Vancouver family lawyer’s call for new law to protect kids
A Vancouver family lawyer has proposed drafting a better child protection law for children and calling it “Cordon’s Law” in the memory of the youngest of three children killed in Merritt almost two weeks ago.
“Cordon Schoenborn was the littlest one that was killed, he lost the most years of his life,” lawyer Kathleen Walker wrote on a Facebook site that contains an online petition to support the proposed new law.
She also said the name has a dual meaning: “When police want to protect something they ‘cordon it off,’ ” the lawyer pointed out.
“It comes from my 16 years in the trenches seeing what works and what doesn’t,” Walker explained Friday. “I’m adding to the debate about the gaps in the system.”
Walker’s proposal is that a new Cordon Order would be a “special red flagged, super duper restraining order that would have the urgency of an Amber alert.”
The person whom the order was obtained against would have to post a $25,000 surety, she said.
“If they breach the order, they would forfeit $25,000,” she added, “or the government could go after their house or any assets.”
Walker said her experience is that people obey orders “when their money is on the line.”
She said she hopes the idea for a Cordon Order is adopted to protect children and prevent a similar tragedy, which resulted in the death of the three children in Merritt — Kaitlynne, 10, Max, 8, and Cordon, 5.
The children’s mother, Darcie Clarke, came home last Sunday to her trailer in Merritt, where the children’s father, Allan Dwane Schoenborn, had been looking after the kids.
The mother found her children dead and Schoenborn gone.
Schoenborn, the prime suspect, was found last Wednesday morning in a wooded area on the outskirts of Merritt.
The mother had moved to Merritt from Vancouver last year to get away from Schoenborn, who turned up in Merritt about a week before the tragedy.
Schoenborn had been arrested three times in Merritt in the days before the murder of his children, who were apparently stabbed to death.
He had been arrested for being drunk in a public place and for an outstanding warrant stemming from a previous charge of driving while prohibited.
His final arrest April 3 allegedly involved threats Schoenborn made against a nine-year-old girl at the Merritt elementary school, Diamond Vale, attended by his children. He was also charged with threatening the school principal.
Schoenborn was released on bail that night during an after-hours bail hearing by phone with a justice of the peace in Burnaby after hearing police opposed Schoenborn getting bail because he wasa flight risk who tried to escape custody in Merritt and had violated a previous court order — a peace bond the Crown had obtained to protect Clarke after she was allegedly assaulted last year by her former common-law spouse in Vancouver .
Three days later, the mother found her children dead and Schoenborn gone.
Despite a massive ground and air search utilizing a police helicopter and up to 30 officers, Schoenborn was caught Wednesday morning by a Merritt trapper and his dog who had been looking for Schoenborn in the backcountry for 10 days.
Updated News- 25April 2008:
Allan Schoenborn, remained in hospital in Kamloops and did not appear in court Wednesday when the charges were laid.
“The Criminal Justice Branch has charged Allan Schoenborn with three counts of first-degree murder in relation to the deaths of his three children — Kaitlynne, Max and Cordon Schoenborn,” Crown counsel Lorne Fisher said.
“The police investigation remains ongoing and we expect to receive further evidence in the days and weeks to follow … We ask for your patience and that you allow the circumstances of this case to unfold in the court of law,” Fisher said.
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