ae
boo:

mpennest walked free
om a Vancouver
feecourtroom earlier this
memonth, Lady Justice

A ust surely have shriv-

melted up and tried to

e@mmide behind her blind-

a old and scales.

The Burnaby schoo! prin-
Fipal was accused of five sepa-
ate charges all relating to
hild pornography or to hav-
ing sex with minors.
Somehow, between his first
Peeppearance on the charges he
@aced, and his trial, the
rown agreed to a plea bar-
ain deal with Bennest’s
lawyer, Peter Leask.

The court was told during

Bentencing that Bennest had
xploited a 12-year-old boy at
is school in “explicit child -
ornography.” Yet, it is in the

wranscripts of the bail hearing
here we learn the real
ature of the Bennest
beast.”

“The Crown’s concern is
at the accused, because of
¢ nature of the charges,

ecause of his position, and

because of the extent, the
Mduration of the offences in
Byuestion, the accused is a
Kianger to the public generally
and if released, the public
ould ‘not be adequately pro-
erected by any terms which
our Honor could impose.”

‘Read those words again. I

ow, I know, the grammar
of the learned counsel is atro-
cious. But read the words.

Leo
Knight

crime and
punisinvent

This quote is from the bail
hearing of Bennest. Words
spoken by Crown Counsel
Gordon Matei to presiding
Judge William Kitchen.

As I explained last week,
something happened that
convinced the Crown to “do
the deal.”

At this point we can only
speculate on what that was.
But in the wake of that spec-
ulation, it certainly appears
the Crown went to extraordi-
nary lengths to ensure the
deal was not only done, but
done without the prying eyes
of the media focused on it.

In the Bennest case,
Crown counsel Craig Webber
was scheduled to interview
officers involved in the case
on Wednesday, Oct. i. The
interviews were cancelled and
re-scheduled for the follow-
ing Monday, Gct. 6.

On Friday, Oct. 3,
Bennest’s case was called for-
ward, unannounced to any-
one other than the characters
involved, into Judge
Kitchen’s court and a plea of
guilty entered on the least
severe of the pending
charges. The remaining
charges were stayed by the

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Crown. When officers
showed up on the Monday
they were only then told of
the deal.

The only plausible expla-
nation for this deception was
to ensure the persons most
likely te be angry with the
deal, the police, were kept in
the dark until after the fact,
lest they go to the media and
blow the whistle.

Kitchen, in giving Bennest
a suspended sentence, (“bug-
ger all” in English, for those
of you unfamiliar with
“legalese”) said the kiddie
porn possessed by Bennest
was, “relatively mild ... not as
extreme as many instances of
pornography we sce.” Clearly,
the “mountain” of evidence
referred to by the Crown in
the bail hearing was kept
from the judge in the plea
bargain.

Bennest was involved in
much more than what was
placed before the judge. The
Crown knew this. The
Crown also knew of much
more than was oudined in
the charges which were laid.
Much more.

When police were execut-
ing their search warrants,
they knew of another teenag-
er from New Brunswick who
goc mixed up with Bennest
after running away from
home. The young male came
to Vancouver and got caught
up in Bennest’s sordid web.

Upon the young male’s
return to New Brunswick,
the information concerning
Bennest was brought to the

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local police who provided it
to Vancouver investigators on
the very day they were apply-
ing for search warrants.

Information that was
placed into the documents
filed by police to obtain the
search warrants (lest Crown
attempt to deny any know!-
edge of the facts).

Want more?

Information was devel-
oped in the investigation
linking Bennest to John
Robin Sharpe, who currently
stands accused in both
Vancouver and Surrey of pos-
sessing, making and distribut-
ing child pornography. When
Sharpe was arrested, police
spokesman Anne Drennan,
called the seizure of kiddie
porn from him the largest in
Vancouver’s history, with

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some of the most disgusting

* material imaginable.

Yet, the Crown stood
mute when Kitchen said, in
sentencing, that Bennest had
no intention of sharing or
distributing the child pornog-
raphy he had made.

Plea bargains happen all!
the time. The glacial-like jus-
tice system would grind to a
halt without the back-room
deals. That’s reality. But, in
this case, there was an outra-
geous breach of trust
involved, committed by a
school principal by being
involved in kiddie porn and,

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Public deserves answers in Bennest case

a aeeeeVEIEN William

indeed, even manipulating a
student from the very school
for which he was master, for
his own sexual purposes.

Attorney General Ujjal
Dosanjh has said he has his
officials looking into the mat-
ter. He should, considering at
whatever level, it was some-
one employed by his ministry
who made the deal. I antici-
pate the AG will announce an
appeal of the sentence. But
we should not let it rest at
that.

The deal reeks. The public
interest is not even close to
being satisfied.

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