The father of a boy abducted in 2011 by a man who is now wanted on a Canada-wide warrant says he’s incredulous the repeat offender could walk away from a Vancouver halfway house last weekend.
In a written statement, the father said police didn’t notify him or his family that Randall Hopley went missing on Saturday after removing his electronic monitoring bracelet.
Global News is not identifying the man by name, in order to protect the identity of his child.
The father, who now lives in Alberta, said Hopley was also released from custody just two weeks before he abducted his three-year-old son from the family’s home in Sparwood, B.C., in 2011.
“So that says it there, back in 2011, that he is a repeat offender, but more so, he is not mentally equipped to be self-sustaining on his own. So why is there not a system in place for someone like Randall?” he asked.
“And if he is mentally not able to be self-sufficient, should he not be in a different support program, not just for him but for the safety of others as well?”
The father said while he doesn’t have “all the answers,” he believes that the “justice system isn’t working” if it allows Hopley to be placed in a situation where walking away was a possibility.
Hopley, 58, went missing days before he was scheduled to appear in court to face charges of violating his release conditions. He had reportedly told several people he was going to a nearby thrift store before he disappeared.
Hopley is considered a high-risk sex offender, previously convicted of the abduction of a person under 14, sexual assault, assault and break and enters. He was released from custody on a long-term supervision order in 2018, and the public was notified at that time of his history of violence, and that he would be in Vancouver.
In a Tuesday interview, Sgt. Steve Addison of the Vancouver Police Department said concern is growing on the third day of searching for him and additional resources have been deployed to help.
“People doing video canvasses, people following up on tips, people physically looking for his whereabouts, but we’re also working behind the scenes,” he explained. “We’re using a major case management model of investigating this.”
Addison said Hopley has previously breached his release conditions and has been returned to custody and subsequently released. The repeat offender was given an electric monitoring bracelet earlier this year.
“That’s a decision that was made by his case management team through the Correctional Service Canada,” Addison said.
“They’re not made to be easily removed…. When it was tampered with, when it was removed, we were immediately notified by Correctional Service Canada.”
Addison said anklet bracelets have been taken off from “time to time,” so the incident is not unprecedented.
Hopley made international headlines in September 2011 after kidnapping the boy from Sparwood, triggering an Amber Alert and a Canada-wide search. He returned the three-year-old, unharmed, four days later and pleaded guilty.
He was sentenced to six years, serving his full term until October 2018.
The case has attracted attention to the security and monitoring of residents of halfway houses.
Hank Mathias, chair of the board of directors at the John Howard Society of British Columbia, said cases like Hopley’s are very rare and should not detract from halfway houses and their role in the Canadian correctional system.
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“My direct experience with the various halfway houses is they are absolutely essential to this whole thing working,” Mathias said. “A lot of people make mistakes. The opportunity to reform and do better exists.”
Mathias said the role of halfway houses is to provide an intermediate step to guide someone released from a prison under some supervision instead of directly introducing them into society, which works against public safety.
He said the John Howard Society assesses individuals who are the best fit to be rehabilitated at halfway houses before their release from prison, and anyone deemed at high risk would not be moved to such a facility.
“Any human decision-making system is fallible,” he said. “The question is, how often do you get it correct and what do the errors look like with respect to looking after public safety and the rehabilitation of people? The halfway houses, they provide a whole lot of stuff that moves us in the right direction.”
Debra Parkes, a professor at the University of British Columbia Allard School of Law, said she is concerned the Hopley case may lead to changes to Canada’s parole system that would unjustly affect thousands of people who don’t pose the same risks.
Parkes said the overall Canadian parole system has been skewing toward greater strictness and sending individuals back to prison for minor violations. She said long-term supervision — the type of release applicable to Hopley — was supposed to place individuals under “intense” monitoring.
“You can look at whether there were issues … there should be a review maybe of what happened in this particular case,” Parkes said.
But she said the case should not give people the impression that Canada’s overall parole system was broken or filled with “unearned leniency.”
“I worry about the reaction that goes to, ‘Oh, we have a big problem here in our system because we have this one case,”” Parkes said. “And I think that’s unfortunately the cycle we often go through — you have one high-profile incident, and then you have the system becoming even more intensely risk-averse than it already was.”
Mathias said the use of electronic monitoring bracelets could warrant discussion in light of the Hopley case. He said the John Howard Society does not use such devices at its facilities, and the reliance and trust placed in the technology by correctional authorities may need examination.
Mathias said monitoring devices depend on networks for effectiveness, and dropped coverage or weak Wi-Fi signals could wreak havoc with the ability to track individuals staying at a halfway house.
He cautioned against over-reliance on such devices, saying it “doesn’t lead to a sense of confidence about public safety.”
“More effective supervision at this point is not dependent on electronic monitoring,” he said. “It’s a very costly way to do something, and it isn’t quite as reliable as you would like it to be.”
Meanwhile, the boy’s father said he wants a system in which mental health can be supported in a “sufficient” and “structured” way to prevent offenders such as Hopley from further endangering the public. He added that his family is “well” despite the news of Hopley’s escape and the attention they have received.
“This is part of our life, and (we) do the best as it comes,” he said.
Anyone who sees Hopley is asked to call 911.
–– with files from Global News’ Catherine Garrett and Elizabeth McSheffrey
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