FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
Olson hearing not news
Families and media indulge killer's lust for publicity
by Nick DevlinJust typing the name of Clifford Olson is a moral dilemma. I firmly believe that things (for I cannot call them people ) who commit certain crimes which violate the very essence of civilization should be expunged from society, body and soul. Extinguished from both life and from memory.
That Olson should die is trite. Of course he should. Preferably horribly, in intense agony for an interminably long final hour - something like the death scenes from those operas inflicted upon us as children in the name of culture.
But whether we should continue to report on Olson while he lives - to acknowledge and validate his existence in exchange for whatever marginal gain in understanding or awareness it may offer - is a difficult call.
In the case of his recent application for early parole eligibility, however, the evidence suggests that almost everyone chose wrong.
By all accounts, Olson's sick and ugly mind thrives on publicity. It is the one pleasure left him now that he can no longer rape and murder children. And yet the media, and more perversely his victims' families, insisted on indulging Olson's lust for celebrity.
The families didn't have to be there. Yet, many came of their own volition and tremendous expense, drawn inexorably back to the clutches of the killer who has owned their lives for countless years. They sat there for three days, serving no real purpose but to provide sound bites for the packs of hovering reporters (who didn't have to be there either). These poor mothers, fathers and siblings in particular ought to have stayed away in droves and privately entreated the news media to do the same.
Olson's application was not news. It was a routine procedure with a predetermined outcome. The media covered it only because the families tacitly forced them to and, more inexcusably, to further their own sensational agenda to sell more newspapers with screaming headlines like: "The Beast Must Die."
Ditto the ignorant thwats who inflict this offal on their readership.
The real tragedy and outrage in this situation is how such a seemingly intelligent group of people were sucked into becoming bit players in Clifford's travelling theatre of the macabre.
What was worse, a few groups and individuals chose to use Olson's hearing as a publicity tool for their misdirected crusade against Section 745 - the so-called "faint-hope" clause of the Criminal Code.
These misguided fools ensured that Olson got headline coverage, completely ignoring the fact that Section 745, a largely innocuous provision, has already been amended so that no one in Olson's position can ever access it again. The fact that it was not made retroactive was a sensible technical legal decision which spared the government an expensive, hopeless legal battle with Olson. Would it have been preferable for Legal Aid to fund a five-year challenge through three levels of courts with a tab of half-a-million dollars?
Olson's application was procedure. It came, it went, it won't happen again. In the grand scheme, it was a micro-blip on the Canadian criminal justice scene. At most, it should have been reported that a jury took only 15 minutes to dismiss Olson's bid and send him back to the dank hole in which he will rot until hell.
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