The lawyer who helped establish battered women's syndrome as a defence for murder has set what he believes is another legal landmark. Greg Brodsky used battered child syndrome in his successful defence Thursday of a 19-year-old Manitoba man who'd admitted to strangling his stepmother to death, then setting her bed on fire.

Judge Brenda Keyser ruled that Earl Joey Wiebe was not criminally responsible for the May, 2000, killing because he was mentally ill.

That illness, Brodsky had argued, was caused by the fact that as a child, Wiebe had witnessed his biological mother suffer beatings and rapes at the hands of his father.

Three psychiatric experts testified this week that Wiebe had attempted to stop those attacks unsuccessfully, and his failure to help his mother had led to personality disorders - disorders that caused him to suffer as badly as if he'd been beaten himself.

"This case demonstrates that abusers affect more than just their spouse, the people they're beating" Brodsky said Thursday, "because a little child who sees the repeated abuse doesn't have the coping mechanism to deal with it."

When his parents split up, Wiebe chose to live with his father, who later married Candis Moizer. Wiebe told the medical experts that he soon began feeling urges to kill, and would shake uncontrollably.

Police said that on May 2, 2000, while his father was away on a business trip, Wiebe awoke feeling surrounded by evil forces. He went to his stepmother's bedroom armed with a knife, police said, then strangled her and slit her throat. Later Wiebe set the woman's bed on fire.

Judge Keyser ruled Wiebe must be held in custody until it's decided where he should be sent for long-term treatment.

But Candace Moizer's brother, Lorne Hodge, said later he believes he knows where Wiebe should be sent: "I do believe Joey should be going to prison for what he did. I think he fully understands what he did. It's just too easy these days to say you had a psychotic episode."