Aug 10
30
Murdering mothers need to face real charges
Calgary Herald – August 28, 2010
Is infanticide charge outdated?
Softer sentences don’t reflect severity of crimes
By Valerie Fortney
It is one of the most troubling of crimes, the killing of an innocent child. But while it elicits a mix of revulsion, shock and sorrow in any reasonable and compassionate person, we always take comfort in the fact that such horrifying acts are about as common as getting struck by lightning. The statistics back up our beliefs: out of 39,000 births in 2005 in Alberta, there was only one case of infanticide; that in the year 2006, there were only 60 homicides committed against children and youth under the age of 18 across the entire country, and that the year 2005 represented the lowest rate of infant and child homicide in 33 years.
Well, those statistics aren’t much comfort this week. In less than 48 hours, two Calgary women were arrested and charged with the killing of their babies: 18-year-old Shelby Herchak is facing second-degree murder in the death of her 26-day-old son Daniel, while 33-year-old Stacey Joy Bourdeaux, already accused of the attempted murder of her five-year-old son, was charged Friday with the 2004 killing of another child, a 10-month-old boy who at the time was thought to have died of natural causes. Then there is the still-fresh memory of 27-year-old local woman Harsimrat Kahlon – who, it was discovered this past spring, gave birth to three children and hid their decomposing bodies in a closet, a horror discovered only after she was found dead of postpartum complications from the third birth. There are achingly similar stories this year coming out of other Canadian cities, along with France and Germany. All of them add up to one inescapable fact: it’s getting tougher by the day to tell oneself that something so terrible and unimaginable hardly ever happens.
But while the rest of us do our best to look away, a debate on how society should deal with such crimes has been slowly but surely simmering in the background. Some say the crime of infanticide – defined as the killing of a child under one year, and used more often these days by the defence than the Crown – should be scrapped. That’s because, an increasing chorus is arguing, long-held beliefs just don’t hold up against the science.
Read the complete article here.