Risk Factors

"He needs to be in a place where he is improving and not just being warehoused.  He could come out in a better place and society will benefit from it, too."
Penny Sherwood

 Mothers can and do overlook much in defence of their children.  After all, whatever their children have done they are still their own children.  And so perhaps it is hardly surprising that Penny Sherwood would seek to appeal on behalf of her son, a young man of 26, diagnosed with mental illness.  But her son, James Sherwood, is also a serial sex offender.

The trouble is, it is another mother's child that has been victimized horribly by James Sherwood.  He raped a fourteen-year old girl.  In her victim impact statement, the understandably emotional girl - child, really - spoke of her nightmares and flashbacks.  She finds it difficult to focus in school.  "My relationship with God has changed as well.  If there was a God, this wouldn't have happened."

Moreover, this child suffered not one, but two separate rapes that night.  There will be another trial for the other man.  And the girl - unidentified to protect her identity as though there might be much more that could harm a child than what has already occurred to her - said she fears the release of James Sherwood.  She no longer trusts men.

As for James Sherwood, his mother pleaded with a judge not to commit her son to federal prison.  She asked the judge to consider sending her son to the St.Lawrence Valley Correctional and Treatment Centre.  Rather than agree to the prosecutor who argued for a prison sentence of up to seven years, as punishment fitting a child rapist.

The prosecutor in fact explained that James Sherwood, suffering from schizophrenia, had been offered treatment on a previous occasion of sexual assault.  The psychiatrist who had examined him at that time believed, he said, that the young man's risk could be managed, if he took treatment and attended a day program.

On that professional assurance he was released, and ten months later raped the girl while still on conditions relating to the earlier sentencing.  "This is an individual who had been given quite a light sentence last time around" said Prosecutor Suzanne Schriek, commenting that Dr. Paul Federoff's earlier recommendation proved "overly optimistic."

Someone suffering from "cognitive limitations", incapable of recognizing the commission of a horrible act, dreadfully harming another human being, and a child at that, is not someone who should be given one opportunity after another to demonstrate his incapacity to learn basic human decency and restrain his harmful impulses. 

Despite the treatment he had earlier received, there did not appear to have been much benefit resulting from it.  The doctor's report indicated that despite the treatment his risk factor mental illness rendered him incapable of understanding why having sex with a 14-year-old was wrong. 

But 'having sex' is not quite what rape is, is it?