Leong: We shouldn’t let perpetrators of serious crimes to change names

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Sixteen years ago, a father in Merritt, B.C., killed his three children aged 5, 8 and 10 in a grisly homicide.

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Two years later, a judge found him guilty of first-degree murder for the admitted slayings but also ruled he was not criminally responsible, citing the killer’s history of psychotic behaviour.

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Today, Allan Dwayne Schoenborn wants you to forget — or at least wants to make it harder for you to remember.

Last month, our colleagues in Vancouver reported Schoenborn had legally changed his name to become known as Ken John Johnson, a fact his legal representatives had tried to suppress.

In a moment of wisdom, the B.C. Review Board, which oversees the cases of offenders found not criminally responsible due to mental health disorders, denied a request to have Schoenborn’s new name struck from the public record.

The backlash to the news came swiftly and within weeks, the B.C. government, perhaps taking a cue from the Official Opposition, moved to restrict the ability of serious offenders to hide from their heinous acts and effectively erase themselves from history.

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The Name Amendment Act would “prevent convicted criminals and individuals that have committed offences causing serious harm to others from evading accountability and avoiding the negative consequences of their actions by legally changing their names,” B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix said in the B.C. legislature on May 13.

The ban would apply to murderers, perpetrators of sexual assault, those who’ve committed crimes against children and people like Schoenborn found to be not criminally responsible because of a mental disorder.

The Alberta government did something similar in 2020 and 2021, but the moves were not nearly as drastic and focused mainly on those responsible for serious crimes of a sexual nature.

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At the time, the province couldn’t say how many people had actually applied to change their name to ease the burden of having been convicted of a sex crime.

Frankly, one is too many, and those linked to other serious, violent offences shouldn’t be able to run away from their past with such ease.

Karla Homolka has certainly tried.

Homolka, a.k.a. Leanne Bordelais, Leanne Teale and Karla Leanne Teale, was unconditionally released from prison in 2005 after spending a dozen years behind bars for her role in the torture, sexual assault and killing of Leslie Mahaffy, Kristen French, and her own sister, Tammy Homolka, in Ontario in the early 1990s.

After being freed, she moved around and even left the country at first to avoid the spotlight but eventually settled in a community not far from Montreal.

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She didn’t get noticed at first but after a time, people eventually blew Homolka’s cover. No surprise, given her notoriety.

Provincial governments shouldn’t have helped her to hide in plain sight.

Or Greyhound bus killer Vince Li, a.k.a. Will Baker, who was found not criminally responsible for beheading fellow passenger Tim McLean near Portage la Prairie, Man., in 2008.

Or sex criminal Graham James, a.k.a. Michael James, a longtime hockey coach who for many years preyed on players under his charge.

Provinces that already haven’t stepped up to need to do so.

And if the federal government were to improve inter-provincial tracking of serious criminals who’ve altered their names to hide their past, I’m sure provinces wouldn’t object.

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I understand the criminal justice system isn’t only about punishment and allows for the possibility of rehabilitation for those linked to heinous crimes.

That said, any rehab must occur without lifting the burden of what they’ve done, even for those found not criminally responsible.

It is unfair for victims’ families to remain trapped in the shadows cast by those who’ve committed terrible crimes, while the killers, pedophiles and rapists themselves could get the chance to escape the very same shadow with a simple name change.

They should not be allowed to get away with murder.

rleong@postmedia.com

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