B.C. moves to prevent offender name changes after child killer legally gets new name

Offenders in British Columbia convicted of serious Criminal Code offences will no longer be permitted to legally change their names under legislation introduced today.

Health Minister Adrian Dix says the proposed law would amend the province’s Name Act to ensure people convicted of dangerous offences can’t change their name.

The legislation comes less than three weeks after Opposition BC United Leader Kevin Falcon proposed a private member’s bill to change the same act after learning child-killer Allan Schoenborn was recently permitted to legally change his name.

Schoenborn was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of his own children, aged five, eight and 10, whose bodies were found in the family’s Merritt, B.C., home in 2008.

A judge ruled Schoenborn was not criminally responsible because of a mental disorder after the verdict.

CityNews learned Monday that Schoenborn is now choosing to go by Ken Johnson.

He had applied to have his new identity kept secret —but that request was denied by the B.C. Review Board.

The board did agree to only refer to his former legal name at his next annual review hearing which is set for June 25th.

Dix says the amended legislation will prevent convicted criminals, those who have committed offences of causing serious harm to others, from evading accountability and the consequences of their actions by changing their name.

A representative of the victim’s family and a victim’s rights advocate Dave Teixeira says when they first learned that Schoenborn was changing his name they thought it was “certainly not good.”

“This is an opportunity for him to disappear into society without being held accountable for the crimes,” he said. “It is also exposing the victim’s family to accidentally having interactions with him.”

Teixeira says having the name known is a step in the right direction that will help correct issues in the future.

The advocate says this act will ensure that women who are escaping domestic abuse situations continue to have the protection of not having their new name known, but at the same time, it will ensure that those who commit the most heinous of acts do not get the same protections.

“I think this is a nice rebalancing of scales,” Teixeira said.

He says in terms of Schoenborn’s case, the previous review board was “coddling” the child killer, and the current board seems to have a “different approach.”

“They’re going to say that he remains a threat to children,” he said.

-With files from Michael Williams and Aastha Pandey-Kanaan.