Violent sex offender avoids deportation
Refusal to sign travel papers keeps Pole in Canada

Kim Bolan, Canwest News Service
Published: Monday, February 11, 2008

A violent Polish sex offender deemed too dangerous to stay in Canada has avoided deportation for eight years by refusing to sign travel documents, The Vancouver Sun has learned.

Between 1981 and 1998, Jerry Bielecki built up a lengthy criminal record in B.C. for rape, uttering threats, unlawful confinement, fraud and drug offences. The 51-year-old refused to take sex-offender programs during repeated jail stints.

During Bielecki's last sentence for the armed sexual assault of a teenager, the federal immigration minister issued a danger opinion in 2000, meaning Bielecki posed too serious a risk to remain in Canada and must be deported.

His sentence ended in 2004. Since March 1 of that year, he has been held in immigration detention pending his deportation. More than 40 monthly Immigration and Refugee Board hearings later, little progress has been made toward sending Bielecki back to his birth country.

At an IRB hearing in January, adjudicator Otto Nupponen heard Bielecki's adamant stance: "I don't want to go back to Poland."

Last October, "the Canadian Embassy in Warsaw sent a diplomatic note to Polish authorities regarding Mr. Bielecki's case," the January hearing heard. "The embassy is still awaiting reply from Polish authorities, and they have followed up on the note, but they still have no response."

Bielecki has repeatedly told the board he will not sign the necessary travel documents because he has no connections in the country he left 36 years ago. "I left Poland when I was a child," he told the IRB in 2004, admitting that he still wrestles with his "demons."

"I do want to deal with my demons. I don't want to spend any more time in jail and I don't want to hurt anybody, even though I end up being hurt more," he said.

Nupponen told Bielecki again last month: "The government of Canada is obliged to remove you. Unfortunately in this case, the removal hinges on your co-operation, as unfortunately, according to Polish law, you must co-operate in the removal. So through your actions, you are holding the governments of Canada and Poland at bay."

"You are an untreated sex offender who appears to show no appreciation of his offences. The National Parole Board understood that. Your detention for the criminal matter continued the very longest that it could, and the National Parole Board imposed the very strictest of conditions upon you," he said.