NIAGARA FALLS, ON, Dec 1 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Yesterday, Superior Court Justice Paul Forestell sentenced Lisa Thompson, 38, to only a two year conditional sentence to be served at home for attempting to murder her disabled 6-year-old daughter, Brandy. On November 8 last year, Thompson tried to kill her daughter by administering a lethal dose of drugs through her feeding tube. After checking to assure that Brandy no longer had a pulse, Thompson turned herself in to police.
Traci Walters, national director of the Canadian Association of Independent Living Centres, told the Toronto Star that the case is evidence of “a disturbing trend in sentencing.”
“The courts are sending a message that this is okay to do and that it’s less of a crime because disabled people are less of a person,” she said.
Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Ontario, told LifeSite that the Coalition is requesting Ontario’s Attorney General to review the judicial decision based on the concern that this decision establishes a precedent for other cases of neglect, abuse, murder or attempted murder of dependent or disabled persons in Ontario.
Schadenberg said the sentence “is far too lenient and may create a climate of tolerance” toward these acts.
Similar cases resulting in lenient penalties include the Robert Latimer case and that of Danielle Blais. Latimer was initially granted a constitutional exemption resulting in only a two-year sentence rather than the minimum 10 years for killing his disabled daughter Tracy by carbon monoxide poisoning. In 1996, Danielle Blais of Montreal received a 23-month suspended sentence after drowning her 6-year-old autistic son, Charles-Antoine and was not imprisoned.
With files from the Toronto Star.