Paul Bernardo transfer: Prison officials ‘intervened’ to stop public statement

globalnews.ca:

Newly released documents show that Correctional Service Canada stopped Paul Bernardo from having his lawyer make a statement to the media as controversy swirled around the notorious killer’s transfer to a medium-security prison.

Bernardo was moved to La Macaza Institution, a medium-security prison about 190 kilometres northwest of Montreal, in late May from the maximum-security Millhaven Institution near Kingston, Ont.

He is serving a life sentence for the kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of 15-year-old Kristen French and 14-year-old Leslie Mahaffy, in the early 1990s near St. Catharines, Ont.

Bernardo was also convicted of manslaughter in the December 1990 death of 15-year-old Tammy Homolka, the younger sister of his then-wife, Karla Homolka. She pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received a 12-year sentence for her role in the crimes against French and Mahaffy. She was released in 2005. Bernardo, who was designated a dangerous offender, has admitted to sexually assaulting 14 other women.

His transfer last spring set off a political firestorm for the governing Liberals. The Conservatives and the families of two of Bernardo’s murder victims demanded that he be returned to maximum security.

Ultimately, a review launched by the correctional service found that while it could have acted more sensitively when it came to notifying his victims, the decision it made to reclassify Bernardo was sound.

The email was released through an access-to-information request, and was part of a flurry of messages between prison system staff and the Privy Council Office, the part of the federal bureaucracy that supports the operations of the Prime Minister’s Office.

As the Liberals scrambled to deal with the fallout of having one of