Nathalie Gettliffe to be freed

Since I am one of the few English journalists to take any interest in the Nathalie Gettliffe case - for which I offer no apology - I should briefly note the news that she is finally to be freed tomorrow.

A French court has agreed to her provisional liberty, effectively parole, without requiring her to complete the six further months of imprisonment to which she remained liable when sentenced in Canada last month. She had pleaded guilty to abducting two of her own children in a bitter custody battle.

This second bit of commonsense in a sad and tangled saga (the first being a French court's gesture in granting her some freedom during the festive period) is to be welcomed.

Ironically, had Gettliffe not chosen to be repatriated just before Christmas, she would by now already be free, according to my understanding of procedures in British Columbia.

But is there any provision in Canadian penal practice for the sort of Christmas leave for which she qualified in France?

If not, she was probably better off being with the other half of her family then, even though it meant having to spend another few days in prison pending today's decision.

Of course, we have not heard the end of this affair. But I will stick to my earlier decision and comment only when, as now, there are significant developments.

This blog is not a news agency, as I have said before, and I have not been required to write news articles for anyone about an affair that was deemed a little too foreign for British readers.

That is the main reason why I have felt perfectly at liberty to express an opinion, intolerable as this may have seemed to some.

End of the road?

There will be relief among many of my readers that this, barring some unforeseen development or need to reply, is intended as my last word on the Nathalie Gettliffe affair.

From the responses since I first raised the subject, it is clear that some agree the issue was worth airing, a few feel indignation that an outsider should express an opinion on any aspect of Canadian justice and at least one wants me to pipe down and Gett a Liffe.

Reports of the case, on both sides of the Atlantic, have sometimes been confused and confusing. Today, there is a fresh gloss on the 16-month sentence passed on Monday and initially reported as leaving Gettliffe with six months to serve for the abduction of the two children she had with her ex-husband, Scott Grant.

It could be little as four months, we now learn, if she behaves herself in jail, or two if she succeeds in a bid for parole.

All of which reinforces my view that a sentence providing for her immediate release would have been the appropriate one, preferably but not necessarily by means of a suspended term. It is a struggle to think of a rational reason for making her spend this many, that many more weeks inside.

Nathalie Gettliffe is no saint, nor even a model mother whose actions can easily be excused, even if no account of the hearing I have seen describes precisely why she acted as she did.

Nor does she deserve mercy solely because she has already paid heavily for her misdeeds. It is simply my case that there is not a single decent cause to be served by her continued imprisonment.

The interests of deterrence and retribution have been amply met by the detention of an intelligent but misguided woman of previous good character for eight months and throughout a difficult pregnancy.

Being made to give birth while a prisoner, wherever delivery actually takes place, would surely be a pretty stiff punishment for any woman.

But I am even more concerned about the impact on her children, all four of them.

Madam Justice Marvyn Keonigsberg said Gettliffe's vilification of her former husband was one of the most seriously troubling aspects of the case, causing him and their children "immeasurable, perhaps irretrievable harm".

In what way incarcerating her for another two, four or six months can possibly help heal that damage, and make the children happier and more settled with their father, is not clear.

Judge Koenigsberg faced, as she acknowledged and I recognised, a tough task in deciding the right sentence.

I respect her conclusions that Gettliffe deserved severe punishment for encouraging the children to hate their father and "brainwashing" them into believing him to be a brute who belonged to a religious cult.

The view that a more compassionate decision could have been reached is no less respectable.

While I hoped to avoid further comment, some of the reactions justifies this added thought. Certain aspects of the case - and in particular the about-turn made by Gettliffe in its closing stages - frankly baffle me.

Taken at face value, the outcome can be seen - as Le Figaro noted when summing up opinion in France, where she would almost certainly not have been jailed - as "harsh but not scandalous".

Despite criticism from a small number of readers, my very own tricoteuses, the fact is that I repeatedly distanced myself from the extravagant claims of some of Gettliffe's supporters. I expressed no view on her guilt or innocence or on Grant's religious activities, but reported what was being said on both sides, with much more restraint than I have seen elsewhere, including here.

However, I stand squarely by my reasons for raising the matter in the first place. I never believed the world would be a better or safer place because Nathalie Gettliffe was in prison, and still don't.

And I do believe that a mature and civilised democracy should find better ways - does possess better ways - of dealing with a pregnant woman, unconvicted but facing trial, than throwing her in jail.