None So Blind. Barbara Fradkin
him a place on the outside, a new halfway house in Belleville. It’s fully accessible, he’ll have his own room but share meals, and Belleville is big enough he has a hope of finding some sort of job. Because it’s practically the only wheelchair-accessible house in all of Ontario, he could probably stay there for years if he wanted.”
“Uh-huh.” Green tried to reconcile this new vision of Rosten with the man who’d fought his conviction for twenty years. “All he has to do is say ‘Yes, I understand and regret what I did.’”
“Yeah. I know. It’s a big step.”
Green could hear his own doubt echoed in the chaplain’s voice. “Do you think he means it?”
As the silence dragged on, Green wondered whether the chaplain would reply at all or whether he was treading too far into confidential territory. Finally Goodfellow chose to be noncommittal.
“Honestly, I don’t know. And I don’t plan to ask.”
“Did he mention the Carmichaels at all in his decision?”
“Not at all. It’s never been about them, you know. He has nothing against them. He’s often said he feels sorry for them and wishes they could get real answers.”
“The mother will be notified,” Green said, “and she’s not in such a conciliatory mood. I suspect she’ll prepare a victim’s statement and attend the hearing.”
“Oh, she’s already been notified, although she hasn’t sent in her reply yet. You boys would have been notified too.”
“When were the notices sent out?”
“A couple of weeks ago? If your desk is anything like mine, it’s probably buried in your inbox somewhere.”
Goodfellow roared with laughter, but Green was too busy doing calculations to rise to the bait. The timing was perfect to explain Marilyn’s tailspin. Just as she was struggling to adjust to a new life, news had arrived that the man who had killed her daughter and haunted her husband to his grave was applying for release. As she had always feared, Rosten would be free to get on with his life while her daughter was gone forever. Green knew without doubt that Marilyn would attend that review.
The mother tiger was back.
A small crowd had already gathered in the waiting room by the time Green arrived with barely two minutes to spare. He’d had to perform some fancy last-minute footwork with Superintendent Neufeld, who didn’t consider parole hearings part of an inspector’s job description, but he was damned if he was going to miss James Rosten’s next move. All Green’s private doubts, all the years of second-guessing the evidence, might be erased in a single afternoon.
Would Rosten admit his guilt? Express remorse? Apologize to the Carmichael family? Was he really a changed man with a fresh vision for his future, or was this just a ploy to advance his own interests?
It was a question of intense importance to Green, but, judging by the sparse crowd, to few others. After twenty years in prison, the man who had commanded media headlines for months barely merited a footnote. Green scanned the faces of the group, spotting Archie Goodfellow in huddled conversation with the parole officer beside him. Normally Archie filled any room he occupied, not just with his six-foot, three-hundred-pound frame but also with his booming baritone voice that could shake the rafters of the largest opera house. Yet today his voice was a mere whisper in the other man’s ear.
Green was just debating whether to approach him when the door opened and James Rosten wheeled in. Green was immediately struck by his transformation. No longer did he look like a shrivelled old man. Muscles rippled down his arms as he propelled his chair across the room.
As he had been during his trial, this was a man gearing up for battle.
Rosten searched the room, nodding briefly to Archie and the parole officer before settling on Green. Something flickered in his eyes. Surprise? Alarm? Before Green could decipher the meaning, the interior door opened and the hearing officer ushered them inside.
It was an unadorned, institutional room with a table in the centre and a row of chairs along the back. Rosten, his parole officer, and a civilian sat at the table, observers and interested parties at the back. There was a shuffle of movement when Marilyn Carmichael entered through another door and took a seat in the farthest corner, her head bowed and her thin frame cradled as if to ward off blows. Unlike Rosten, she did not look geared up for battle, but Green observed with relief that although she was wearing her familiar navy suit, at least it was pressed.
Once everyone was settled, all eyes turned to the two Parole Board members on the other side of the table. The official reports on Rosten were in a file in front of them, documenting Rosten’s insight into his crime, his conduct within the prison, his release plans and sources of support, the impact on the victim, and most important, his risk to the public.
From experience, Green knew how the game was played. Some reports would be favourable, others less so, especially given Rosten’s long history of denial. But Green was only interested in what two people had to say — Marilyn and Rosten himself.
Once the introductions and procedural formalities were over, the lead board member, who had introduced himself as Pierre Anjou, invited the institutional parole officer to summarize the case. Green leaned forward curiously. From previous cases, he remembered Gilles Maisonneuve as an experienced PO with a reputation as a hard-ass. If he had bought Rosten’s sudden conversion to remorse, perhaps the board would too.
After giving a brief sketch of Rosten’s criminal history, which was essentially unblemished until his current offence, Maisonneuve sped through Rosten’s twenty years of anger, protest, and endless legal wrangling before arriving at the past three months. Maisonneuve had personally worked on Rosten’s release plan and administered a number of standard risk- and needs-assessment measures. In drawing the board’s attention to the man’s moderate scores, he explained they would have been even better had Rosten co-operated more fully in recommended treatments and not lost all ties to friends and family on the outside.
However, Maisonneuve was quick to add, despite his reluctance to assume responsibility, Rosten had never presented a discipline problem, had no history of substance abuse, and had co-operated fully with CSC rules and routines. He had used his advanced education and skill as a teacher to help in the prison school program by mentoring and tutoring students toward high-school diplomas and even advanced science credits. This was a skill he intended to carry into his community placement.
“But what about insight and remorse?” the lead board member said.
Maisonneuve paused and leaned across the table, conversational now. “As I mentioned and his records show, although Mr. Rosten has been a model inmate, exhibiting no violent or disruptive behaviour, some attitudinal problems have hindered his progress in the past. He has had difficulty accepting responsibility for his crime and coming to grips with its implications for himself, the victim’s family, and the community at large. It has been a difficult admission for a man in his position, and one that until recently he has been reluctant to make. The professional opinion of CSC counsellors and psychologists is that the crime was so repulsive to him and so contrary to his values and self-image that he denied it happened. Perhaps he even blocked out all memory of it. We may never know. However, he has now come to accept that he committed this crime while under the stress of his new job at the university and the increased financial pressures of his family. His wife had recently given birth to twin girls and no one was getting much sleep.”
Ridiculous, Green thought, just as Anjou echoed his thoughts. “Everyone has pressures, Mr. Maisonneuve. Some of us even have children.”
“Agreed. It’s not an excuse. But his circumstances are very different now. He has no family obligations, financial or otherwise — in fact there’s been no contact with his family at all since his incarceration, and none is anticipated. He has no job pressures, other than the job he will be applying for if his parole is granted. He is no longer a young man, and his spinal cord injury has left him with considerably diminished sexual capacity. Certainly his capacity to physically assault and overpower a