Mayor says community needs to be vigilant now that Bakker is living there
By Glenda Luymes,
The Province
August 3, 2012
VPD spokesman Const. Lindsey Houghton warns the public Thursday about convicted sex-offender Donald Bakker's, pictured rear, recent move to Abbotsford.
Photograph by: Jason Payne, PNG , The Province
"He needs to know that if he's not behaving himself, the eyes of the community will be watching," Mayor Bruce Banman told The Province on Thursday.
Banman was responding to a police warning a day earlier after Bakker, the first person convicted under Canada's sex-tourism laws for sexually abusing seven Cambodian girls between the ages of seven and 12, in addition to three Vancouver sex-trade workers, took up residence in Abbotsford.
"Look at his picture. Memorize his face," echoed Michele Giordano, a support worker at the city's Warm Zone drop-in centre. She said the words felt ironic to her, given the last time she saw Bakker she was delivering the opposite message.
"Look at me, not at him," she remembers telling some of the women who testified against Bakker at his preliminary hearing in Vancouver in 2004.
Giordano sat through hours of emotional testimony from three of Bakker's local victims, during which videotapes of his violent assaults were played as the women sobbed and begged the judge not to have to watch them.
Bakker eventually pleaded guilty and went to jail for seven years.
Freed from prison in June in spite of his refusal to participate in rehabilitation programs, Bakker originally settled in Penticton. He was soon back behind bars, however, after being unable to find a place to live, turning himself in to police on two separate occasions before breaching his 11 p.m. curfew.
Abbotsford police Const. Ian Mac-Donald said Bakker's latest residency plans were "a bit of a surprise" for police. "We had heard he was des-tined for another community, but a last-minute left turn put . . . Abbots-ford in play."
Police wasted no time putting out a warning, and officers paid Bakker a visit at his new home Wednesday evening. MacDonald would not elaborate on his living situation or location.
By Thursday, the warning had made its way through the city's internal communications system to everyone from politicians to out-reach workers to rec-centre staff.
A photocopied picture of Bakker was front and centre on the "Bad Date" wall at the Warm Zone. A note scrawled in red felt marker warned women of his "ultra high risk to re-offend," an assessment that can be found in parole documents describing Bakker's lack of empathy and failure to take responsibility for his actions.
Giordano said she fears for Abbots-ford's most vulnerable citizens, those in the "survival sex trade," as Bakker was known to pick out the most "dope-sick" prostitutes as he trolled Vancouver streets in the family car, his son's car seat in the back. He asked the women if he could hurt them on videotape, and the assaults involved whipping, kicking and choking. He often wore hiking boots, said Giordano.
After his arrest for an assault against a prostitute, police searches revealed the videotapes, which showed Cambodian children per-forming oral sex. Bakker, who was a 16-year employee at the Pan Pacific hotel, had gone to the country under the guise of doing charity work.
Simon Fraser University criminologist Rob Gordon said Abbotsford's concern is "understandable," but by law there is very little the community can do.
"He has to live somewhere," he said, adding the best way to man-age sex offenders in the community is through accountability and sup-port groups.
"It's the unsupported offender who is most likely to reoffend, so you want him to settle in a community where he has some kind of support network."
CONDITIONS OF PAROLE
In addition to an 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, Donald Bakker is not to be in contact with any sex-trade workers or persons under 18; not to posses a computer, pornography or any device with access to the Internet; not to visit areas where children are known to congregate; not to own a camera or other recording device or any device that could be used as a restraint.
gluymes@theprovince.com
twitter.com/prov_valleygirl
No comments:
Post a Comment