the MATTHEW Inquiry : a public inquiry on how the NS justice systemically treats wealthy victimizers vs non-wealthy child victims

this generation is due its own MARSHALL style inquiry

I can’t speak as to what Canada should do but I have now come to believe that Nova Scotia should hold a public inquiry far different than the one most Nova Scotians have been calling for.

For no matter how hard we dissect the mistakes made by the RCMP on April 18th-19th 2020, the fact remains that the majority of Gabriel Wortman’s victims were already dead by the time the RCMP arrived.

The best - indeed the only - time the justice system had to save 24 lives occurred eighteen years earlier.

The systemic abuse endured then by the child victim, delivered on the grounds of simple expediency, ultimately cost 23 other equally innocent victims their lives two decades later.

The Law of Unintended Consequences on this occasion returned with a vengeance to deliver Nova Scotia a lethal bite.

But I don’t think a public inquiry need dwell on this point, we ordinary Nova Scotians are not as stupid as the authorities believe, we can fill in the blanks, draw conclusions, follow cause and affect.

For we may never again see a spree killer like Gabriel Wortman in Nova Scotia, even in our grandchildren’s lifetime.

But what happened to young Matthew M in 2002, is still happening to the poor victims of wealthy victimizers today in Nova Scotia, indeed all over the world where the adversary law system holds sway.

Judging from the total lack of mea culpas from over a dozen highly senior crown prosecutors, defence lawyers, judges and police officers in the months since news of GW’s 2002 assault conviction leaked out, it is clear they remain convinced that the appropriate justice result was produced at the time.

You might even be convinced that Matthew shares their smug self-satisfaction at the verdict reached.

I understand fully how you might feel that way : you have been reading any one of dozens of media reports that simply speak of a GW assault against “another man” that resulted in a $50 fine.

”Big deal”, you sniff, “just two friends getting into a bit of a push and shove just before closing time in a bar”.

That is not the way the police saw it, after a thorough two month long investigation : they charged Wortman with criminal assault punishable with up to five years in jail for an interrupted attempt to beat a child to death.

  GBH, as the crime shows from Britain always refer to it : grievous bodily harm.

And that is clearly not how Matthew, the bystander witnesses who rescued him or the hospital doctors, remember the assault, judging by the initial police charge.

 Matthew told the Toronto Star’s Steve McKinley the unprovoked and prolonged assault, from behind, on a total stranger, was both “bizarre” and “violent”.

 World famous mass killer profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole could not have boiled down the twin defining characteristics of a red alarm “violence leakage” from a injustice collector potential mass killer any better herself.

And no, Matthew is not convinced justice was done back then.

In April 2020, Matthew told Global News’ Andrew Russell

I think there should have been a bit more justice here : a grown man beating up on basically a young teenage kid. I wish the police would have dealt with him a lot sooner. I wish he would have lost everything back then. Basically, this (24 dead) might not have happened....

I have reviewed the available evidence thoroughly and fully agree, in spades.

Hold the damn MATTHEW INQUIRY, Stephen : the decisions made by your half dozen relatives on the HRM police force at the time of this systemic screwing of a child victim can go to  blazes !