Murderer’s wife tells P.A. crowd justice system failed her

“It had been determined that… his first crime was a one-time act of adolescent rage that would never happen again,” Moroney shared.

However, that belief and the life Moroney built with Staples was shattered a month after they married in late 2005.

Moroney was away at a work conference when police told her Staples had been arrested for kidnapping and brutally sexually assaulting two women. Staples called police himself and confessed to his crimes.

As the keynote speaker at Prince Albert’s Restorative Justice Conference, Moroney told more than 100 people in the criminal justice community what she went through.

Her connection to the conference’s theme, “Justice, healing and forgiveness,” quickly became clear to the audience.

The shock of finding out that a man she knew as a kind, caring and generous husband was capable of such horrendous acts has led to a life-long struggle.

Staples confessed Moroney was one of 23 people he collected bathroom surveillance of, which gave her ‘victim’ status, but also gave her the obligation to notify the other victims, she shared.

Moroney’s re-victimization

However, Moroney said the justice system, the public, her employer, and the media re-victimized her.

She was let go from her job, lost friends, and was socially isolated. In the midst of all of this she was also diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I was ignored by the Crown attorney’s office and when I went to ask for help from Victim Services at the police station, the counsellor looked me up and down and said ‘what are you doing here?’ And then she told me coldly I needed to give other people time and I needed to understand how serious the crimes were, as if for one second I didn’t.”

Moroney told the audience she was told not to contact the victims because they didn’t need to hear from “Jason’s arena.” She was also left to clean up the crime scene in her home, which she had no part in creating.

For years, she was denied a chance to meet the women who were kidnapped and raped by her husband.

Moroney searched her home for clues on why this happened, but found nothing that could have prepared her for what he had done. She believes there is a root cause to his violence, which he kept hidden away as a separate part of himself.

“Jason didn’t give me or anyone else a chance to help him.”

In fact, Staples received no treatment while serving his 10 years in prison for murder.

Moroney said some media coverage painted her as a woman who married a man who’d just gotten out of prison. People wrote her accusatory letters, disregarding her grief and loss.

Moroney’s changed perspective

“No one blamed Corrections Canada or the parole board for having released Jason. They simply blamed me for having trusted both them and him, calling me naïve and delusional.”

In the time since, she said she’s learned how broken the criminal justice system is.

The current system focuses on the perpetrator, asking what law was broken, who did it, and what punishment that person deserves, “typically using victims’ stories only to achieve a conviction or to influence sentencing. The focus is on retribution,” Moroney said.

She experienced this firsthand when she went to court in 2008 to provide a victim impact statement at his dangerous offender hearing.

Staples did not contest the position that he should spend the rest of his life in prison.

For the first time, Moroney was able to communicate her experience to the victims of Staples’ assault. She was finally able to hear what it put them through.

One of those victims approached Moroney during her statement.

“I want you to know I never felt you were responsible for any of this,” the woman told her. They hugged and cried together, in what Moroney described as a healing process.

The end of Staples’ time in court, which decided he will serve an indeterminate sentence, did not lead to a feeling of justice for Moroney.

“Just as [jails and prisons] keep society safe from dangerous people, at least as long as they are locked up, they also protect those same people from facing up to the harm that they’ve caused, from being able to make amends, and from being meaningfully accountable for what they did to the people they hurt.”

When it comes to the federal criminal justice system, Moroney is critical of mandatory minimum sentencing.

She said she believes money spent building prisons would be allocated to rehabilitate prisoners. Staples is currently serving his time in an Ontario correctional facility.

“Where my ex-husband is now, it’s the biggest institution in Canada, over 600 offenders, about at least half of them violent or sexual offenders and there’s one part-time psychologist. And I find that appalling. From a public safety point of view I think we all deserve better than that.”

She pointed to funding cuts to program meant to prevent crime and rehabilitate criminals.

The conference, which coincided with Restorative Justice Week, featured programs and ideas existing within Prince Albert findinf alternatives to incarceration.

In Prince Albert, a program that aimed to prevent domestic violence shuttered earlier this year. The Community Against Family Violence (CAFV) program was discontinued by the Prince Albert Co-operative Health Centre.

Moroney wrote a book about her experience and healing journey in 2011. You can find out more about it here.

claskowski@panow.com

On Twitter: @chelsealaskowsk

by Chelsea Laskowski

Murderer’s wife tells P.A. crowd justice system failed her

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