Former Youth Offender Who Spent 703 Days in Solitary Wants Newfoundland’s Statute of Limitations on Child Abuse Amended

Jack Whalen (C) sits in front of his pickup truck, which holds a replica of the tiny cell in which he spent two years of his life, during a recent protest outside the Ottawa Courthouse. (Matthew Horwood/The Epoch Times).

A Newfoundland man who spent almost two years of his childhood locked in solitary confinement arrived in Ottawa on Sept. 11 to raise awareness of the province being one of the last to remove its statute of limitations for child abuse.

When he was 13 years old, Jack Whalen was sentenced to four years in Newfoundland’s Whitbourne Detention Centre resulting from a physical altercation with another boy. For 703 days of Mr. Whalen’s sentence, he was confined to a tiny cell in solitary confinement.