Will the Sault ever be safe from Paul Whalen?

How great a risk to public safety is Paul Jeffrey Whalen?

That's the question before Ontario Court Justice John Keast this week at the Sault Ste. Marie Court House.

On Friday, June 27, 2008, Assistant Crown Attorney Kelly Weeks filed a dangerous offender application, seeking to have Whalen assessed by a forensic psychiatrist after the 33-year-old Saultite was found guilty of a string of charges dating back to 2006 and early 2007.

Whalen and his lawyer then went their separate ways.

The courts appointed an amicus curiae for him.

That's Latin for a friend of the court.

An amicus curiae is a lawyer who helps out during a hearing by representing a position or interest, usually at the court's request.

Whalen's amicus curiae, Anik Morrow, is at the courthouse this week, defending the interests of a young man whose violent, hair-trigger temper have become somewhat of a legend among readers of SooToday.com's police reports.

The Crown says Whalen is very likely to reoffend and should could be locked up indefinitely in a federal penitentiary.

Morrow isn't so sure about that.

Yesterday, she called Dr. Julian Gojer, a forensic psychiatrist, to testify on Whalen's behalf.

Gojer believes Whalen has a personality disorder and exhibits some traits of borderline personality disorder.

This is subtly yet importantly different, Gojer says, from the clear diagnosis of borderline personality disorder provided by Crown psychiatrist Dr. Derek Pallandi when he testified last week.

"Mr. Whalen is very engaging, he likes to talk," said Gojer. "Here is an individual who accepts his responsibility for most of the offences."

Gojer told the court that this characteristic is not typical of the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder.

And that, he believes, is the key to stabilizing and managing Whalen's kick-ass tendencies.

Gojer said that Whalen has additional issues that complicate or contribute to his borderline personality disorder traits.

These include:

- Abuse in his family history.

- Perceived abandonment and isolation issues.

- Substance abuse.

- Anger issues.

According to Gojer, those issues are going to complicate Whalen's treatment and recovery.

But he argues that the courts and society should not get caught up in labels.

"We need to look at underlying issues," Gojer said. "We need to look at the person behind the diagnosis."

Right now, Whalen is at moderate risk to re-offend, the forensic psychiatrist conceded.

But circumstances like the sentence he receives from the crimes he committed in 2006 could alter that risk considerably.

"The dangerous offender program is, in itself, a very eye-opening process," Gojer said. "It has led him to say, 'how did I come to be in this place.'"

Gojer believes Whalen sincerely wants to do the work needed to reform his behaviour and to deal with the underlying issues that render him anti-social.

He says Whalen can be stabilized, educated and monitored to a degree that the public would not be in danger from him.

Whalen demonstrates behaviour consistent with the concept of antisocial personality disorder, but Gojer says that is a concept defining a set of behaviours, not a diagnosis of underlying cause of those behaviours.

During cross-examination by Weeks, Gojer said that quantitative tests on Whalen, his own clinical assessment and that of Dr. Pallandi, all indicate that Whalen is at a moderately high risk to re-offend.

He qualified that, however, by saying he believes Whalen will not re-offend in a very violent way.

Gojer said that, in his experience as a forensic psychiatrist, Whalen's criminal record shows he's not low on the scale of the level of violence in the criminal acts he committed.

But he's not the highest either.

A forsenic psychiatrist at Toronto Western Hospital and St. Lawrence Valley Correctional and Treatment Centre and assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, Gojer was asked by Morrow to give his professional assessment of Whalen's state of mind and his tendency to relapse into bad behaviour.

Gojer is a contributor to TVO's Secret Life, a show that uses drama to deal with the question of whether offenders can really be rehabilitated and whether they are safe to live among us.

The courts may declare Whalen a dangerous offender if it's proven that there's a significantly high risk that he will commit future violent offences.

If Justice Keast finds the risk Whalen poses to the general public is severe enough for him to be declared a dangerous offender, Whalen will serve whatever sentence Keast deems sufficient to protect the public without throwing the administration of justice into disrepute.

The Criminal Code of Canada stipulates that dangerous offenders will have no opportunity for parole for seven years.

It also provides for a period of strict supervision of the offender for up to 10 years after his release.

At the conclusion of court yesterday, Dr. Gojer was called away on an urgent personal matter.

Arrangements were made for him to continue testifying today under cross-examination and to answer questions from Justice Keast via video conferencing.

Judge Keast said he believes presentation of evidence and arguments will be concluded this week.