The annual review hearing for Allan Schoenborn, scheduled to take place on Friday, has been postponed to early next year.
The delay is reported to be due to his lawyer's illness, but a spokesperson for the the family of Schoenborn's victims, who were his own three children, says the delay simply adds more grief to an already impossible situation.
"As you can appreciate there is a lot of emotional effort to get prepared for these hearings," said Dave Texeira, who is acting as a spokesperson for Darcie Clark, the mother of the victims and Schoenborn's former wife, and her cousin, Stacie Galt.
In April 2008 Schoenborn brutally murdered his three children, 10-year-old Kaitlynne, eight-year-old Max and five-year-old Cordon, in their Merritt home.
Nearly two years later he was found not criminally responsible and has since been housed at the Forensic Psychiatric Institute at Colony Farm in Coquitlam.
The BC Review Board was set to release him on escorted leaves after his annual review in April 2011, even though the victims' mother was living in the Tri-Cities. Schoenborn later withdrew his application after significant public outcry.
In March, Schoenborn asked that his 2012 hearing be delayed and requested Dec. 23; Clark and Galt objected, saying it was too close to Christmas, and the review board set the date for Nov. 23.
Texeira said Clark and Galt had asked two years ago to move the hearings to any month other than April, since it marks the anniversary of the children's deaths and it's also when two of their birthdays would be celebrated. "But Allan insisted on April, and because he's the patient the BC Review Board allowed it," Texeira said.
The annual reviews are deeply troubling for the family, who has to relive the murders as they urge the review board not to release Schoenborn.
"Allan has made it known he does not wish to participate in any treatment," Texeira said. "He could be a danger to [Clark]."
Clark and Galt have been focusing their efforts on helping other victims of domestic violence, and lobbying the federal government for changes to the way patients deemed not criminally responsible are handled.
They want to see reviews take place every three years if a patient is assessed as a high risk to re-offend or has not participated in any rehabilitative programs.
A staff member at the BC Review Board confirmed the hearing has been postponed to next February but declined to give a reason for the delay.
