Pedophiles & high-risk sex offenders have to live somewhere after prison, like it or not
Neighbours and elected officials helped bump one offender from Surrey to Delta to Abbotsford to Mission to Chilliwack
The loudest voices on the topic of how to deal with repeat sex offenders are stuck in a confirmation-biased discourse most suited for social media comments and truck bumper stickers.
Then there are the slightly less angry "lock'-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key" politicians who react emotionally if irrationally to news reports about serious criminal offences, tossing red meat to their salivating base.
Over in boring and nuanced reality, Canada has a criminal code, ongoing legal precedent-setting by judges, and a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The only people actually getting locked up and unlikely to ever leave incarceration are serial killers and unrepentant criminals with dangerous offender designations.
Society either has to tackle recidivism with science-based rehabilitation or the cycle continues over and over and over.
Take the case of James William Conway, a convicted high-risk sex offender of children who has repeatedly been released to live in the community on strict conditions, and who repeatedly reoffends and/or is shuffled from town to town.
Out of prison on strict conditions in April 2014, Conway was caught looking down shirts of young girls on SkyTrain, and engaging them in conversation by producing a teddy bear. He was sentenced to 10 months in jail and three years’ probation.
Surrey
In February 2015, Conway, moved to Surrey and a noticed was issued. BC Corrections said in a press release that Conway has a pattern of “sexual offending against female children in a predatory and opportunistic manner.”
He was back in jail 10 days later after allegedly breaching his conditions when he sat down on a bus beside a 14-year-old girl.
Delta
A public notice was then issued in April 2015 when he was again released from prison and planned to reside in Delta.
Abbotsford
Four months later, in August 2015, Conway moved into a house on a small remote cul-de-sac surrounded by forest and farmland on the western edge of Abbotsford.
Neighbours got wind of it, held protest rallies, and contacted officials to try to get him out. Abbotsford officials told the property owners they wanted Conway gone, along with the halfway house supervisor Ed Holroyd and another inmate.
They did not leave so the City of Abbotsford file a lawsuit alleging the defendants were using residential-zoned property for institutional purposes.
Mission
In July 2016, the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General issued a public notification that the then 41-year-old Conway was moving to Mission. He moved in August and the Abbotsford neighbours celebrated.
“People are pretty happy,” neighbour Kim Iverson told the Abbotsford News, adding that residents were organizing a barbecue to celebrate.
Now it was Mission's turn. When they got wind of his location on Dewdney Trunk Road, Mission residents held rallies at offices of the municipality, Abbotsford-Mission MLA Simon Gibson, and Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon MP Jati Sidhu.
A protest organizer who helped the effort to get Conway out of Mission, Angel Elias, said having Conway deemed a dangerous offender and out of the community would protect him.
“He will have a safe life when he is away from society,” she told The Mission City Record.
Because he is developmentally disabled, Elias said Conway is incapable of understanding the impact of his actions and should not be living in a neighbourhood where there are children.
“He cannot be rehabilitated,” she said.
The District of Mission similarly filed a lawsuit over zoning. Three months later, in December, 2016, it was revealed there was a conflict of interest involving the housing in Mission and a review
The review was ordered after allegations of a possible conflict were raised when it became public that the home, located on Dewdney Trunk Road close to city hall, had been purchased by Lynett Stuckey-Mack, and was being leased back to WJS Canada to house Conway. Stuckey-Mack was a manager with WJS Canada, which was awarded the housing contract from Community Living BC (CLBC).
Chilliwack
Then in July 2017, it was Chilliwack's turn.
”I don’t believe any community wants a convicted offender to move into their neighbourhood, and Chilliwack is no different,” then mayor Sharon Gaetz said. “The safety of the public, especially children, is of deep importance to us.”
She knew, however, that the city can’t confirm where he is living nor does the city have any authority to restrict his movements.
“As a municipality we have no authority over BC Corrections or the Ministry of Public Safety. They are responsible for providing correctional services and programs and for ensuring Mr. Conway adheres to his court-ordered conditions.”
A year after that, someone spotted the then 43-year-old Conway in their neighbourhood walking around with an ankle monitor and his location was made public.
He was apparently under 24-hour-supervision, and while B.C. Corrections would not confirm Conway was living in the house where neigbhours spotted him, that house was owned by the government of B.C., according to a City of Chilliwack spokesperson.
Gaetz spoke with the head of B.C. Corrections and a representative for Community Living B.C. to ask questions and express her emphasis on residents feeling safe.
“I expressed also my request, even though I have no authority, that they remove him from our community for the safety of the residents and for his own safety,” Gaetz said. “People are angry and people are upset.”
Neighbours were upset indeed.
“There are three families just minutes away and yet another with grandchildren and we knew nothing about this,” neighbour Kelly Wood told me.
“We want everyone to be aware. My kids go up past his house. How do I know he’s not watching from the window?”
Another resident of the area who gave his name only as Mike, was upset to hear a convicted sex offender was in his neighbourhood.
“I do understand that people deserve a chance to live out their lives,” he said Thursday. “But we have three kids and we live in the neighbourhood. I think it’s ridiculous that they would relocate him to an area where there are nothing but kids.”
Wood created a flyer that was circulated in the neighbourhood above Unity Christian School in the Eastern Hillsides.
The location Conway was moved to was considered by officials to be remote. That is until housing started creeping up the hillsides. Driving through the neighbourhood behind Unity Christian, nearly every house has a trampoline or hockey nets or play structures, pointing to the large demographic of families with children in the area.
“I’m sure that it’s never a good idea no matter how many securities they put in place to have a pedophile live next door to children,” Gaetz said. “I’m glad the community is getting out their concerns. I want them to know that we are using our voices to advocate for them.”
Even then MLA Laurie Throness whom when first asked about Conway, said he understood that he has to live somewhere but by 2018 he had a change of heart.
“Last year, I didn’t object to his placement in Chilliwack because he has to live somewhere in B.C.,” said Laurie Throness, MLA for Chilliwack-Hope.
“But now that we know (where he is) and know families are on either side, his place of residence is difficult to defend.”
And while Throness agrees that Conway’s current placement is no longer as originally described, the region’s recent growth may have played a factor.
“In the sense of proximity, it was a more remote area three years ago,” explained Throness, who says he’s recently toured the area. “There’s a brand new subdivision going in there, and there’s a clearing across from (what’s believed to be Conway’s) residence, so the area’s becoming less remote (daily).
So what to do with him?
“Unfortunately, there’s no long-term solution for Mr. Conway. He’s disabled and may never get better,” said Throness. “So I will continue to work with BC Corrections to explore other options for a long term solution to ensure the public is safe.”
can he get better?
Men who have committed sexual offences are released every day in Canada and as mentioned, we do not lock them up and throw away the key.
Rebecca Myers is a British forensic psychologist who worked with serious offenders for more than 25 years, and she is the author of Inside Job: The Life of a Prison Psychologist Inside Job: Treating Murderers and Sex Offenders. the Life of a Prison Psychologist.
"I’ve learned that men who commit sexual offences can be deceitful, manipulative, cruel, deluded, distorted and damaged," Myers wrote in an article in The Guardian on the topic. "But also, that they can be remorseful, ashamed, introspective, funny, polite and willing to try to stop their harmful behaviour.
Myers said she kept doing the work because of how important it is to at least try to prevent there from being more victims.
"I also do it to help the men themselves," she wrote. "Just about all of the offenders I’ve ever met don’t want to offend again, and most sexual offenders do not reoffend. They want to be useful members of society. However, released sexual offenders face many barriers to this: stigma, ostracism, lack of work, housing, friends, family, human connection."
The John Howard Society of Canada, an organization that fights for the rights of those behind bars, has expressed the position that best practices to reduce recidivism of sex offenders are not being used in Canada's institutions.
In a 2024 blog post on its website, the society points to a meta-analysis of studies about sex offenders and rehabilitation.
"They conclude that we know more and more about measures that would reduce recidivism in this group, but that this knowledge is not being used enough in practice."
Public discourse on sex offences continues to be highly punitive while the research evidence says that "a positive orientation and practices that are respectful, relational, empathic, and motivational, has led to greater effectiveness of treatment."
It is unclear where Conway is living now, if it is still in Chilliwack or if he has been moved yet again.
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Paul J. Henderson
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