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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Sex-abuse reform vital, victims say
TORONTO -- Promises to give victims a formal role in Canada's criminal justice system and to stiffen penalties for child-sex predators are overdue federal initiatives, two abused former hockey players said Monday.
Speaking after a roundtable with the justice minister, Greg Gilhooly and Sheldon Kennedy said the Conservative government was on the right track, even if details were lacking.
"Right now a victim is simply a witness -- we're at the beck and call of other people," Gilhooly said.
"To the extent that we can be given a formalized role in the judicial process, that to me would be a wonderfully empowering thing."
A victim's bill of rights was one of three get-tough-on-crime themes the government plans to emphasize this year, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said. The aim is to entrench the rights of victims into a single law.
Nicholson also promised stiffer sentences for child-sex predators.
Concerns over sentencing arose after former hockey coach Graham James was jailed for two years last year for assaults on ex-NHL star Theo Fleury and his cousin Todd Holt in the 1980s and '90s.
The Crown has appealed the sentence as too lenient in a case that also saw the prosecution stay charges involving assaults on Gilhooly as part of James's guilty plea.
James had already been sentenced to 31/2 years in the mid-1990s for assaulting Kennedy and another young hockey player.
He served 18 months.
-- The Canadian Press
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 5, 2013 A5
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