We must end parole possibilities for Hay and lifers like him
The Province
Friday, December 08, 2006

It is a fundamental pillar of our system of criminal justice that no convicted person, however terrible their crime, should be beyond redemption. But a person who commits a crime of the utmost depravity, and years later still seems incapable of grasping the enormity of it, deserves no sympathy.

Such a man is Donald Alexander Hay, sentenced in 1977 to life in prison for the kidnapping and rape of 12-year-old Abby Drover.

Drover was held for 181 days in an underground dungeon at Hay's Port Moody home, where she suffered unspeakable abuse.

Hay, now 73, is in a minimum-security prison in Saskatchewan, where he appeared again recently before a National Parole Board panel to plead, unsuccessfully, for his release.

Hay seems convinced society owes him a break. Every two years he asks for parole, and every two years he is rejected. This is the law, and Hay is exercising his rights.

But you have to wonder why his victim, now a mother in her mid-40s, should have to suffer the biennial spectacle of her assailant's self-serving pleas. Hay told the recent panel: "I thought I was helping her" and "I thought I could recapture my youth."

Anyone sufficiently deluded to express such twisted thoughts is a continuing threat to society.

Not long ago, Abby Drover's name and birth date were found on Hay's computer. Is it any wonder she lives in constant fear of his release? "I am very worried about him getting out of jail," she said at a parole hearing in 2001. "And I would like to see that he doesn't."

In a 1999 book on the case, author John Griffiths wrote: "If members of the public knew how many sex offenders could be found living within a few blocks in a typical North American neighbourhood, they might be quite concerned for the safety of their sisters and wives -- and even more protective of their children."

It is chilling to recall that, back in 1976, when Hay "helped" police search for Abby, they were at first unaware of his previous convictions for sex crimes, committed in another province.

Today, we have a National Sex Offender Registry that gives police access to the movements of chronic sexual predators. And once they are jailed for their crimes, that's where they should stay.

Two years from now, Hay should think twice before forcing Abby Drover to relive her nightmare yet again.

In the meantime, the Harper government should move swiftly to end the possibility of parole for Hay and other monsters like him.

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© The Vancouver Province 2006