Richard Charles Joyce, imprisoned in a federal facility for murder and sexual assaults against children, was denied parole following a hearing earlier this month..The prisoner of William Head Institution in Metchosin, BC applied for escorted temporary absences for what the parole board called “community service and personal development.”.The case management team said Joyce “requires a gradual reintegration to the community before there is any consideration of a full parole.”.The brother-in-law of Joyce’s murder victim, a mother of one of a child sexual assault victim, and Kerri Kehoe made victim impact statements. Kehoe was 11 when she was assaulted in a Kingston, Ontario parking lot and in a forest immediately afterwards..The parole board acknowledged Joyce “ruined the lives of his victims. They were severely traumatized by his behavior. The victims suffer from paralyzing flashbacks, anxiety, extreme agitation, hypervigilance, anger, blackouts, hypersensitivity, lack of sleep, loss of employment…[and] PTSD.”.Before the hearing, the board said Joyce was a “moderate risk” for sexual reoffending..“Joyce may still respond to sexually deviant preferences as results of testing indicated that his highest responses were scenarios that depicted coercive sexual encounters between an adult male and a pubescent female," a board member explained..“Despite the concerns of Mr. Joyce's case, the case management team applies that his overall risk would not be undue on the proposed escort in a temporary absence program as he would be under the close supervision of the escort.”.A parole board member who led the interrogation asked Joyce about what motivated his crimes, since neither poverty nor an abusive upbringing could account for his behaviour..Joyce said he was depressed for “as long as he could remember” and began to “sink” in his teens. He said he tried to kill himself..“I was a failure. I grabbed all the medication, and I put it into a container and drank it all,” Joyce recalled..The parole officer said, “So why not attempt it again, if you're grossly depressed?”.“There were very few things that gave me any form of happiness or positive emotion or anything of that nature. The only time I was happy, period, was pretty much when I was with my family, especially with my nieces or having sex.”.The prisoner had more than 50 sexual encounters before his imprisonment. .Joyce said violent coercion gave him a “feeling in power and control of my life,” and had trouble “recognizing genuine emotions.”.“At my lowest levels when I started to feel, started my offending, I had apathy…There was no empathy towards anybody, my emotions were gone,” he said..The interrogator said that was part of “psychopathy.” She asked Joyce why he hid his pedophile crimes when first seeking parole following 20 years of imprisonment..More than 12 years ago, DNA evidence connected him to a cold case of child sexual assault against a nine-year-old. A victim and the mother of a nine-year-old victim with Down’s Syndrome came forward when the case went public. Joyce was convicted and given concurrent sentences over 12 years..The prisoner said he was “sorry” about his previous crimes but felt he would “lose everything” if he had confessed to them and would jeopardize spending time with his family..The interrogator said, “I go way back to that time. And what I see is you're having PFVs [personal family visits] with your niece who is developmentally challenged, starting at the age of nine, the age of your victims. If I were your family, I'd be OMG, right? Did you ever offend against her in any of those many PFVs?”.Joyce said, “I never touched them. I was always happy around them. I never needed emotion seeking around them. I was always happier around my family.”.The parole officer challenged notes from his file where Joyce had said he wanted to “steal” the happiness of his victims. The convict said no, he wanted to “share,” not “steal” happiness..The parole worker challenged Joyce, saying, “You would understand screaming and begging for their life, that's not happiness, so it doesn't connect.” She did not accept Joyce’s response that he resorted to violence to “gain compliance.”.Joyce finally conceded, “I felt powerless in my own life, and to control made me feel important, made me feel happy, and allowed me to control the situation a little better.”.Sexual assaults didn’t bring him happiness either..“Actually I was getting progressively frustrated with the sexual assault because it wasn't getting the desired effect,” Joyce said..Under questioning, Joyce confessed he had “inappropriate sexual fantasies” of children once per month, but they didn’t involve violence..“In my fantasies, they would be compliant and they would make me happy. They do everything I want with it.”.A prison chaplain attending in person said, “I feel being a woman and him having to face me and tell me what he's done is a huge step. I put him at a low risk.".“Where I have a lot of respect and trust in him is that he's come to me on his own accord, and has opened up pretty quickly into the depth of [everything]. My job is here to help him reintegrate and find out who he is, and come along as a friend in the journey to discern if we're going to be friends when he's released.”.That won’t happen in the immediate future, as the parole board decided not to allow escorted passes or parole for Joyce. .A day after the hearing, Kehoe told the Western Standard she was relieved Joyce would not get passes out of jail, but found some of the testimony hard to process..“I still cannot wrap my mind around [how] we were at a hearing for escorted passes in the community, something [where] everybody takes their jobs so seriously, yet the parole officer was bragging. She was bragging what a good boy he was during unescorted passes outside the jail.”.As Kehoe testified and watched by video feed from eastern Ontario, she thought public attention might be one reason the parole officers asked pointed questions..“She's setting up scenarios with children, I think she was trying to get him aroused. And then he stands up and he has a cramp in his leg. Like, I don't think he had a cramp in his leg.”.Kehoe said the parole board told her three times prior to the hearing that it was not their job to “warehouse” offenders indefinitely. Kehoe said Joyce’s prison has been called “Club Fed” by some, but if he stays there, good enough..“His life is not difficult right now and I don't need it to be difficult. I just need him to stay in prison away from vulnerable children, away from mothers of children. He should stay there. That makes sense to me,” she said.
