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Warning: this story is about child sexual abuse.
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He was once a staunch opponent of sexual harassment education, using his platform as a lawyer to urge Edmonton Public Schools to end a program that helped elementary school students identify and report inappropriate contact. Three decades later, Helmut Berndt is taken to prison for sexually abusing his own children. Berndt, 73, was sentenced to 14 years in prison on Thursday, months after a court convicted him of five sexual offenses against his children between 1986 and 2001. Calling Berndt a sex predator, Queen’s Bench judge Earl Wilson said the retired lawyer deserved 18 years behind bars. However, Wilson concluded that such a sentence – which would have ended when Berndt was 91 – would have run counter to the Supreme Court’s conviction of senior offenders.
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“How a father could ever do such outrageous things in his flesh and blood is confusing to the mind,” the Calgary judge concluded.
For Cedric Shui, the son who suffered some of the worst abuse, seeing his father taken to prison was a “relief.”
“I hate my father (and) everything he did to us,” said the 38-year-old. “I can not wrap my head around it. To me, our father is this monster from our childhood; he is like a force of nature from which I want to be away “.
Strong opponent of the ‘CARE’ kits
Berndt was born in West Germany and immigrated to Canada with his parents. He became a well-known bodily injury lawyer, winning the Presidential Award of the Alberta Bar Association in 2005. The union revoked the award following Berndt’s conviction, pledging to donate to groups working with victims of sexual assault.
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During Berndt’s trial, jurors heard that he regularly abused his children in the family home. Lavinia Perreault, 36, recalled cases of abuse dating back to when she was four years old. For Sui, the abuse started in elementary school and ended around 15. Perreault, Shui and older sister Juanita Falkingham have successfully petitioned for the lifting of the mandatory ban on publishing their identities as sexual assailants, arguing that it protects their father’s identity as well as their own. Helmut Berndt’s children, Juanita Falkingham, left, Cedric Shui and Lavinia Perreault in a photograph taken in the late 1980s. Photo by Supplied While harassing his children privately, Byrd campaigned publicly to end sexual harassment prevention programs in Edmonton schools. In 1990, Edmonton public schools were forced to defend CARE kits by parents, including Berndt, who claimed that they intimidated children and led to false allegations.
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An article in the Edmonton Journal on June 18, 1990, described how kits — developed in British Columbia and then used in some 150 Edmonton public elementary schools — used puppets and chat cards to teach children physical autonomy. This article quoted Berndt as saying that children should not be taught about sexual abuse in schools. “Only one parent can assess when a child needs what information and only one parent can present it in a way that is non-threatening, non-confusing and without the risk of harm,” he said.
Investigation of child protection services
Berndt’s children first raised the abuse in 2000 when Perreault confronted her father over lunch in Earls. She later told a friend, whose mother contacted child protection services.
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The agency investigated the household, but in a 2001 report stated that Rosalind Berndt insisted on not accusing her husband. “He said, ‘Do you want to put your father in prison?’ “He has done so many wonderful things,” Perreault said Thursday. “The economic aspect, too. It has always been “How will we survive financially if you do that?” The brothers met their mother again in 2018. A little while later, after Rosalind Berndt refused to cut off contact with her husband, the three of them went to the Edmonton police. In a statement to the court last week, Berndt urged the children to care for their mother while he was in prison, but did not mention his own actions. An article in the Edmonton Journal on June 18, 1990, quoted attorney Helmut Berndt of his opposition to CARE kits – a source for educating children about sexual abuse. In 2022, a court convicted Berndt of sexually abusing his children for more than a decade.
“Extremely high” reliability
Berndt was indicted in 2019. At his trial, he claimed he was innocent and that his children “should not be believed because they were otherwise wrong, confused, fraudulent, vindictive or generally unreliable,” Wilson said in a statement. defense. case of lawyer Brian Beresh.
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The court disagreed and convicted Berndt on all five charges. At the sentencing, Crown Prosecutor Mark Huyser-Wierenga disagreed for 15 years. Beresh asked for eight, citing his client’s advanced age and claiming that the Crown ignored the legal principle of restraint. Wilson agreed more closely with the Crown submission, saying Berndt’s “moral dignity” was “extremely high”. Shui said his trial allowed him to release some of the anger, shame and guilt he felt about the abuse. Dealing with the trauma was an “incremental” process that included periods of alcohol abuse, but Shui said he still managed to find a career and a loving wife. “My life right now is beyond anything I imagined it could be 10 years ago,” he said. “I want people to hear it and know that people are surviving (abuse) and people are feeling this kind of mutilation shame and they are still going through it.” [email protected] twitter.com/jonnywakefield Top right, Lavinia Perreault, Juanita Falkingham and Cedric Shui as adults. Photo by Supplied
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