WRITER - The Tyee -
Anger Management
[Mr. Berner is well known as a CKNW talk show host, but he was the Founder and Executive Director of The X-Kalay Foundation, a residential treatment centre for drug addicts, alcoholics and jailbirds. His program, which operated in B.C. and Manitoba, never suffered anything resembling the tragic incidents described below.]
Howard House will close. Thus, one of the greatest public deceptions in recent memory.
We all know the gruesome, bloody tale by now.
A man named Eric Fish murdered a much older man recently in Vernon, British Columbia. He did so viciously and with clear premeditation. The older fellow had advertised that he had something for sale. Mr. Fish pretended on his first visit to the older man’s house that he was, indeed, an interested buyer. In short, he cased the joint. On his second and last visit, he tied up both the old man and his old wife. Then he beat the old man to death, and fled.
This would be horror story enough as it is. But the truth is much worse. Not merely for what Mr. Fish had been doing with his miserable life these many years, but in terms of public policy and public safety, for what the National Parole Board, Corrections Canada, and the RCMP spectacularly failed to do.
Some 20 years ago, Mr. Fish committed an almost identical crime. Except that in that case, in Ontario, after Mr. Fish tied up his home invasion victim, he ran a butcher knife specifically and surgically, through the man’s heart. Not confident that he’d achieved his end, Mr. Fish then tired to strangle, suffocate (a plastic bag over the head), and beat his victim into a more certain and reassuring death.
What follows are many years of the usual Corrections Canada/National Parole Polka. Drugs in and out of federal prisons, escapes, escorted passes, transfers to medium and minimum-security facilities, and, of course, professional help.
The Help comes in a number of ready guises familiar to anyone with even a passing interest in such matters: counselling, faith, psychology and psychiatry. None of it cheap. All of it at taxpayers’ expense.
And the most convincing Help of all, the one that causes the Parole Board to make the mistake we will presently reveal, the mistake they make with far too frightening regularity, the most convincing Help of all is that good old reliable Mr. Eric Fish is enrolled in Anger Management classes.
Now, let’s just pause and consider that notion for a moment. Anger Management. Who is eligible for an anger management course? Who might profit? You and I might be good candidates. Perhaps we yell at our spouses or children too often, too convincingly. Perhaps we holler at traffic, while pounding our dashboard into submission. Maybe we lie on the sofa and indulge our revenge fantasies on our bosses during breaks in the ballgame. Maybe.
But let me ask you this. How many of you have run a neighbour through with a butcher knife? How many of you have beat an old man to death with heavy, blunt instruments?
You see, the truth is that Mr. Eric Fish is a Stone Cold Killer.
Mr. Fish has been a psychopath for an awfully long time. He is not capable of seeing your point of view, your interest. He cannot guess your thoughts or feelings. They are of no known use to him. He is not unlike a snake in high grass. Move, spot, snatch, devour. This is Eric Fish.
Why? Because I say so? Well, yes, of course. But also, it turns out, because a number of psychologists said so, said exactly this to the National Parole Board. Instead of taking heed, instead of listening to their own well-compensated experts, the Parole Board warned their psychologists against using such designations. The Psychologists said that Mr. Fish was a stone cold killer and that courses like Anger Management had only helped make him a much better versed psychopath, and that there was no known cure and that Mr. Fish was a serious danger to the community.
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