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Crime Story Episode 18: Jana Pruden

Host: Kathleen Goldhar

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: The following episode contains difficult subject matter, including references to sexual assault. Please take care.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I'm Kathleen Goldhar. This is Crime Story. Every week, a new crime with the storyteller who knows it best.

SOUNDCLIP

JANA PRUDEN: I read Helen's story on the news, and it immediately struck me as way out of line. And I wrote a letter to Helen four days later asking if she would consider telling her story. Because even with the sparest, sparest details on the record, and there was so little, it just seemed so out of line with other sentences. And in fact, it turns out it really was. It was way out of line.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: When I was a kid, I remember watching a movie called The Burning Bed. It starred Farrah Fawcett as an abused wife who, after years of enduring physical and emotional violence, sets her sleeping husband's bed on fire and kills him. The movie tells the story of Francine Hughes and her groundbreaking case. It was one of the first cases that uses what was called the battered women syndrome as a defence, and a jury found Hughes not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. Hughes's case made it possible for abused women to defend themselves, even if in the moment, they weren't facing immediate threats of violence. But this isn't the case for all women, and certainly, it wasn't for Helen Naslund. For almost 30 years, Helen and her three sons lived in fear of her husband, Miles, isolated on a small farm in Alberta. The family was held hostage to his outbursts and his anger and his violence. And then one night in 2011, Helen had enough. She shot Miles to death while he slept. Six years later, Helen Naslund was sentenced to 18 years in prison, one of the longest sentences ever given to an abused woman in Canada. The Globe and Mail's Jana Pruden tells Helen's long and complicated story in her podcast, In Her Defence.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Jana, welcome to Crime Story.

JANA PRUDEN: Thanks so much for having me on.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: It's so nice to have you here, and I think we need to start with talking about the life that Helen led before all of this happened. So can you tell me the abuse that she faced, what her family suffered during those years?

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah. I think it's fair to say that Helen and her sons endured on the highest end of the spectrum in terms of abuse. There was physical abuse, emotional abuse, certainly sexual abuse of Helen, extreme control, degradation and numerous life threatening incidents directed at Helen and at her sons.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And the fact that she was isolated on this farm in a community that was small played a lot into her and her family sort of feeling quite stuck, even though that doesn't discount that women in big cities also feel stuck. But for Helen, that was an added issue for her, correct?

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah. We do know that living in a rural area is particularly complicating for people who are surviving domestic violence. Even if you call the police, response times can be very, very long and you are isolated. You don't necessarily have the kind of daily contact with neighbours when you're living on a farm. And also, your tie to the rural community, to your land, to the animals that are there are all complicating in terms of getting away. There's something that Helen said to me once that has always stuck with me, that there was always something or someone she loved at the farm. So even if she was away, if she was at work, if she was in town, there was always something at the farm that she wanted to protect and that she knew could be hurt if she didn't go back there.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Because without her, that farm really wouldn't run. I mean, you told us about her life. It was a lot of work.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah. I think that's something that I have thought about in a new way in this podcast is actually abuse by work, that Miles was using Helen and his sons almost like slaves, and that in addition to the other forms of abuse that they were all suffering, they were being worked into the ground, essentially. So there's no way the farm would have survived, for sure. And there was… Helen was doing an amount of work that in fact, I think at times, she barely survived.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. And they were isolated, but Helen had a job and there was a community around her. And you do start to realize that people had become uncomfortable around Miles and Helen, to say the least. So what did people in her community understand was happening obviously before he was killed and everything came out?

JANA PRUDEN: Mm hmm. I think like in a lot of situations where there's domestic violence going on, people do sense something, that something is not right. And in this case, through the years, I think it got more and more obvious. People saw in Helen how quiet she was, how she didn't speak unless she was spoken to. They could… they sometimes saw bruises. Neighbours… there was one neighbour who told me about being able to hear Miles yelling across the farm, like from her farm. So, you know, it’s…

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah, so far.

JANA PRUDEN: Yes, kilometres away. There were people, lots of stories going around about Miles’s use of guns, and that people would see him twirling the gun on his finger. It was well known that he would hold guns to the heads of his children or point guns at the boys or at Helen. So it was obviously a pretty severe situation. And people did have, I think even from the glimpse that they had, it was severe, and nobody knew actually the extent of what was going on. So people were concerned. But as is very common, no one really knew what to do about it. And I think a lot of people were afraid that if they did say something or do something, that they would make it worse, that it would make it more dangerous for Helen and for the boys.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So they're in this horrible situation for 30 years, is that correct?

JANA PRUDEN: 30 years. If we count the period in which Miles and Helen start dating, we get close to 30. They were married for 27 years.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And her children are being abused and her life is hard. And can you tell us about the night that she finally said this was enough?

JANA PRUDEN: Mm hmm. So it's harvest, September long weekend, Labour day long weekend 2011, so very stressful time in farming because that's the period you're trying to get the crops off, and really, all of your work for the whole year either pays off or can come to nothing. They were having severe financial problems and had been for several years, and Miles was suffering a number of health problems. He had diabetes that he was not treating. He'd had a head injury in a bar fight that seemed to have had an impact on his behaviour. And I think things were getting worse and worse and things were obviously escalating. That weekend, Helen was working, trying to bring in the crops. And we know that tractor broke down. Miles was drunk. He was furious. He was throwing wrenches at her. At some point, she went into the house to make dinner. He swept the whole dinner onto the floor and said it wasn't fit for a dog. And he did threaten her, promise her that she would pay for the broken tractor. And that night, while Miles was sleeping, he was shot in the back of the head, killed instantly as he slept. His body was put into a truck toolbox and hidden in the bottom of a slew or a pond on a nearby property. Then Helen and her sons reported Miles missing, and he was missing for six years.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: What did people think happened to Miles in those six years?

JANA PRUDEN: This is an interesting aspect of the community. You know, everybody knowing that something was going on and not knowing what to do about it. When Miles disappeared, everybody knew he didn't just disappear and nobody did anything about it and nobody particularly cared. You can hear in the podcast, you know, a number of people who tell me basically, yeah, you know, I just didn't really give it much thought. I didn't care what happened. And I think to some extent, there was a certain form of country justice that no one was overly concerned about it, and no one was really going to do anything about it until ultimately, the police began investigating again based on some comments by her middle son.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. I mean, that to me, the tragedy is so extended by that because I want you to talk about what happened with her and her kids. You know, they have to live through the years of Miles. We'll get to, you know, some of the suspicions of what actually happened that night, but she does end up getting kind of turned in by one of her children. So can you tell me what happened there?

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah. Helen's middle son, Darrel, who had previously made statements to the police like they all did, sort of implying that his father had gone off and killed himself, or maybe that these guys from the city that had beaten him up at the bar, that incident I referred to, that maybe they'd done something to him. So that was sort of the story that the police had for years. There wasn't really any searching for him. Very different from many other missing persons cases. And then Darrel did go in and give a statement in which he said that his mother had killed Miles and that they had, his brothers and him had disposed of the body and the car and the guns.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Do we know why her son turned on her like that?

JANA PRUDEN: There's a few theories about that. There's a theory that Helen has, and that some people have shared with me, that he was facing his own trouble with the law. And he does, has admitted that he has a drug problem and he does have a criminal record, and that he used it to get out of that trouble. He told the police that it was because he felt, you know, that it was weighing on him. I'm not exactly sure. I never was able to speak with Darrel. Darrel didn't speak with me. But one thing I do know is that for Helen and Neil, that's her youngest son and the only other son that was home with her at the time. It was her, Neil and Darrel. The oldest son, Wes, was at his own house. It was really weighing on them. It was weighing on their consciences, I think. And I do believe it would have come out sooner rather than later. You know, I know that Helen, I don't think she could have kept the secret too much longer than she did, to be honest.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: You've been covering domestic violence for like 25 years. What do you know about the way a family copes after the violence has stopped? Like what kind of an impact does it have? What kind of a tale does it have with this family? Because it did come across in your podcast that all the sons were quite angry. One of them does talk to you and he's… I mean, I’ve held my breath every time he came on. I mean, he's so aggressive. I mean, it's really amazing to hear a voice like his. You rarely hear that. But tell me about what you know from the work that you've done about what domestic violence does do to a family even after they've escaped the violence.

JANA PRUDEN: I think, you know, not just from my own work, but anyone who has had domestic violence in their life or in their family, which is very, very many of us know that the impacts truly can last for generations. They do last for generations. The son you're referring to in the podcast is Wes, Helen's oldest son, and he's a really, he's a really interesting person and really, one of the most intense and probably profound interviews I've ever done. You know, he is someone on one hand, he says that he could kill a thousand people and he wouldn't really care. But yet, he's very, very astute about the emotional effects, I think, of abuse.

SOUNDCLIP

WESLEY NASLUND: Mental abuse and torture and shit changes your brain. It just kind of changes how you perceive shit. For all you fucking know, sadness could be love and love could be anger and anger could be fucking hate. You have no clue. It's like you're colour-blind for feelings.

JANA PRUDEN: There's things that he says like that that are very intense and they're very scary and they're very disturbing, but then he's also very emotionally aware of how growing up with his father has affected him. And I think that some of the ways that he expresses the effects of abuse are, you know, some of the most profound ways that I've ever heard that described in terms of the way that it can change your personality and I guess the work that you have to do to try to not succumb to that kind of behaviour yourself.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah, I was taken. Like he talked about it rewiring his brain.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah, but his love for his mother is very clear. And in a weird, it's almost violent, but it's there.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah. I think the boys, they care so much for their mother. And I think they all have spent the last 27 years, or I guess the kids aren't that old, but they've spent their lives all protecting each other and trying to keep each other and also themselves safe. And I think the weight of that and the effect of that on a person, of course, is extremely profound. And, you know, one of the things that we talked about in making the podcast was there is sometimes this, you know, seeing this as an issue behind closed doors, and even that sometimes, when there is a domestic homicide, a woman dies, her children die, but we still kind of think of that as oh, a family issue and somehow, she put herself in that situation. But we know that there is a massive link between domestic violence, intimate partner violence and mass murders. I also cover news. I covered the Portapique shootings, I covered the stabbings on the James Smith Cree Nation, two of Canada's worst mass homicide events. And those both were perpetrated by people with long histories of domestic violence. And so that's something that was really important to us, was to really make clear this isn't just an issue between a husband and wife if people are tempted to think that it can't affect them. And I think that's something that we saw with Miles in terms of him being a ticking time bomb, is not only dangerous to Helen, not only to his kids, not only to, for instance, Wes's family and his kids, but also to police, to neighbours, to random people, because we know that that's the possibility when someone who's engaging in this kind of violent behaviour becomes homicidal, which I believe Miles was.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: But the police do not approach Helen that way. The police even seemingly ignore what is clearly a domestic violence situation. And we hear incredibly, you have an interview tape with the police and Helen.

SOUNDCLIP

OFFICER: The suffering is very important to consider, right? And from what I know and from what I understand, you were suffering living with Miles and living in that home. I think you did what you had to do because it was necessary. It was an escape. The suffering had to end.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: How do the… tell me about how the police interrogated Helen, how the police approach the situation. Once they discover Miles's body in the pond, it's clear that he didn't commit suicide, that something happened. So how did they approach this?

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah. I think the interrogation is really interesting and powerful to be able to hear it. You know, the police do not do anything wrong per se. And I think a lot of police officers would see that as a very successful interrogation. There were no breach of charter rights. And in the end, she confessed to murder, and they were able to lay a charge, or she confessed and they were able to lay a murder charge. I think what I see in it, however, is that even though they do know there was abuse happening, they have people who witnessed abuse, physical abuse, that while they may say that they're sympathetic and they understand and, you know, they repeatedly say something had to be done and you were protecting your family, which is in fact the battered woman defence or the battered spouse defence, but it's really only used as a tool to get a confession. It's not really used in a legitimate spirit of is this really domestic violence self-defence? And some of that may have to do with what was done to the body after, which looks, you know, not great. I think everyone agrees that that's not…

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah, the outcome would have been very different, I suspect, if she had gone straight to the police right after it. But you talked to her about that.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah. I mean, that is a question.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

JANA PRUDEN: That is what some people think. And of course, this does look kind of guilty, I guess, to dispose of the body, to lie about it. And that's fair. I accept that, but I think there's a lot in the interrogation where we can see that the idea of her being a battered woman is used sort of against her as a lever, in the same way that the fate of her youngest son, Neil in particular, is used against her as a lever. And there's one part in the interrogation that has always really stuck out to me, and it's where one of the police officers is talking to her about that there was a neighbour that witnessed abuse.

SOUNDCLIP

OFFICER: Speaking to people like Phil and learning from an outsider's perspective what he saw, and I know guys like Phil aren't there at 3:00 in the morning on a Tuesday night or at 8:00 in the morning on a Thursday to see exactly what's going on, he just sees, he sees when you and Miles are sitting around the kitchen table playing cards. Miles gets too drunk, calls you a bitch or whatever, and then tries to take a round out of you.

JANA PRUDEN: And that moment really sticks out to me, because I think about that language and how belittling that is to say, you know, taking a round out of you over a game of cards. These aren't two hockey players having a scrap on the ice. What you're talking about is a man who's twice the size of his wife physically assaulting her while they're playing cards and…

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: With people around.

JANA PRUDEN: With people around. And, you know, when you look at someone like Helen, who's coming into that interrogation having never spoken about her experience in really any way, she's been keeping it a secret. She doesn't know what other people would think about it. She doesn't even fully understand what parts of it are abuse or not. You know, a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their head around the control as abuse. Even, you know, unwanted sex, is that abuse if you're a husband and wife? Some people… I know that it is, but many people don't. Is having a loaded gun to your head abuse if it doesn't leave a bruise? So to think of trying to actually disclose the reality of what she was living with to someone who's already described an act of violence like taking a round out of you, you just really see the environment that she's in. And then as defence lawyer Mona Duckett points out way later in the series, that sets a tone for how she moves through the system. Everything in that interrogation sets a tone for herself, and then, of course, also sets a tone for the prosecution of where things are going to go as her case gets to charges and punishment.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: What's Helen charged with?

JANA PRUDEN: First degree murder, and as well as a charge around offering an indignity to a dead body, which is around the disposal of the body. But the first degree murder charge, of course, is the most serious. It's arguably the most serious charge you can face in Canadian law. If you're convicted of first degree murder, that's life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And it means that it was premeditated.

JANA PRUDEN: Yes.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And her child too. Her son was charged.

JANA PRUDEN: Yes. Neil was also charged with first degree murder.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And then how does it proceed? Tell us. Like where… what does she face? Because the police are just the first stop along the road to what happens.

JANA PRUDEN: Mm hmm. You know, the battered woman defence is a defence that is established in Canadian law and was established in the 1980s, as a matter of fact, in a very famous case called Lavallé. And in the battered woman defence, it recognizes that shooting someone in the back of the head while they're sleeping or while they're walking away can still be self-defence in the context of a domestic violence relationship. Traditional self-defence law really was geared towards two men fighting, two men of equal strength. And in that case, you have to feel that there's this imminent threat, and you also have to act in a way that a reasonable person would find is self-defence. But what was decided in the Lavallé case when it went to the Supreme Court in a decision written by Supreme Court Justice Bertha Wilson, who is Canada's first female Supreme Court justice, really recognizes that the dynamics of a domestic violence relationship are far different than that, and that if a woman waits for an imminent threat, she's going to be the dead one because usually, their male partner has size on their side. They have physical strength on their side. They have a psychological advantage of having been the abuser for all of those years. So in those cases, the woman is going to be the one who dies, and also that people who are victims of repeated cyclical violence are actually very good predictors of when violence is imminent, and that the reasonable man test doesn't hold because most men have not found themselves in that particular situation. So there definitely was the possibility of a battered wife defence. So her first lawyers do see that the battered woman defence is a big issue, and her lawyer is going to take her to trial on battered woman. They even practice in a courtroom, empty courtroom, so that she can get used to that environment so that she's comfortable. And she really trusts him and feels like she's going to go to trial. And he feels really confident that at the end of it, they're going to walk out together and that a jury could find her not guilty. But that lawyer has health problems and has to give up Helen's case, and he recommends a new lawyer in Edmonton. And when he comes on board, he sees it totally differently. And so there's a possible deal with the Crown, plea for manslaughter that would have 18 year prison sentence attached. And so Helen had to consider, you know, whether or not to take that deal. And I should say, you know, when we're speaking about levers and power against Helen, they had two very powerful levers in terms of Am I going to take this deal or not? One of which is the gamble of going to trial could mean life in prison 25 years. And Helen felt certain that for her, that's, you know, that's a death sentence. She would die in custody given her age and her health and what that would mean for her. And…

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: The other lever was even more powerful.

JANA PRUDEN: Her son.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

JANA PRUDEN: Her son and his life.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Because they… what were the prosecution offering the son in terms of her own plea bargaining?

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah. So if she took the deal for manslaughter, 18 years, the life sentence is dropped against her, the life sentence is dropped against Neil, and he's looking at four years.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And so that becomes decided. Helen goes to prison. Where do you intersect with this story? How do you get involved?

JANA PRUDEN: I actually remember I saw it on Twitter. I remember seeing the headline and I just automatically was really shocked at that sentence like many other people across the country. But having covered so many domestic homicides, all or nearly all of which involved women as victims, and many other kinds of homicides, again, many, many, many of which involved women as victims, as very innocent victims who hadn't done anything, I just was very shocked that this man who had perpetrated, you know, a lifetime of abuse against his wife, that she was still facing that term. It immediately struck me as way out of line. And I wrote a letter to Helen four days later asking if she would consider telling her story, because even with the sparest, sparest details on the record, and there was so little, but we knew that there was abuse and that that was admitted, it just seemed so out of line with other sentences. And in fact, as it turns out, it really was. It was way out of line.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Why did a judge approve the plea then?

JANA PRUDEN: Well, that's a good question. I mean, joint submissions where the defence lawyer and the Crown come with a deal that they've both agreed to, the idea is that the judge should in most cases accept it, especially when it's, you know, brought by reasonable experienced lawyers. Often, the tension is actually whether the judge will go higher. Sometimes, the judge will disagree with a sentence and go higher, but he clearly thought everyone had done a good job on this. I mean, he says that on the record and he accepts it as it was. And of course, the idea that he shouldn't have accepted it is one of the legs in what is ultimately an appeal that's filed of that sentence.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Because in the judge's orders, he sort of weirdly defends Miles.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah, he makes some comments. I guess this is part of my own very strong reaction to the sentence. It wasn't actually only the amount of time, it was some of the comments the judge made, including, you know, that this happened to a man while he's, you know, sleeping in what should be the safety of his own home. That was a line that really bothered a lot of people and, you know, raises automatically the question about what about Helen's right to be safe in her own home?

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Reminds you of the judge she said she should have kept her legs closed.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah. Well, I think he was also from Alberta.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I think he was.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So what does happen when people start to hear about what happened to Helen?

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah. So she's sentenced to 18 years. She's in prison, and her first contact is a defence lawyer from Vancouver who wants to appeal Helen's sentence. And she's not sure what to do at that point. She is actually very upset by that. She isn't sure if she made a mistake in taking the deal. And then as awareness around the country grows and some people start to get involved and they start urging Helen to appeal. And at some point, she starts to consider it, especially when she feels confident that nothing can change for her youngest son, Neil, and make it worse for him. So at that point, defence lawyer Mona Duckett, who's a very well-respected senior defence lawyer in Edmonton, comes on board and she decides to appeal Helen's sentence. And appealing a joint submission is like climbing a mountain. That's how it was described to us. It's very, very difficult. Joint submissions are by their nature, you know, they're put forward, they're accepted by the judge and they're done. So that was a major, major obstacle. And at that point, that's really where this community response became so powerful. In fact, it was… essentially, one of the foundations of the appeal was that the sentence was so unfit that it would bring the administration of justice into disrepute. So people's anger, people from across the country being angry and outraged that an abused woman would get this amount of time was enough to say this is an unfit sentence, and also that the judge should not have accepted it, and that some of his comments showed some really outdated thinking about the abuse of women. So at that point, it goes to the Court of Appeal. And after months of consideration, it is halved to nine years. And then at a certain point after that, Helen starts to go through the regular parole process, which is first unescorted absences, day parole, and then full parole.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So you do talk to… you do get to meet Helen. I mean, you really speak to such a large swath of this entire story and all the people that are around her life. But Helen is a very compelling character in a way that isn't the way most compelling characters are where they're loud or their presences is, you know, just in your face. Helen is somebody we don't really hear from very often in all of our lives. So what was your impression of Helen?

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah. I mean, Helen is… she described herself to me as someone who likes to hide in the corners. You know, she doesn't want attention. She doesn't. She really didn't want this story to be written about her or this podcast to be made about her. But she did agree to do it because I really believed that her story could help other people and could help to expose some things in the system that I think could be changed. Again, to help other women and other people who have been living with abuse. And she really hoped that too. So even though it was very personally uncomfortable for her, she made this choice. I think it's a very, very courageous choice to open up her life first in a very long print story and in this podcast in I think a very selfless act, actually.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Did you have any hope that you might help her?

JANA PRUDEN: That I would help her personally?

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah, that maybe there could be appeals or a change in her.

JANA PRUDEN: Well, by the time we spoke, the appeal had been decided. So I come in and in fact, even after she decided to speak with me, her lawyer wanted to wait until the full appeal period and Supreme Court possible appeal was done so that her sentence then was what it was and that couldn't be changed. So I don't think I particularly had a thought that I was going to alter what would happen, but I did hope that it would I guess not only help others, but also help her to put it out there. And I knew… I felt I knew how people would respond to it. And to know, to see the reaction of other people who understand, who have been there, who support her, who don't think that what she did was wrong and who understand I think has been a really powerful thing. One thing that did happen which I wasn't expecting is that, you know, several months into our interviews and our correspondence, we wrote many, many letters also, when she went before the parole board, that she was very, very nervous about going before the parole board. And I remember this conversation, a little bit of it is in the podcast, that I was, I guess, talking to her about what that would be like. She was worried she was just going to freeze and shut down. And I told her, you know, I don't think it can be worse than what you've done with me because we did very tough interviews. We did. They were, you know, I think the first interview I did with her was four hours and very, very intense. And I think that in a lot of ways, it did, although this wasn't my intent, but I think it helped her that she had gone through that kind of questioning with me, that then when she faced the parole board, she was more able to speak about what she'd been through.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And then you get to meet her outside the prison because she gets parole.

JANA PRUDEN: Mm hmm.

SOUNDCLIP

HELEN NASLUND: Hello.

JANA PRUDEN: Hi, there. Hi, Helen.

HELEN NASLUND: Hi. How’re you doing?

JANA PRUDEN: Good. How are you?

HELEN NASLUND: I’m a little better now.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah. Boy, it's funny I was saying to my editor and I was telling him we were going to stop and see you. And I said like this is the first time I'm going to see you in real life.

HELEN NASLUND: Yeah.

JANA PRUDEN: You look lighter and happy.

HELEN NASLUND: I’m much, much lighter.

JANA PRUDEN: It's so wonderful to see you out here. Yeah.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Talk about that.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah. It’s we stopped in to see her at work, one of her first days at work. I had seen her in prison twice. Well, three times. When we went to take photos, we wrote. We weren't really allowed to speak by phone. The prison never approved me to be on her phone list. But once when she got out on a day pass, she called me from her sister’s, and then I got to see her when she was back at work. And I mean, this is not unique only to Helen. People who have been into prison facilities before will recognize this with many people. I mean, it is a horrible place to be and people are not happy to be there, obviously. And so to see Helen out, honestly, the word that I can think is just lighter. She just looked like a different person almost. And I think to be out in the world and to also have experienced some of the reaction to see people again in the community and really to know that she's now free, honestly, for the first time in her life, that she is free was pretty profound thing. Also, she loves to work, so she was really happy to be back at work. One of the biggest things that she hated about being in prison was she was so bored and there wasn't enough for her to do, and she's just way happier when she's working. So I think happy in many, many ways out there.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: How's her and her family now? I mean, so much happened. Is she speaking to all of her children? Where is she with that?

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah. I think, you know, having the podcast out has been an intense thing. And also, Helen is still in the process of getting her feet underneath of her out in the world. She was living with her sister, and she's just gotten her own place. And so I think she's taking things really slow, but I think she's doing really well, and it really has meant a lot to her the kind of response. I have sent her several batches of emails that I've gotten, the ones that specifically talk about Helen, about what her story has meant to them. You know, the number of people who write to me to say this could be about my life is really stunning. And I think that means a lot to Helen to know that putting herself out there has actually had the effect that we hoped it would, that is comforting people and leading people to think about some of these systems, the legal system, in a different way and ways that it is working against survivors like Helen and working against women. You know, I think that her relationship with Darrel, that's a really tough one. You know, I'm not sure what will happen with that, but I hope all of them can move forward in a positive way from here.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Does she feel like it might help people?

JANA PRUDEN: I think she does because of the response from people. You know, I mean, some of these letters, they're so heartfelt, and also hearing from professionals who see what they can do differently in the system, from advocates who see areas that they can make change, and that the next case that comes up like this, because they're rare, but they do happen of battered woman self-defence, that maybe that woman will go through the courts in a different way or find different supports because there are so many other people now who are more aware of this issue, who are more aware of the defences and who are more aware even of how to raise their voices and change the situation for the woman. I mean, that's one of the things that I find truly amazing about Helen’s story is that, you know, she’s sentenced 18 years, she's in prison, she's hopeless, she has no hope. And then outside, all these people start seeing this is wrong. And some of those people are, you know, pretty socially powerful people. There's Senator Kim Pate, there's defence lawyers, there's experts. Elizabeth Sheehy, who wrote the book Defending Battered Women on Trial. Then there's also a lot of just everyday people who wrote letters to Helen in prison and, you know, shared their own experience, became supports for her. There's people who signed petitions, there's people who posted on social media, you know, with I stand with Helen signs. And what was so amazing to me is that all of those people played a really important role. It wasn't only, you know, the socially powerful people that made this change. It was everybody. The people who wrote to Helen I think gave Helen the confidence to be able to go ahead with an appeal, to trust that maybe something could be better for her and that maybe she deserves better from the system. And so when we look at, you know, how systems can work against people, we also see how communities can change systems. And in a way, I think that almost the whole message of the podcast happens in like the last five seconds after the credits in the final episode, with a quote from Supreme Court Justice Bertha Wilson where she says that, you know, basically, the law doesn't want to change.

SOUNDCLIP

BERTHA WILSON: It responds to changes in society, it seldom initiates them.

JANA PRUDEN: And to me, that that's the most powerful message is that we know that some of these systems were geared towards certain populations. They were made for, you know, white men primarily, and that to change it so that it's more equitable for everybody, we have to fight for that, all of us in whatever, you know, whatever way that you can in what you do.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Well, and what you did went a long way to helping it too.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And I’m going to ask you one last question. So you have been telling these stories, but through print for all these years. This is your first audio project. How did you enjoy it or what did you feel was different about the way that you could tell this story?

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah, I loved it. I really loved it. And one of the things, you know, when I was reporting this story for print and we didn't know for sure that it was going to be a podcast, Kasia Mychajlowycz, who was producer of The Decibels, the Globe's daily podcast, was taking on a role doing a narrative podcast for the Globe. So I had pitched several stories and one possibility was Helen, but we didn't know for sure it was going to go ahead. But we decided in those early interviews to have someone come along and get good audio so the option would be available to us for sure. So Amber Bracken, who's a wonderful photographer in this country, did double duty and recorded good audio for me. But what I realized really early on speaking to Helen, speaking to Wes, was really how powerful this audio was going to be. And especially after Helen and Wes's interviews, I just thought, okay, this has to be a podcast. This has to be an audio because I found their voices so powerful. I found that they expressed themselves in such a profound way that I didn't want to mediate it at all. I wanted people to hear them. I wanted to hear what was in their voices. And that's the same with Helen's friends, her family, her sister Sharon. And so yeah, I just knew then it had to be an audio, and I'm so glad it was. It's been interesting to see the response from people, even people who read the print story. And the print story was very successful. It won awards. You know, it's a long form story and I'm quite proud of it. But it's interesting to see from people even who read both that one of the first things they say is it’s just so amazing to hear Helen's voice. And to me, that was a really profound and beautiful thing to have her voice out there, literally her speaking for herself and telling her story with as little mediation from me as possible.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Thank you for your work. I think it was a great podcast and a really important one, so thanks a lot and thanks for coming in.

JANA PRUDEN: Thank you so much for having me.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: You've been listening to Crime Story from CBC Podcasts. We drop a new episode every Monday. You can get our next episode a week early on CBC Podcasts’ YouTube channel or by subscribing to the CBC Podcasts’ true crime channel on Apple Podcasts. In addition to Early Access, subscribers to our true crime channel also listen ad free. Crime Story is written and hosted by me. Our producers are Alexis Green and Sarah Claydon. Sound design by Graham MacDonald. Our senior producer is Geoff Turner. Our video producer is Evan Aagaard. Our YouTube producer is Jon Lee. Executive producers are Cesil Fernandes and Chris Oke. Tanya Springer is CBC Podcasts’ senior manager, and Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts.

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Transcript: Crime Story, Episode 18

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