Father guilty of decimating his family: in a women’s penitentiary for at least 25 years?

The father who killed his partner and two children will be able to spend at least the next 25 years of his life in a women’s detention center, simply on the basis that he now considers himself one.

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• Also read: Trial for triple murder in Brossard: a father guilty of the murders of his two children and his partner

“I have the right to be in harmony with my gender identity, I am a woman like any woman on this planet who considers herself a woman. I am a good mother,” the trans murderer reiterated Wednesday during a sentencing hearing.

Mohamad Al Ballouz was found guilty on Monday of the murders of his boys Zac and Eliam, aged 2 and 5, and that of their mother Synthia Bussières.

The accused now identifies as a woman and goes by the name Levana Ballouz. This gender change was announced during his preliminary investigation last January.

Throughout her trial, she was held at Leclerc Prison, a provincial facility for women. And it is very likely that it will be with female clients that she will spend the next 25 years of her life, before being able to ask for parole (see other text).

It is to a federal establishment that criminals who have received a sentence of more than two years are sent.

But she will first be held in an assessment center for several weeks. In particular, we will measure its dangerousness.

Simple auto-identification

She will then likely be sent to a maximum security facility due to the crimes for which she was tried.

And if she wishes, Ballouz could be detained in the Joliette penitentiary (the only federal establishment for women in Quebec).

In fact, the Correctional Service Canada allows criminals to choose the establishment that corresponds to their gender identity or expression.

And it is not necessary to have initiated legal procedures or to have started hormone therapy or to have gone under the knife.

A simple self-identification is necessary, which several speakers deplore.

“A citizen will have to go through a medical process or meet a psychiatrist. But in a penitentiary, there is a free pass?,” protested the former conservative senator, Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu.

“We have never taken into consideration women’s right to security,” added a retired manager of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, Marie-Claude Girard.

No manipulation

She fears abuse by dangerous criminals, to “lessen their conditions of incarceration”.

Elsewhere in the world, establishments or wings dedicated to trans people are planned.

But this solution risks isolating detainees more, warns a lawyer, M^e Alexandra Paquette.

According to her, it is pernicious to assume that criminals who request a change of establishment in connection with their gender identity are manipulating the system.

“It’s not that easy to ask for a transfer. There are several meetings and procedures. “It’s not done by shouting scissors,” she said, adding that Correctional Service Canada is capable of applying “a filter.”

She also ensures that if the security of the inmates is compromised, the request for a change of establishment will be refused.

She also refutes arguments according to which a female penitentiary is more comfortable than a male one.

“I have a client who is detained at the maximum in Joliette and she is not experiencing her best life“, she said.