Canada’s youngest dangerous offender seeks escorted prison leave
A convict who became Canada ‘s youngest designated dangerous offender after sexually assaulting a three-month-old baby is seeking escorted leave from prison to attend Indigenous cultural ceremonies in Vancouver.
Tara Desousa, now 43, has applied to Federal Court to overturn a decision by B.C.’s Fraser Valley Institution to deny her “escorted temporary absences” from the federal women’s prison.
Desousa, then named Adam Laboucan, was 15 years old in 1997 when she sexually assaulted an infant she was babysitting in Quesnel, B.C. The baby required surgery to repair the injuries.
Desousa, who underwent gender-affirming operations while serving an indefinite sentence, also admitted to drowning a three-year-old boy when she was 11 years old, which the judge in the sexual assault case said was below the age of criminal responsibility.
B.C. Supreme Court Judge Victor Curtis imposed an indefinite sentence and a dangerous-offender designation in 1999 because there was no foreseeable “time span in which Adam Laboucan may be cured.”
“In doing so, I do not intend that Mr. Laboucan be kept in prison for many years with no hope for release,” the judge wrote of the then-17-year-old.
“What is intended, and what must happen is that Mr. Laboucan be kept only so long as it is necessitated by the risk he poses.”
The B.C. Court of Appeal upheld the dangerous offender designation in 2002.
Desousa’s application filed in Federal Court in Vancouver in October says she first applied for escorted leave to attend ceremonies at the Anderson Lodge “healing centre for women” in August 2023.
The lodge is run by the Circle of Eagles Lodge Society, an Indigenous-led organization headed by CEO Merv Thomas.
Thomas said in an interview that he couldn’t
Read more on globalnews.ca
