Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Bulletin: Ivan Henry; British Columbia; Tanya Olivares, 42, the oldest daughter of Ivan Henry, testified Tuesday about the impact of her father’s 27 years of wrongful imprisonment on her life.


Countdown to Wrongful Conviction Day:  Friday, October 2,  2105; 32 days. For information: http://www.aidwyc.org/wcd-2015/

"When her father was arrested, Tanya Olivares’s world “kind of crashed down” on her and her sister, the beginning of an ordeal that played out for them for nearly three decades. Olivares, 42, the oldest daughter of Ivan Henry, was testifying Tuesday about the impact of her father’s 27 years of wrongful imprisonment on her life..........All that changed in 1982, when she was nine years old. Henry was arrested and charged with sex offences against eight Vancouver women. “From the moment we learned he was arrested, our world kind of crashed down on us,” said Olivares. In 1983, a jury convicted Henry and he was declared a dangerous offender and jailed indefinitely. In 2009, he was released on bail after his case was reviewed and in 2010 acquitted after spending 27 years behind bars. Olivares, a mother of two, told the judge that after Henry’s arrest, the neighbourhood kids would not talk to her and her sister Kari. “So we basically were kind of hiding out inside our house. We couldn’t do too much.”.........She did not share with her friends the fact that her father was in prison and she had no idea where he was actually incarcerated. To stop the questions, she told friends her dad was dead. “I quickly realized if I said he was dead, that would end the questions. It was very easy that way.” She knew that the charges against her father were “horrific” but she said she never believed them for a moment and started doing research and reading on her own. She and her sister Kari started to really fight for their dad and wanted to get him out of prison, and they arranged for him to be transferred to a prison in B.C, where they could visit him."
http://www.theprovince.com/news/Ivan+Henry+wrongful+conviction+destroyed+family+says+daughter/11332983/story.html