WERE THERE EVER a contest for the title of Canada’s most notorious

female, there’s little doubt that Karla Homolka would win it hands down.

But does that also mean that the Quebec Superior Court judge was wrong in deciding to overturn a lower court’s order that she enter into a peace bond that included far more restrictions on her liberty than are faced by most parolees from Canadian prisons? Perhaps not.

The recent ruling by Justice James Brunton involved acceptance of arguments advanced by her lawyers that there is insufficient evidence that she meets the requirements of Section 810 of the Criminal Code, which says a peace bond with restrictions on a person’s liberty can be issued only if the court is “satisfied by the evidence adduced that the person on whose behalf the information was laid has reasonable grounds for his or her fears.”

The fears must be that the other person (in this case Ms. Homolka) “will cause injury to him or her or to his spouse or commonlaw partner or child and will damage his or her property.”

Lawyers for the federal and Quebec attorneys general argued the fact that while in jail she had a relationship with a man who killed his girlfriend raises the reasonable fear that she may kill again.

Justice Brunton was told no incident of violence involving Ms. Homolka was reported during the 12 years she spent in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter in the sex killings of schoolgirls Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy. The Crown allowed the plea in exchange for her willingness to testify against her ex-husband, Paul Bernardo, who is serving life and indeterminate sentences for the slayings and a series of violent rapes.

The French and Mahaffy families, through lawyer Tim Danson, expressed outrage at the judge’s decision and his conclusion that Ms. Homolka doesn’t represent “a real and imminent danger.”

Justice Brunton acknowledged in his ruling the possibility that Ms. Homolka, who now lives in the Montreal area and goes by the name Karla Leanne Teale, could reoffend one day.

“However, her development over the last 12 years demonstrates, on a balance of probabilities, that this is unlikely to occur. She does not represent a real and imminent danger to commit a personal injury offence.”

The restrictions she faced included having to report her whereabouts and travel plans to police on a regular basis. She was also to provide a DNA sample when she left prison but it was not clear whether that was done.

Justice Brunton suggested the lower court that granted the restrictions lacked balance, in that not much favourable to Ms. Homolka had been presented at the s. 810 hearing.

“This was a complex case which called for the analysis of the development, or lack thereof, of Ms. Teale over a period of 12 years. The proof presented was not exclusively negative from Ms. Teale’s point of view.”

Quebec’s attorney general said his ministry will seek leave to appeal the ruling. “After having analyzed the judgment, the decision has been taken to appeal the judgment of Mr. Justice Brunton in the case of Karla Teale Homolka,” Yvon Marcoux told reporters last Friday, two days after the judgment was released.

And Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant said his government had been confident the restrictions would be upheld and even if the appeal is unsuccessful, if she returned to Ontario “we will continue to do everything we can to protect the public under these circumstances.”

Thanks to the enormous publicity that followed what has been termed the Crown’s “deal with the devil,” we suspect that there is realistically no likelihood that Ms. Homolka will ever opt to settle anywhere in Ontario, or even return for short visits.

After all, she must be fully aware of her notoriety and it would be unthinkable that she could disguise herself to the point where she would see no risk of being recognized.

But more fundamentally, the fact is that there is far more reason to fear the likelihood of many others committing personal injury offences, a lot of whom are literally unidentifiable.

Take, for instance, the young male who took the lives of two Orangeville schoolmates, but was found not guilty of the murders by reason of insanity and apparently served only a relatively brief period in an institution before being released.

And a similar observation might be made concerning the teenagers charged in the relatively recent murder of 16-year-old Robbie McLennan.

As matters stand, there isn’t a shadow of doubt that these teens and countless other teenaged criminals will be just as free as Ms. Homolka is, and yet enjoy perfect anonymity, thanks to the Young Offenders Act and its successor, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which both permanently prohibit publication of anything that tends to identify them.

To a lesser extent, similar observations can be made concerning most of those who have been convicted of murder. For every Paul Bernardo or Clifford Olson there are literally hundreds of killers who would not be recognized by anyone who didn’t know them at the time of the homicides. Sure, most of them will be on parole for the rest of their lives, but chances are that status will require them to do little more than report occasionally to a parole officer and advise police of any change of address.

The fact is that the peace bonds provided for under s. 810 have been available for only a few years and are supposed to last no longer than 12 months (although they can be renewed and have been in the case of some repeat sex offenders).

And strictly speaking, no one but Ms. Homolka and Mr. Bernardo know precisely what her role was in the French and Mahaffy murders. We know only that ,she obviously was a willing accomplice of her husband and as such should also have been convicted of kidnapping and sexual assault, if not murder.