriving at any conclusion to this very perplexing question. Forcing sixty-five-year-old employees to quit before they are ready, would allow some businesses the opportunity to axe older staff free of wrongful dismissal claims and discrimination laws.

It is difficult to reconcile a mandatory or justified retirement age with the concept of age discrimination. By its very nature, such a measure ignores individual capability.

A recent example of this is the enforced retirement of 1,000 unionized Bell Telephone employees, many who have reached sixty years of age, as a cost-cutting exercise. No doubt, these employees, many who have worked for Bell for thirty years, are in their prime with respect to their abilities to work in their field. Despite that, they are being forced to take early retirement. Admittedly, they are being given a pension that will represent a portion of their salaries for the last five years but do these people really want to retire at sixty? Some perhaps do but I doubt that the majority do.

In my opinion, the decision on whether to allow businesses to set compulsory retirement ages will have a profound negative effect on the workforce.

Perhaps our government should set a retirement age at seventy, when the employee does labour work and seventy-five when the employee works in sales or in an office or works in administration where employers will then be able to retire their employees compulsorily without having to justify their decision.

Making compulsory retirement ages under seventy for laborers and seventy-five for office workers and administrators should be unlawful, except in exceptional circumstances where the employer is able to justify a compulsory retirement age in individual cases.

Quite frankly, I can’t imagine why an employee would want to continue doing heavy labour after the age of seventy or still work in sales or in an office after seventy-five. I would think that they would want to spend as much time as they can in their sunset years, doing something other than simply working for a living. By that time, they have probably saved up a lot of money for their retirement both in savings, RRSPs and a pension.

For the reasons outlined previously in this paper, I believe that we should amend the current upper age limit for bringing a claim for unfair dismissal on the basis of age to legislate an employer's normal retirement age, which would be seventy for labourers and seventy-five for those who work in sales or in offices or as administrators. Exceptions would obviously have to be made with reference to police, fire and ambulance employees working in the field.

I am wondering if such legislation will exclude all people who are employed in a private residence as an employee of the family from the protection of equality legislation? The home as a place of employment is precisely the place where many vulnerable people find employment, including those who come from abroad. We all know that the widespread use of foreign nannies or au pairs who are all too often exploited by their employers are workers who seem to be those most blatantly discriminated against. That being as it is, how do we protect them from wrongful dismissal because of age before they reach the legislative retirement age?

We must also be mindful when considering this issue of mandatory retirement about the dilemma facing young persons just out of school.If we raise the age of mandatory retirement, which means employees stay longer with their companies, there may not be as many openings for the young people who want to fill the vacancies because there will not be any vacancies to fill until the seniors turn seventy or seventy-five and retire.I don’t have statistics to offer that might support my concern on that issue so my concern may be academic.

This issue is a complex issue, of that, there can be no doubt. We have to balance the rights of seniors against the needs of the young.

Let me quote from a very pertinent statement made by Senator Feargall Quinn of the Irish Senate. He said in part;

“Making compulsory retirement illegal would be a measure with considerable benefits with almost no cost at all. At a personal level, no one would be forced to work beyond whatever was the normal retirement age for their occupation. At a business level, no one would be forced to go on employing a person who was incapable of doing their job. Such a change would be a huge boon to people who would prefer to go on working. In most cases there would be a clear benefit to the companies for which they work. To the wider community, the benefits of having someone continue to be economically active are too obvious to need spelling out.” unquote

I welcome this move on the part of the government of Ontario to update our equality legislation with respect to compulsory retirement. What we do at this time at the beginning of our new century will have an effect on the lives of millions upon millions of employees in Ontario in the future and it will surely benefit them all.

I am beyond the age where it will have a direct effect on my life but my two children are not and neither are their children nor are any other children in our province.

Needless to say, I am pleased to have been given the opportunity to speak before this august group and express my views on the issue of compulsory retirement.

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A year after I presented my paper to the Ministry of Labour, the province of Ontario
made it illegal to fire someone once they reached the age of 65 unless there was evidence that the employee was unable to continue working in a satisfactory manner.

Should the illiterate be promoted in school?
By Dahn Batchelor

A group of parents in Ontario have voiced their concerns that the Ontario government is demanding that their children, some of who are mentally handicapped, should be permitted to be given a high school diploma even though they are unable to pass a literacy test. They state that they don’t want their children ending up serving burgers for the rest of their lives.

Do these parents have any idea of what they are asking the citizens of Canada to accept? They want our schools to graduate their unfortunate offspring who can’t even read properly, to enter the work force with a high school diploma.

Will that diploma get them into university or even college? Not likely. Will it get them a job as a bookkeeper? No, it won’t. Will it get them a job as a transport driver? Hardly. How about a job as a cab driver. Forget it. Perhaps a job as a teller in a bank. Now that is a great leap into faith.

If they get a job serving hamburgers or are given work as common labourers, then they are indeed fortunate. Many handicapped people do excellent work in these kinds of occupations and it is because employers recognize their abilities to do certain jobs that don’t require a high school education. We see them all the time and we should see more of them doing this kind of work because they are entitled to earn a living so that they can be self-supporting.

But to give them a high school diploma when they can’t read properly or do basic math, is an insult to all the students who fortunately have all of their mental faculties intact and study hard to pass their exams. It will make a mockery of our school systems, which boasts that it is one of the best in the world.

Imagine if you will what would happen if your child is retarded and he applies for a job in another country and in his application he states that he graduated with a high school diploma and his or her potential employer asks if it is true that Canadian high schools graduate mentally retarded children whose reading skills don’t even surpass those of students in grade three. How embarrassing that will be to your child who wants them to think that he was smart enough to graduate from high school. Will he truly understand what was written in the letter or will his potential employer have to explain it to him?

The parents of the mentally handicapped children asked to have the matter taken to court. Should a court be ruling on matters in which the applicants are asking that a special exception be made for their mentally deficient children?

A similar dilemma happened in Florida where the court and the Florida legislature were fighting over who had the final say in whether or not a comatose woman should be permitted to live or be starved to death. The court said that it was their right to make the decision and the legislators said it was their right.

My personal view is that we elect who is to run our schools in our country and we should leave these issues up to them. For the court to interfere, there would have to be a terrible injustice heaped upon the children before the courts should interfere with school policy.

I think the real injustice would be to give mentally deficient children high school diplomas that would never be recognized in the business world.These children would then believe that they are being cheated out of jobs despite the fact that
they have high school diplomas.They have to realize in their own minds that in this highly competitive world, jobs are hard enough to find even for university graduates and that in the real world, they must accept the realization that they are destined to have to accept lower paying jobs that will not really lead to advancement.

Admittedly, this is unfortunate, of that there can be no doubt but alas, it’s life. To be more direct to the point, it sucks but unless by a miracle, these unfortunate kids suddenly become bright kids who qualify for high school diplomas, this is how their lives are going to be. The parents who are not mentally handicapped should have enough common sense to realize this and accept it.

If parents can’t brag that their mentally deficient children have high school diplomas, at least they can brag that their kids are working and are self-supporting and for a mentally deficient person, that in itself is quite an accomplishment that both they and their parents can be proud of.

Sexual Predator Risk Initiative

WILL A ‘SEXUAL PREDATOR RISK INITIATIVE’ HELP
By Dahn Batchelor

At first blush, the words, Sex-Offender Registry of Ontario gives us a feeling of security and well-being until we look into its purpose with a jaundice eye. It’s purpose is to compel convicted sex offenders to register every year with the police so that wherever the sex offenders reside, the police will always know. The current registry has more than 5,000 names in it. That being as it is, it will be easier for the police to track down convicted sexual predators if they are suspected of re-offending.

Mandatory registration applies to those individuals living in Ontario who were convicted of a sex offence in Canada and who were (a) serving a sentence on the day Christopher's Law was proclaimed or (b) convicted of a sex offence on or after the day the legislation came into force. Other individuals required by law to register are those who have been found not criminally responsible on account of a mental disorder, and who have received an absolute or conditional discharge, on or after the day the legislation came into effect. It should be noted however that if they later apply for a pardon and their application is approved, their names will be removed from the Registry.

In Ontario, this Act is also referred to as Christopher’s Law which was named after 10-year-old Christopher Stephenson who was raped and murdered in 1988 by a sex-offender who was on statutory release from prison at the time. The sex offender was convicted of the murder and later he was murdered while in prison.

On December 11, 2002, Federal Solicitor General Wayne Easter and Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Martin Cauchon introduced similar legislation to implement a national sex offender registration system. It is called the Sex Offenders Registration Information Act.

The backbone of the sex offender registration system is a special new Sex Offender Database on the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) system. The sex offender database will allow police to conduct a search according to a full or partial address and the offence of a sex offender or both. Offence information and registration information will be included, as well as other pertinent identification information such as tattoos, other distinguishing marks and DNA information.

Under the proposed legislation, convicted sex offenders will have to register within 15 days of being released from incarceration. Re-registration would be required annually and within 15 days of a change of residence. Offenders will be required to provide local police with current information such as addresses and telephone numbers, names and alias(es) and identifying marks and tattoos. Penalties will be provided for failing to comply with a registration order or for not giving truthful information. Unfortunately, the data base only includes the names of sex offenders who committed their crimes after the Act came into force.

In the United States, a similar law to the two aforementioned ones is referred to as Meagan’s Law. It was the brutal 1994 rape and murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka in New Jersey that prompted the public demand for broad based community notification. It is applied in all 50 states.

Some of the states have the particulars of the registrees on the Internet. For example, in Delaware, the Sex Offender Central Registry shows the picture of the offender, his or her date of birth, the offender’s current address and a description of the particular sex law that was broken. In Louisiana, the released sexual offender must distribute throughout the area where he intends to live; post cards delivered to every door, giving his name, address and a description of the crime he was convicted of. There was one community in the United States that required the offender to post a sign on his lawn as to who he was and to state that he was a convicted child molester. It should be pointed out however that 20 states are being constitutionally challenged for these kinds of steps made by the American authorities who are using these means as an attempt to cut down recidivism of convicted sex offenders.

Publication of offenders names and addresses and particulars of their offences on the Internet in the United States has resulted in some disastrous results; such as some of them being victims of vigilantes who have committed arson and murder to repunish the offenders.

Some police forces in Canada have publicly announced the whereabouts of released violent sex-offenders after they were released from prison. Manitoba and Alberta even publish on the Internet, the names, last known addresses and particulars of the sexual offences committed by these released prisoners along with their photographs. Manitoba has only published four violent sex offenders on their Website.

The state of Colorado has approached this concept in a different way. They publish the names, photographs and descriptions of the offences of those convicted sex offenders who have not registered as they are required to do. This surely is a good way to ensure that sex offenders register with the local police. It would seem more acceptable to restrict the publishing of the offender’s names and pictures on the Internet to only those who refuse to register with the police. That would amount to about 5 percent of all convicted sexual offenders.
Although statistics show that 65 percent of these offenders will not re-offend, the remaining 35 percent will and for this reason, these Acts have been created.

There are unfortunately, failings in sexual offender registration systems that don’t make public the whereabouts of sex offenders that have been released from prison. For the most part, there is nothing in these systems that makes it possible for potential victims or their families to be warned in advance that a sexual predator is amongst them. The public reaction has been so negative, most of the released sex-offenders exposed thusly have been forced to move time and time again, which makes it more difficult for them to re-enter the community, that which is conducive to rehabilitation. Generally, only the police know where they are. What the police don’t know is what the ex-offenders are up to after their release from prison.

An example of this failing in these kinds of systems occurred in 2002 and it occurred right in my own home. A close friend of mine, a 55-year-old man whom I had known for twenty years, was a regular visitor to our home and in November 2002, I observed that he was becoming all too familiar with my five and a half-year-old granddaughter. I spoke to my daughter and asked her to speak to her daughter to see if my friend was doing anything to her that she considered was improper. She spoke to her daughter and concluded that nothing was amiss. It could be because at that time, nothing was amiss or it could have been because my granddaughter being none the wiser, didn’t think anything was amiss.

A week later my former friend sexually assaulted my granddaughter and left his semen behind in her. Within a day, he was arrested and charged and was in custody awaiting trial for eleven months. The police investigators told my daughter that this particular man was a bad one but I learned at his trial that his one redeeming feature was that he intended to plead guilty to that charge and two other charges relating to two similar incidents that occurred in Toronto thereby sparing the children he abused; the trauma of having to testify in court.

As it turned out, other than some brief pain, my granddaughter was not savagely ravaged. She is her normal self again, even laughing at her own pranks. As time moves on, the experience will hopefully disappear in her mind rather than crop up once in a while to haunt her in her later years.

Before I go on any further, let me add that if the man was a mere acquaintance of mine, I wouldn’t have let him be that familiar with my granddaughter. But the man had been a close friend for twenty years and I knew his wife had left him, his children were grown up and he was lonely. Of course, I didn’t want to believe that he might be a sexual predator. I was obviously too close to my friend to see his behaviour for what it was. As an interesting aspect in all this, both my daughter and I studied criminal law, deviant behaviour, and abnormal psychology for years at the University of Toronto and generally; we can spot conduct like this, and yet we somehow let this one slide by us.

I spoke to a close friend of mine who is a police officer in Toronto that the sexual predator resided in and asked him for some background on his criminal record. My friend apologized and said that he couldn’t give me that information because it was against police policy. When I spoke to the investigating officer in Mississauga where the sexual assault against my granddaughter took place, she too said that she couldn’t give me that information. It’s ironic when you think of it. Both I and my daughter could only learn of this man’s criminal record when he was convicted and it was brought out during his sentencing.

I asked the investigating officer if she would have given me that information before the sexual offence took place if I told her that I was suspicious that he might be a sex offender molesting my granddaughter. She said that she still couldn’t give me that information even under those circumstances. Further, she also didn’t tell me that this man was on bail for two counts of similar charges prior to him sexually assaulting my granddaughter.

Had my granddaughter suffered terribly and been seriously injured as a result of this man’s sexual assault on her, and it was because the police in the community in which we live had previously refused to give me or my daughter information about this man’s other current charges for the same kind of crime, my daughter may very well have sued the police for their failure to look into the matter and warn us of the existence of this sexual predator in our midst.

In the famous Jane Doe case in Toronto in which she was victimized by a serial rapist because the police refused to warn the public of his presence in their midst, the court said in part, “In spite of the knowledge that the police had about this sexual rapist and their decision not to warn, they took no steps to protect Ms. Doe or any other women from this known danger. In the circumstances of this case, the police failed utterly in the duty of care they owed Ms. Doe.” unquote.

I think that same principle applies in cases where a potential victim or the family of such a potential victim makes enquiries to the police about someone whom they suspect may be a sexual predator and who is visiting their home on an ongoing basis and may appear to be acting in an improper manner towards a child.

On October 5, 1999, Citizenship, Culture and Recreation Minister Helen Johns launched the $1.2 million Ontario Screening Initiative (OSI) to safeguard community groups, a program to protect children in sports from sexual abuse or the elderly being subjected to some other form of abuse. She said, "We all want our loved ones to be safe in community programs -- whether it's a child playing soccer or an elderly parent receiving home care." unquote. The program is funded by the Ontario Government and operated by various community groups such as sports organizations, summer camps and church groups etc. The OSI promotes the adoption of safety practices for community groups to use to screen people in positions of trust, such as reference checks, job orientation, training, supervision and monitoring.

Perhaps a similar program might be implemented in Ontario that would protect children at home from sexual predators who come to visit. I envision a group of volunteers in each community, comprising of retired police officers experienced in sexual abuse crimes and retired social workers who have the same kind of experience, who could send a member of their group to interview a potential victim and his or her family and if the volunteer concludes that there may very well be a risk to the child, the volunteer ( who has been approved by the police ) can obtain from the police, information as to whether or not the person being enquired about has a criminal record for sexual crimes or has similar charges pending. Armed with that information, the volunteer could then advise the family that it would not be in the child’s best interests to permit the suspected offender having any contact with the child at any time. This program could be called the Sexual Predator’s Risk Initiative. ( SPRI )

Single mothers whose boyfriends have shown an unusual interest in their children, parents whose children appear to spend a lot of time in single adult’s homes, parents who feel that their children’s friends of the same sex are far too old for their children to be playing with, parents who have suspicions about the conduct of their babysitters or wives who have suspicions about their husbands molesting their children or visa versa; would be the kind of people who would be in need of its services.

The reasons for any parent being suspicious could be that the adult or older child is spending too much time roughhousing with the younger child or is constantly inviting the younger child to sit on his lap, is constantly telling jokes or stories of a sexual nature, is always wanting to be the one to bathe the child in the bathtub, or an adult is constantly giving money or gifts to the child or permitting the child to drink alcohol in the presence of the adult or wants to take the child on overnight camping all the time during the warm months of the year or for sleepovers at his or her house or the child is afraid to be near a particular adult.

The Toronto Sun published a story in its May 27th 2003 edition about a woman who accidentally stumbled on her husband's kiddie porn collection, including pictures of himself naked in the couple's bedroom with a six-year old girl they knew from the neighbourhood. He later admitted to improper touching by the child from September 1998 to June 1999.

She said that looking back at it, she was able to piece together the hints her husband dropped about his secret. She's just sorry she didn't pick up on them sooner. "He knew all the kids in the neighbourhood and I thought at the time it was really cute. I looked at it like practice parenting because we were starting a family." unquote.

If professionals like my daughter and I can be fooled as to the real intentions of a sexual predator in our midst as we were, what about those who are untrained in recognizing sexual deviance in others. Unless something like SPRI is brought about, victims such as my granddaughter and her mother and thousands more like them will only learn of the sexual predator’s intentions after the sexual attacks have been committed on their loved ones and only learn during the sentencing aspect of the predator’s trials, when it is too late, about their children’s sexual predators’ previous sexual criminal history.

As an aside, the molester of my granddaughter was arrested and spent one year in jail awaiting his trial. He was put on probation for three years because the judge felt that since he was beat up in jail and wasn't permitted to attend his father's funeral, and was required to seek psychiatric treatment as a condition of his probation, no further jail time was necesary. I advised the court that I was in agreement with the hudge's decision. Needless to say, my family and I no longer associate with this man and from talking to some of our mutual friends who knew this man, they don't talk with him. He is now on the Canadian list of sex offenders.

About Dahn Batchelor

I am a criminologist in Canada and since 1975, I have addressed the United Nations in their conferences on criminal justice around the world. (Europe, Africa, South America and Asia) I am the father of the United Nations bill of rights for young offenders (The Beijing Rules) which affects the lives of millions of children around the world. I created Ventures in the boy scouts organization and it is currently in 13 countries. I was 22 years of age when I did this. I am currently 72 years of age and still working as a speaker on justice at UN conferences and I am practicing law. I am a concert pianist, written several novels and am an essayist. Most of my work and writings is on issues on criminal justice and on human rights. In the past, I was a private investigator, a syndicated newspaper columnist and editor of a police magazine and host of a TV talk show.