Constructing Joseph Fredericks: Competing narratives of a child sex murderer

Abstract

Joseph Fredericks– one of Canada's most notorious sex offenders– was defined through the institutions that dealt with him from his infancy to his death to the inquest held after his death. In this paper, we locate in historical context and compare the different narratives that were constructed of his life in each of these institutional settings from unwanted child to 'mental defective' to psychiatric offender to criminal recidivist to victim to iconic sexual predator. We show that each of these narratives claimed to capture the essence of Fredericks in terms of what were his core characteristics and what remedies were necessary for the problems he posed only to be superseded by new narratives based on different assumptions. Finally, we show how one of these conceptions of Frederick's essence influenced a shift in Canadian public policy for sex offenders toward the greater emphasis on community protection characteristic of public policy in the United States.