By Arthur Weinreb
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Last week the news broke that schoolgirl killer Karla Homolka gave birth to a bouncing baby boy in a Montreal area hospital. Actually it was "Leanne Teale" who gave birth; the name that Homolka has used since leaving prison upon completion of her 12-year prison sentence in the summer of 2005. Apparently even in relatively sympathetic Quebec, the name "Karla Homolka" has too many negative connotations to use. Leanne is Homolka's middle name whereas Teale is the name that she and ex-husband and partner-in-crime adopted some time ago. Teale comes from the psycho character Martin Thiel, played by Kevin Bacon in the 1988 movie, Criminal Law.
There has been some media coverage of the allegations that some hospital employees denied Homolka medical care after they discovered who she was. While we live in a society where even filth like Homolka have the right to medical treatment, what has been left unsaid is the question of what, if anything, should be done to protect her newborn baby.
It is beyond dispute that we live in a nanny state where all levels of government feel that it is their duty to tell us what we can and cannot do. They are bound and determined to protect us from fatty foods, injuries from tobogganing and every other mishap that could possibly happen. But even those with a libertarian bent would undoubtedly concede that the state jumping in to protect those who cannot protect themselves, like Baby Teale, is justified. So the question must be asked; should the authorities step in or should Karla be allowed to simply take her baby and go back to the obscure life that she has been leading?
If the authorities do step in it should not be to punish Karla who all rational people agree got off way too lightly. She ended up serving 12 years for the torture and deliberate killings of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French, the accidental killing of her sister, Tammy, and other sexual assaults against young girls. There can be no dispute that Homolka remains a danger to children.
The case of Karla Homolka is somewhat unusual in that she received a 12-year sentence when others who have been convicted of similar crimes have received life. Marion Boyd, the non-lawyer Attorney General under Bob Rae's NDP government bought the line that poor Ms. Homolka was a battered woman who was forced to go along with her ex, Paul Bernardo who on top of other defects, happened to be a man. Even new Liberal Bob probably wouldn't buy that argument any more. There is a misconception that those who are given life sentences are always released after 15 or 25 years. Not true. There are many dangerous people in Canadian penitentiaries that are given life sentences at a relatively young age and then die in custody of natural causes decades later. Much like planes that take off, fly across the Atlantic and then land safely, we never hear about them. We only hear about the crashes and those who are released early and go on to kill again. Had Homolka been given life, like Paul Bernardo it would have been unlikely that she would ever have tasted freedom again. She is one of the most dangerous convicted killers ever to walk among us and she is free to give birth and go on her merry way.
Even in a world of serial killers and mass murderers, Karla Homolka stands out. For example, of all the heinous crimes that the late Jeffery Dahmer committed he was never accused of eating the members of his own family. Homolka killed her own sister, albeit by accident. Fifteen-year-old Tammy Homolka died after being drugged by her loving sister so that she could be served up to then-boyfriend Paul Bernardo as a Christmas present.
Babies have been taken away from their mothers who have done a lot less. This isn't to say necessarily say that the baby should be taken away permanently; but there has to be some state intervention to ensure that the child is protected from its sick and twisted mother. To do nothing would render the notion of the state having a duty to protect children utterly meaningless.
Only time will tell if the authorities in Montreal will do something to protect the child who is now growing up with a real life psycho while bearing the surname of a fictional one.
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