B.C. moves to prevent offender name changes

Offenders in British Columbia convicted of serious Criminal Code offences will no longer be permitted to legally change their names under legislation introduced on Monday.

B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix says the proposed law would amend the province's Name Act to ensure people convicted of dangerous offences can't change their name.

The legislation comes less than three weeks after Opposition B.C. United Leader Kevin Falcon proposed a private member's bill to change the same act after learning child-killer Allan Schoenborn was recently permitted to legally change his name, with his new identity being made public on Monday.

"What this legislation does is it says that people who have been found guilty of very serious offences — violence against other people, acts against children — will not be permitted to change their name," said Health Minister Adrian Dix following introduction of the bill in the legislature.

"The focus here is the offence and not the verdict," he said. "What it ensures really is more safety and reflects the views of families who are facing these circumstances."

Schoenborn was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of his own children, aged five, eight and 10, whose bodies were found in the family's Merritt, B.C., home in 2008. 

Following the verdict, a judge ruled Schoenborn was not criminally responsible because of a mental disorder.

Schoenborn has changed his name to Ken John Johnson, according to Dave Teixeira, a spokesperson for the family of the slain children.

Teixeira said he received confirmation of a B.C. Vital Statistics Certificate of Name Change document showing Allan Dwayne Schoenborn legally changed his name to Ken John Johnson in May 2021. The spokesperson posted the name change document on social media.

"I wanted to share it because I don't think someone who murdered three children should be able to hide under a new name," he said in an interview. "It doesn't mean they can divorce themselves from what they did."

Falcon said recently that permitting Schoenborn to change his name is "not acceptable."

"This is a huge problem for the safety of communities," the opposition leader said at a news conference in April.

"When government balances competing interests, I put the interests of community safety well above the interest of Allan Schoenborn to have his name changed so that he can move around the community unnoticed."

He said he fears a dangerous person could "show up in your community, perhaps even in a neighbourhood living in a basement suite across the street, without you even being aware because the NDP allowed his last name to be changed without anyone knowing what the new name is."

Schoenborn has been a patient at the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital in Coquitlam since 2010.

Darcie Clarke, the mother of the children, died in 2019.

"While this will not help Darcie Clarke and her family necessarily, Darcie's legacy is going to be that her children, Kaitlynne, Corden and Max, don't go forgotten and she's going to assist families in the future," said Teixeira.