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Sermonette, March 2002

Saskatoon man was 23 when he was brutally killed by drunk teens who gay-baited him first

Scott Asher

He'll be 23 forever and next year his killers will be 24

Jeremy Gardiner and Chris Smishek had already beaten up another man before descending on Asher. The second victim recovered from his injuries. At the time of the incident, the teens were quoted as saying they had "thought he was a fag."

The sexual inclinations of the victims in these beatings is unimportant. What is far more important is the mens rea, the guilty minds of the assailants who both come from well-connected Saskatchewan families.

Gay bashing in Saskatoon has been and continues to be a frequent occurrence. When the phenomenon was being brought to light in Winnipeg and other Canadian and U.S. cities a decade or more ago, it was not raised here. The same media managers reported on Satanic abuse charges salaciously and slavishly gobbled up the juicy tidbits offered by the hysterical promoters of the false allegations. The accused, were after all not well-connected -- in fact, many were demonstrably low-class. When policemen were charged in the Martensville affair, the media took a bit more notice, although the events surrounding the most expensive criminal trial Saskatchewan has yet run were most certainly destructive to everyone concerned.

Anti-homosexual bigotry has been around Saskatoon as long as I can remember. When I first went to university to study English, Dr. Peter Millard was expected to succeed the current head of the department but was passed over because he was gay. After an acrimonious decade, during which those who had rallied to his defence and had been mollified by an arrangement of rotating heads, he finally got the position. He didn't want to talk about it. A cultured and gentleman, Dr. Millard passed away this winter.

I have heard so many personal testimonials from people who have been physically brutalized because they were gay that I have no difficulty stating that Saskatoon has a serious problem. Several of the incidents I have learned of were committed by police. So, alongside the First Nations people (15% of Saskatoon) we have the gay community which is dumbstruck and terrified, living in continual fear. I have tried very hard to get some of the victims to come forward, especially the ones who have sought redress and ended up doubly brutalized, but they are too scared.

The movie Norma Rae has a haunting theme song with the recurring lines: "And sometimes what's good gets a little bit better, and sometimes what's bad get's gone." I occasionally find myself humming that piece but when I come to the last line, I find myself changing it to "and sometimes what's bad gets worse." That about sums up the decline of this beautiful city over the last decade and a half -- from poem to ugly cliché.

Sheila Steele, March 9, 2002

Victim's family upset killer given parole
 
Lori Coolican, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Mar. 8, 2002

Judy Asher was glad she wasn't home Thursday when the message from the National Parole Board arrived, telling her that the man who took her son's life less than four years ago is getting out of jail to work in Alberta.

"I'm just glad that he's not going to be here in the city," she said in an interview.

"You think that you've prepared yourself, and then well . . . all I guess I can say is that we are upset, but that's just natural. We knew that it was coming, but it's still just a shock."

Scott Asher was just 23 when Jeremy Gardiner and another middle-class teen, Chris Smishek, both 17 and drunk, descended on him with a red oak cricket bat in the Broadway area one night in early June 1998.

An hour before, they'd launched a similar random attack with the same paddle on another man in City Park. The other victim survived his head injuries. Asher went into a coma and died three days later.

The memories are still close to the surface for his family.

"You go through the same emotions every time," Judy Asher said. "Maybe other people think we should be hardened to it by now, but you aren't."

Charged with second-degree murder, Gardiner and Smishek both pleaded guilty to manslaughter in a plea bargain in 1999. Smishek was ordered to serve 3 1/2 years, and was paroled in 2000.

Gardiner, who delivered the fatal blow, got 4 1/2 years. He would likely have been released by now if he hadn't absconded through the perimeter fence at the Saskatoon Correctional Centre with six other inmates in fall 2000, then taken part in a break-in and car theft.

He pleaded guilty to those charges as well, receiving an additional three months for the escape. His sentences for the break-in and theft amounted to "time served." After a hearing Thursday morning, the parole board agreed to release Gardiner, now 20, on day parole as soon as space is available at a halfway house in Red Deer or Calgary, where he plans to work in a lumberyard.

"Your prowess at fighting was encouraged by a previous stepfather and proved useful to your hockey team, where you met your co-accused," the board noted in its decision.

"Since your return to custody (after the escape) your behaviour has been acceptable although you were reported as having a tendency to gravitate to people who could offer reinforcement and/or protection . . . the month-long period of solitary confinement following your recapture allowed you to seriously re-evaluate yourself."

Gardiner told parole board members that "constant contact" with a psychologist since his recapture enabled him to change his attitude.

The board imposed an order that he abstain from "all intoxicants" until his full sentence expires in 2004.

© Copyright  2002 Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.
William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell

Truth suppress'd, whether by courts or crooks, will find an avenue to be told. Sheila Steele, injusticebusters.com

If you hold the mouth of Truth, It will burst out its rib-cage. Somali proverb

Truth crushed to earth will rise again. --William Cullen Bryant

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This is a pretty good scrapbook for the 1998-2002 period.

More Sermonettes

2001

January: Legal Treachery to keep Dueck's lies safe

2002

March, 2002 -- Gay Bashing still a legal sport in Saskatoon -- Even when it turns to murder

 

2003

 

Feb. 1: Where we stand

Feb. 15, 2003: Has Saskatchewan learned anything?

March 1: Connecting the dots

March 23, 2003: From Micro to Macro

March 25, 2003: About libel and malice

March 27: Gangs of Saskatoon: the police and prison guards

April 28, 2003: The Naked Truth

May 5: How low will they go?

May 15, 2003: Come clean Calvert, Cline!

May 30: Still smearing Milgaard - defamation is alive and well on the lawn of the Regina legislature and Precendent has been set as we reclaim our institutions

June 11, 2003: --Eric Cline carries on a corrupt tradition

Nov 7: Courage -- the only reward is justice

November 20: Just following orders

November 24: Mayor Atchison, community policing and graffiti

November 25: Michael Jackson

November 30: Corrupt officials must be severely punished: otherwise they just keep on putting the administration of justice in disrepute!

December 1: Christmas comes early for injustice warriors

December 4: Wide open Saskatchewan?

December 16: Crawling through the tunnel of justice since 1991

December 24: The Crown keeps right on breaking the law

December 30: Who will find justice under their tree?

 

2004

 

January 1. 2004: Unprecedented publicity and Happy New Year

January 8, 2004: Malice still afoot

January 10, 2004: Shame and mugshots

January 14, 2004: Telling more truth about the undefamable: McKillop and Quennell, the static duo

January 17, 2004: Fifth Estate returns and A working class hero is something to be

January 22,23, 2004: Justice is still prevailing -- it is just taking longer and Bits and pieces are now coming together to tell the story of the century

January 27, 2004: Telling the truth about the undefamable, restoring reputations to the defamed.

February 5, 2004: Negotiations and strategies: getting an intransigent government to remedy its damage

February 10, 2004: How many lawyers does it take to ruin a province? and Lawyer continues to treat people's lives as a cruel game: monopoly?

Febrary 16, 2004: Calvert is not King Arthur

March 29, 2004: Counting down to the damages trial

April 16, 2004: The internet, the courts and now the movies -- We will so what it takes to get justice

May 1, 2004: If Frank Quennell is any example of what former Justice Minister Chris Axworthy called "evolving," Saskatchewan is ready to kiss justice good-bye!

May 27, 2004: Some observations on Saskatchewan and justice

June 7, 2004:Media coverage of Monique Turenne's story illustrates journalistic laziness

June 8:, 2004 -- The police not only failed to serve and protect Don and Lorna Smith and their children but set them up for false charges and community shunning

September 2, 2004: A tale of three cops: Dueck, Gobeil and Schinkel -- with an update on how they get away with criminal obstruction of justice

November, 2004: Wilfred Hathway, Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns -- RCMP stings offensive to community standards

November 11, 2004: Rogue Platoon? Identifying the rotten apples in Saskatoon Police Service and why we need a full public inquiry into our whole justice system

November 28, 2004: Can Justice Minister Quennell take a few more steps? The Prosecutors' office is still harbouring crowns who put the administrative of justice in disrepute

November 12, 2004: Saskatchewan Justice in chaos: The Stonechild report suggests it is.

November 28, 2004: The price for being a good judge or a good prosecutor

December 30: When the government interferes with the judiciary, we know a Police State is a dangerous possibility (The government appeal of the Klassen/Kvello decision)

 

2005

 

Jan 1, 2005: Chewed up digested and spit out

Jan. 5, 2005: More on chief Sabo

February 18, 2005: Tunnel vision: Darren Koehn, Wilf Hathway and Leon Walchuk

March 2: Fixing the system: Time to quit talking and implement previous commission recommendations

March 19, 2005 : Injustice as ShowBiz