Mike on Crime

By Mike McIntyre
Winnipeg Free Press

The family of a Manitoba teen sexually assaulted in her bedroom by a former Canadian soldier is outraged at the bureaucratic “oversight’‘ that kept them from a parole hearing that led to his release from jail.

Roger Borsch, 37, was quietly granted day parole to a halfway house last month after serving about eight months of his two-year prison sentence. He had previously done six months in pretrial custody that was given double-time credit, for a total sentence on paper of three years.

By law, the victim was supposed to be notified about the parole application and given the opportunity to attend and speak. However, the girl’s mother told the Free Press they just received a letter from the National Parole Board apologizing for the “oversight.”

“They said it was an employee error. They said they were really sorry,” said the woman, who can’t be named to protect the identity of the victim. “I feel like we’ve been duped all over again, this time by the Canadian government.”

The woman believes the day parole decision might have been different had family members been allowed to make their position known. Her 13-year-old daughter was attacked by a knife-wielding Borsch after he broke into the family’s home in the middle of the night in 2004. Borsch was working as a jail guard in The Pas and claimed to be in a catatonic-like state when he taped the girl’s mouth shut and then molested her. The girl eventually managed to free herself and scream for help.

“We’ve made it very clear from the start that we wanted to be present for any hearing,” the mother said. “This is like being victimized again.”

Borsch is now living in a Winnipeg halfway house. His parole conditions include having no unsupervised contact with any children under 18.

Borsch made national headlines when he went to trial and was found not criminally responsible for the attack because of a mental disorder. He became the first soldier to successfully use post-traumatic stress disorder as a defence for his crimes.

Borsch testified he only remembered waking up hours after the attack in a canoe with no paddles on the Saskatchewan River. He claimed he was haunted by the horrors of what he witnessed during a 1994 peacekeeping mission when he attacked the girl. He said he personally killed five people, including a Serbian soldier he caught raping an eight-year-old girl. Doctors who testified in his defence claimed Borsch might have been “acting out” what he’d witnessed.

The Crown lawyer argued Borsch has given different versions of his story to psychiatrists over the years. And the prosecutor said the military has no written records of the events, which Borsch has said also include the death of a young Bosnian girl who came upon a landmine at a military checkpoint.

Queen’s Bench Justice Nathan Nurgitz agreed at trial with Borsch’s claims his mind had been affected by his Bosnian experience. The decision to clear him of criminal wrongdoing sparked debate and reaction across the country, including several former soldiers who questioned Borsch’s war stories.

The Crown appealed, and Manitoba’s highest court agreed to overturn the verdict and order a new trial. Borsch then tried to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada but was rejected.

Borsch ended his legal saga last September by entering a surprise guilty plea and being sentenced under a joint recommendation between Crown and defence lawyers.