No Justice For Incest Victims

A woman who moved to Nanaimo to get away from Abbotsford, where her estranged husband molested and impregnated her teenage daughter, was shocked to learn the 43-year-old man is set to be released here next week on parole.

The man, who cannot be named due to a court order, started serving a 28-month sentence in March 2007 for sexually assaulting the stepdaughter. The woman can also not be identified because of the same court order. He is scheduled for statutory release on Tuesday.

The mother said she married the man when her daughter was six years old, and the sexual assaults started when the girl was 11. The abuse came to light in 2005 when the mother caught the man having sex with the girl, at that time 14 years old. By then the girl was pregnant and the woman said DNA tests showed that her husband fathered the child.

The woman said her daughter, now 17, functions at the level of a 13-year-old, in part due to the trauma of the sexual assaults.

In a letter to the parole board, the mother argued that her daughter "shouldn't have to feel like a prisoner in her own hometown."

She said the man is at William Head prison Victoria and that they were recently informed that he asked to be paroled in Nanaimo. His full sentence expires July 18, 2009.

"They told me he was being released in Victoria, which is bad enough, but then he changed his mind and asked to come to Nanaimo," said the woman.

She thinks the man learned through a relative they had moved to Nanaimo. Also of concern to her is that the man has said he wants custody of the three-year-old daughter they had together.