Gerald Klein, the 63-year-old man recently banished from Regina for a year after stalking a woman for more than three decades, has taken up residence in Saskatoon while he continues to fight the order in court.
At a Queen’s Bench chambers hearing Thursday before a Saskatoon judge, Klein said he needs time to read a legal brief filed by a lawyer for Saskatchewan Justice. The ministry is opposing Klein’s application for a court-appointed — and taxpayer-funded — lawyer to represent him at his Oct. 21 Court of Appeal hearing.
Justice Mona Dovell adjourned the application until Oct. 5.
According to an affidavit Klein filed with the court, he lives in a house in Saskatoon’s Riversdale neighbourhood, but still owns a home in Regina. Legal aid has refused to represent him on the basis that his appeal is outside the range of the services it provides.
In his Sept. 24 affidavit, Klein says he can’t afford a private lawyer because he is “both unemployed and unemployable,” with social assistance and Canada Pension Plan benefits as his only income.
The lawyer who represented him at recent hearings in Regina is no longer officially working for him, but still acts as his “legal adviser,” Klein told Dovell.
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“It is the appellant’s belief and position that there are larger issues before this honourable court at stake than were raised in my particular case and the appellant needs (legal) counsel to effectively address these issues for the better and orderly development of the law,” he wrote in his affidavit.
“Further, it is also the appellant’s belief and position that the banishment is severe and not unlike a jail sentence and, given what is at stake, it is only fair that I have and be granted counsel to level the playing field in this matter.”
Klein’s obsession with his victim, Cathy Kaip, began when they met at a wedding in 1974.
Ignoring her repeated demands that he leave her alone, for the next 36 years he followed and harassed Kaip and members of her family, tracking her to other cities when she tried to escape and subjecting her to nuisance lawsuits and legal proceedings.
Eventually, he served three years in prison for stalking Kaip. Following his release in 2006, the Crown applied for a Section 810 order, known as a peace bond, to ensure he stayed away from her and her family for one year, the maximum time period allowed by law.
Klein fought the peace bond, causing a one-year delay before the order was granted. When it expired in 2008, the Crown sought another one — which he again opposed.
In his Aug. 9 decision granting a new peace bond, provincial court Judge Dennis Fenwick said it’s time to give Kaip some freedom and peace of mind by ordering Klein to stay out of the city where she and her family live, except for medical emergencies. He gave Klein three weeks to leave Regina.
Last week, Klein applied for a temporary order to put the banishment on hold pending the outcome of his appeal of Fenwick’s decision. A Queen’s Bench judge refused the request, saying Klein “has clearly been a menace to the complainant.”
In a recent letter to the Regina Leader-Post, Kaip asked for the public’s help making sure her stalker obeys the order.
“I do indeed intend to continue my practices of keeping myself as safe as possible and to deal with the obvious stress that I have been forced to endure,” she wrote.
“But I could use the public’s help. If after August 30, 2010, Gerald Klein is seen walking the streets of Regina, would you please contact the police immediately. Unless he is in town for a medical emergency or for his appeal on October 21, 2010, he has no right to be here.”
lcoolican@thestarphoenix.com
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