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Canada: Lindseys Law
Topic Started: Oct 22 2009, 11:29 AM (809 Views)
Ell
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Heart of Gold
[ *  *  * ]
Unresolved missing persons a wound that never heals.
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 | 7:10 am

Canwest News Service

When the Jaycee Dugard horror story broke in late August, news of the California woman’s kidnapping at age 11 – and her 18-year imprisonment in the squalid backyard compound of her alleged abductor and rapist – struck Vancouver Island resident Judy Peterson in a way that might puzzle most Canadians.

“People I’ve talked to say they feel so sorry,” for Dugard and her family, Peterson says. “I’m thinking, oh man they’re lucky. It’s like they’ve won the lottery. Obviously, it’s a horrendous situation that it happened but, for her to come out the other end of it alive, I’m sure the mother is very, very grateful.”

Peterson’s perspective arises from her own immeasurable, unresolved grief. Her own 14-year-old daughter, Lindsey, went missing near Courtenay, B.C., in August 1993 and has never been seen or heard from since.

In her quest for closure, the 54-year-old Peterson has spent the past decade championing a cause that could help solve hundreds of missing person cases in Canada – none, perhaps, with the relatively happy ending the Dugard family is now experiencing, but with an ending at least.

Peterson’s push for the adoption of what she calls “Lindsey’s Law” would finally allow investigators to match DNA from unidentified human remains found in forests and fields across the country with DNA samples supplied by the families of missing Canadians – grieving siblings, fathers and mothers, like Peterson, who are aching to close the book on the central tragedy of their lives.

“My fear is that, oh my god, what if her DNA is sitting in a coroner’s office somewhere?” says training analyst with B.C. Ferries. “What if her remains are there, and nobody knows who she is?”

The country’s National DNA Databank already includes genetic profiles from known crime scenes across the country. Convicted violent offenders also have their DNA on file at the RCMP’s Ottawa headquarters, and these two databases can be cross-referenced by investigators in criminal probes.

But there is no central registry of DNA taken from found human remains in Canada – the hundreds of Jane and John Does who have turned up over the decades and never been identified. So people like Peterson – Canadians who would happily provide samples of their own DNA to seek a possible familial match with traces of a lost loved one – are still unable to do so, despite years of lobbying for that right.

Privacy concerns, jurisdictional questions and perceived funding challenges have so far thwarted the adoption of Lindsey’s Law.

There have been some high-profile expressions of support for the cause over the years. Former Liberal solicitor general Wayne Easter publicly backed the idea, and a private member’s bill was introduced in 2003 by current federal Sports Minister Gary Lunn, Peterson’s MP.

But Lunn’s bid, along with another private member’s bill introduced in 2006 by Burlington, Ont., Conservative MP Mike Wallace, failed to gain House of Commons approval before elections scuttled the process.

“As it stands now in terms of DNA analysis, if we do find remains there’s no real way of comparing it against a databank,” says RCMP Const. Annie Linteau, B.C. spokesperson for the force.

She says investigators currently need specific evidence with a “high probability” connection to a particular missing person to trigger DNA analysis.

“It’s not an easy process,” she says, adding that the Mounties “absolutely” support Peterson’s efforts to implement Lindsey’s Law: “Anything that would make it easier for us to give closure to those families.”

But the proposal has faced privacy issues, legal questions and jurisdictional wrinkles about how provincial police forces – which manage missing person cases – would be involved in a new national DNA-matching system.

Wallace says his bill addressed a legitimate concern that random probing of DNA databases could improperly prompt criminal investigations. Likewise, he said, provisions were made to protect the privacy of living individuals, such as “missing” women who were actually escaping violent relationships, or individuals who might be linked to crimes through relatives’ donated DNA.

Still, there are signs of progress that give Peterson hope. In 2007, the Commons’ public safety committee gave an all-party endorsement to have the government consider implementing Lindsey’s Law.

A ministry spokesman told Canwest News Service that the Conservative government remains “committed to further action to make the DNA Databank effective in solving other types of crime,” and that proposed reforms, including Lindsey’s Law, “are now undergoing further study.”

Wallace added that a relaunched bill for the adoption of Lindsey’s Law will be his “priority item” the next time he gets a chance to introduce private member’s legislation.

Peterson says the change couldn’t happen soon enough – despite the fact that she hasn’t exhausted all hope that Lindsey is alive.

On Sept. 12, 2008, the day her daughter would have turned 30, the RCMP and Missing Children Society of Canada issued a news release urging the public to help solve Lindsey’s disappearance and distributed – along with a snapshot of the girl as she appeared in 1993 – an “age-progressed” image showing what she might look like today.

“For the RCMP, this remains a very active investigation,” RCMP Sgt. Tim Shields said at the time. “While it has been over 15 years since Lindsey was last seen, we are continually looking for new information and clues that can help us determine what happened.”

Peterson says that even as stories like Dugard’s rescue in California kindle faint hopes of finding Lindsey, such developments are “always emotional” for the families of missing men, women and children.

“The trouble is when you don’t know for sure, then every time you hear something it reopens the wound. That’s what it’s like. That’s why we need the database to help all of the `missing families’ across Canada.”


http://www.kelowna.com/2009/10/22/unresolv...t-never-heals/#
Ell

Only after the last tree has been
cut down;
Only after the last fish has been
caught;
Only after the last river has been
poisoned;
Only then will you realize
that money cannot be eaten.
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