Paul Bernardo's Narrative Of Violent Crime

The second narrative of a violent crime came from Paul Bernardo in his first interview with the police after his life sentence. Paul Bernardo is known as the Scarborough rapist who was convicted of killing two schoolgirls, Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, and almost twenty sexual assaults.

In his interview Paul said, “Sexual performance anxiety was the driving force that led him to leave a trail of dead girls and sexual violence across Southern Ontario. I used sex as a vice. Now, I work out. I wake up every day knowing I'm not psychopathic. He claimed…to come to grips with deep-seated insecurities - involving his "baby chest," his having been a nerdy schoolboy, and his penchant for forcing rape victims to disparage their boyfriends' sexual

According to Coates and Wade (2004) attributing the assault to a psychological disorder to naturalize his behaviour. However, this testimony leads to the idea that it is okay to rape young girls to help men get over the sexual anxiety issues. His responses do not indicate the details of the events on hand, nor the girls’ reactions to the assault. He also conceals his violence by using the word “vice”. On two occasions he said that he uses “sex as a vice” and “loved sex because of the vice at the time”. Bernado uses vice to say that sex was a way he handled his sexual anxiety. Also, he uses the word “sex”, which misrepresents the fact that it was sexual assault not consensual sex with the

He said that the girl in 1988 got her arm broken, but others did not. Only if they resisted, they tended to get hurt more. Mr. Bernardo minimized the sexual attacks on these young girls by stating, “You have ups and down - depending on the more they fought, the more I fought.” These words also conceal violence because it does not indicated what he did when they fought back. A broken arm must have been quite painful for the young schoolgirls. The statement also suggests that he was determined to go through with the sexual assault even if they fought back, which seems to combat his story of sex and sexual anxiety. He also blames the victims for the physical violence they received for resisting his assault. This narrative had all four discursive operations to conceal the violent acts with language, divert responsibility of the crime, conceal the victim’s resistance, blame the victims for the