Paul Bernardo’s galling tale of woe lands flat in parole board hearing
Mommy didn’t love him. Daddy hated and tormented him. His biological father disavowed him.
With breathtaking gall, schoolgirl killer Paul Bernardo now claims he was the victim. And the crimes he committed — first-degree murder, the drugging death of his teen soon-to-be sister-in-law, the raping of 14 women, the masturbating voyeurism: That was “revenge” for his suffering.
The poor pitiful me framing of his atrocities didn’t wash at a parole board hearing on Tuesday. Nearly three decades after his conviction for kidnapping, torturing and murdering Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French, after being handed a sentence of life in prison, after being designated a dangerous offender, sexual sadist Bernardo was for the third time denied any form of parole.
The families of those slain teenagers stood up for their girls again, delivering anguished victim impact statements. Because the hurt never goes away and they have to revisit it, crack open their grief, on every occasion that Bernardo makes a bid for freedom. Leslie and Kristen are frozen in time, trauma and tragedy. Dying was their only escape from horror, but the pain hasn’t subsided for those who loved them.
It was Bernardo’s boo-hoo tale of woe, however, claims he’d never raised with the trial judge, his defence lawyers or, until just a couple of months ago, his parole officer, that ambushed the day, affording the felon exactly the same power and manipulation and control he’d once exercised over the teenagers he abducted and murdered. From start to finish, it was all about his hardships, with the humiliation, violence and brutality he’d inflicted on his captives sidelined to context.
