Babs MacLean & Gabe Wortman : anger management assessment in 2003 : yes or no ?

its not just parents that abuse children - sometimes JUSTICE SYSTEMS do as well

Karissa Donkin is a CBC investigative reporter who asks the right questions, the questions so many of us want answers to.

She got totally stonewalled by the NS Justice System (“Private Babs MacLean reporting for stone-wall duty, sur !”) but I am not surprised.

Those JS ADULTS have so much to be ashamed about, so much to hide.

A $50 fine to a hulking brute who tried to kill a child from behind, without warning, the child a total stranger, a child already walking away as fast as he could.

ADULTS : well paid highly trained professional ADULTS with a sworn duty to protect innocent children.

A child betrayed, morally stabbed in the back by ADULTS just as the ADULT brute physically struck him in the back.

But along with the chump-change-to-a-millionaire $50 fine, Gabe Wortman was ordered to report to a probation officer and to attend anger management sessions, to assess whether he likely to get violent ever again.

(Hint to the ADULTS in the room : 23 innocent deaths, proceeded by a long list of violent assaults.)

Karissa wondered, just wondered, how the sessions with the probation officer went, and ditto the anger management sessions and what did the final anger assessment report say about his propensity to re-offend.

I had heard cynical commentators opine that Gabe never went to the probation officer, anger assessment et al but I have a little more faith in our justice system.

My faith in them is about - oh how did Jesus put it ? -  is about as big as a widow’s mite.

Babs pulled out the old “privacy” evasion, that Flanders & Swann universal Wompom of  bureaucratic chicanery, on Karissa.

But forget the 25 cent words from the bureaucrats : in plain old, pardon my french, english this is just a whole pile of ADULTS ashamed to admit to other ADULTS that they betrayed a child they were sworn to protect.

Still unwilling to say sorry to the child they betrayed, the 23 innocent people they betrayed, the Nova Scotia taxpayers they betrayed.

Prominent crown prosecutors, policemen, judges, defence lawyers : all ADULTS, all unwilling to say sorry to a child betrayed.

But one fine day, I believe we will go together to a Big Courthouse In The Sky, where a Big (omnipresent, omniscient) Judge will review the facts in this case - the public and the private, all the shredded papers magically back together, all emails undeleted, all the phone calls back on tape.

It will be one hell of a Public Inquiry , a place where the custodial sentences for un-heartfelt mea culpas can seem Eternal.

So shall we publicly repent today, apologize to Matthew, say we are sorry - or do we wait until Jesus comes back with the Search Warrants....