I should have known it was going to be a bad day when I left the house I had spent the night at, late for meeting up with prison staff, and with a new route to follow that I had not tried before, and discovered it was snowing!!
So far, every time it has snowed this winter, something has gone awry. This time I was concerned about my son’s parole hearing. That is where I was headed. Following the new route Steven had given me, I actually made it to the appointment with 30 seconds to spare. Despite the blowing snow and the winding twisty road I drove.
Made it safely, so now we wait. The prison staff put us upstairs in the main office building, in the board room, to wait. About a half hour later, Derik's IPO (internal parole officer) Marion Higgins, brought him upstairs to sit with us. We just had a general conversation in which Marion told us a bit of the history behind the place. William Head Institution had first been built as a quarantine area for new immigrants from the Orient. Many Chinese and Japanese immigrants did not make it out of there. Those who were or became ill and died are buried in a corner of the property that is maintained as a Canadian Heritage site by the Federal Government. I felt it would be very interesting to take a walk around there, but this was not the day.
The prison began as a minimum security camp with no fences, then became medium security wit a three roll barbed wire fence cutting it off from the rest of the penninsula. Now, it is a minimum again, but the fence is still there. Parole hearings are a regular occurrence as prisoners serving long sentences, like Derik, has the right to have one every 2 years once they reach a minimum length of time served. For Derik, that time was 10 years. He has now been in prison for 17 years, but has not gained any release yet. We were hoping for something this time, but not really expecting anything like full parole.
Because the prison is located on the tip of a penninsula, we walked down to the visiting room, where the hearing was being held, in the rain, not snow. The 3 members of the board were already seated. The assistant got the IPO from Derik's previous institution on the phone and then the members of the press (6) and the relatives of the victims (8) were brought in and seated behind us. We had to face the board, his current IPO sitting with us, and were not permitted to turn around to see the people being seated behind us. There was a significant distance between the groups to prevent any possibility of interaction. Derik had pointed out to the prison staff that one of the relatives had physically assaulted me at one of our many court appearances, so that was one reason for the caution, and the larger room than was normally used.
The hearing started as it usually did with the board members wanting to discuss his crime. That part was naturally short as Derik still maintains that he is innocent. Even after such a long time in prison, he will not make up a confession. He is maintaining his innocence while assuring his continued incarceration. The next part was longer. Going back to his childhood, they wanted to know if his father was controlling. One statement they questioned is that I have to call him before I leave the house. I explained later, when I had a chance to speak, that we both did that. In our opinion, it made sense that someone know where you are in case something happened. At the very least, it gives a starting point for a search should someone not make it home. We kept in close touch with each other and with our children for that reason. I am sure some people might call us controlling, but we always knew where our children were and when to expect them home.
The chairperson also appeared to fixate on the fact that, as a boy, he carried a pocket knife. Derik explained that based on his rural upbringing for the first 13 years of his life. Nearly every boy carried a pocket knife in a rural area. You never knew when you might want to whittle a sling shot fork, or cut some binder twine to save an animal's life, or any other emergency fix. I don't think that the city people really understood that.
Once they were done questioning Derik, then it was my turn to speak on his behalf. I tried to give an eloquent testimonial on his progress since going to prison, expecially in the past few years. Derik had ended the questioning telling them about the programs he took, the effort he made to understand his behaviour, the self help books he read and worked through, the issues he had identified on his own and worked through, and the relationship he had been building with his fiancee over the past 9 years. I did an overview of the incarceration as a ping pong type of relationship building. They would tease him with a program and then say he did not fit the profile and yank it away. This happened 14 times. Most times he was screened out because he already had the skills they were trying to teach. For a couple of them, he was screened out as not being violent enough, and not willing to confess to the crime for which he is innocent. Finally, they had to give him one. Ottawa had to override the requirements to get him in there, but Derik worked very hard at getting the most benefit from the program as he could. However, the Parole Board did not believe that it was enough. Following my input, 2 of the relatives read impact statements. One was a very emotional short statement about the love lost when one sister died. The other one was a rant. He told the board that Derik should get out only after he received training to get a job and had the conditions put on him to repay the costs of his imprisonment.
Then Derik had the last word.
We were all ushered out in the reverse order than being ushered in, once again to avoid any contact between the 2 groups of people. The waiting began again. Suddenly, the phone rang and we were once again being summoned to the meeting room. There we got the decision. Day parole denied. Full parole denied.
I requested direction from the board members, and the only response was to continue with making improvements like he had been most recently. Once again, we left, ushered out in groups. We had another half hour visit with Derik and his IPO while the relatives were leaving the grounds. It was a good unwinding session. Both of us were on the verge of tears, relief that it was over and release of the tension.
Stopping just past the prison property, we gane an interview to CBC and GlobalTV news, once again standing in the rain as it changed back into snow. Arriving at the climic where my daughter works, it was now hailing ferociously. And again, following a great dinner with my daughter and granddaughter, I was driving in a near blinding snow storm.
A 30 minute drive, a 60 minute wait, an hour and a half ferry ride, and I was on the highway home. Surprise! Another snow storm on this side too! Two hours of that messy highway driving and I was finally back home. Snow and ice the entire way!
It is now April 2. No longer April Fools Day. At 2 am the snow is stopping and turning again to rain. Thank God that Day is over!
Elouise Lord,
mother, teacher, paralegal, writer, speaker, driver, facilitator, etc.
PS, next time it snows, I am not going anywhere!
Coach Elouise
604-794-3218
Skype elouise.lord
Email: lordelouise@gmail.com
rascal60@shaw.ca
http://tinyurl.com/b5op9q
