(This column was published in the North Shore News on Oct. 29, 1997)
Public deserves answers in Bennest case
By Leo Knight
WHEN William Bennest walked free from a Vancouver courtroom earlier this month, Lady Justice must surely have shrivelled up and tried to hide behind her blindfold and scales.
The Burnaby school principal was accused of five separate charges all relating to child pornography or to having sex with minors. Somehow, between his first appearance on the charges he faced, and his trial, the Crown agreed to a plea bargain deal with Bennest's lawyer, Peter Leask.
The court was told during sentencing that Bennest had exploited a 12-year-old boy at his school in "explicit child pornography." Yet, it is in the transcripts of the bail hearing where we learn the real nature of the Bennest "beast."
"The Crown's concern is that the accused, because of the nature of the charges, because of his position, and because of the extent, the duration of the offences in question, the accused is a danger to the public generally and if released, the public would not be adequately protected by any terms which Your Honor could impose."
Read those words again. I know, I know, the grammar of the learned counsel is atrocious. But read the words.
This quote is from the bail hearing of Bennest. Words spoken by Crown Counsel Gordon Matei to presiding Judge William Kitchen.
As I explained last week, something happened that convinced the Crown to "do the deal."
At this point we can only speculate on what that was. But in the wake of that speculation, it certainly appears the Crown went to extraordinary lengths to ensure the deal was not only done, but done without the prying eyes of the media focused on it.
In the Bennest case, Crown counsel Craig Webber was scheduled to interview officers involved in the case on Wednesday, Oct. 1. The interviews were cancelled and re-scheduled for the following Monday, Oct. 6.
On Friday, Oct. 3, Bennest's case was called forward, unannounced to anyone other than the characters involved, into Judge Kitchen's court and a plea of guilty entered on the least severe of the pending charges. The remaining charges were stayed by the Crown. When officers showed up on the Monday they were only then told of the deal.
The only plausible explanation for this deception was to ensure the persons most likely to be angry with the deal, the police, were kept in the dark until after the fact, lest they go to the media and blow the whistle.
Kitchen, in giving Bennest a suspended sentence, ("bugger all" in English, for those of you unfamiliar with "legalese") said the kiddie porn possessed by Bennest was, "relatively mild ... not as extreme as many instances of pornography we see." Clearly, the "mountain" of evidence referred to by the Crown in the bail hearing was kept from the judge in the plea bargain.
Bennest was involved in much more than what was placed before the judge. The Crown knew this. The Crown also knew of much more than was outlined in the charges which were laid. Much more.
When police were executing their search warrants, they knew of another teenager from New Brunswick who got mixed up with Bennest after running away from home. The young male came to Vancouver and got caught up in Bennest's sordid web.
Upon the young male's return to New Brunswick, the information concerning Bennest was brought to the local police who provided it to Vancouver investigators on the very day they were applying for search warrants.
Information that was placed into the documents filed by police to obtain the search warrants (lest Crown attempt to deny any knowledge of the facts).
Want more?
Information was developed in the investigation linking Bennest to John Robin Sharpe, who currently stands accused in both Vancouver and Surrey of possessing, making and distributing child pornography. When Sharpe was arrested, police spokesman Anne Drennan, called the seizure of kiddie porn from him the largest in Vancouver's history, with some of the most disgusting material imaginable.
Yet, the Crown stood mute when Kitchen said, in sentencing, that Bennest had no intention of sharing or distributing the child pornography he had made.
Plea bargains happen all the time. The glacial-like justice system would grind to a halt without the back-room deals. That's reality. But, in this case, there was an outrageous breach of trust involved, committed by a school principal by being involved in kiddie porn and, indeed, even manipulating a student from the very school for which he was master, for his own sexual purposes.
Attorney General Ujjal Dosanjh has said he has his officials looking into the matter. He should, considering at whatever level, it was someone employed by his ministry who made the deal. I anticipate the AG will announce an appeal of the sentence. But we should not let it rest at that.
The deal reeks. The public interest is not even close to being satisfied.
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