by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

On September 14, Mark Sadovski, 59, of Pointe Claire, was placed among convicted criminals at Bordeaux prison without having been found guilty of any crime. He was planning to plead not guilty on November 5.

Sadovski, a Polish immigrant who had offered at-home denture repairs since the 1980s, had recently been accused by two elderly women of sexual assault over the last three years.

With Sadovski awaiting trial in prison, police publicized the accusations against him in hopes of finding additional witnesses. A third elderly woman came forward with complaints against him.

Five days after being brought to Bordeaux, Sadovski was found beaten to death in a prison courtyard.

Authorities have refused comment about the case, which is currently under investigation. But one Bordeaux insider tells the Mirror that sex criminals “are not accepted” and Sadovski had made himself vulnerable by refusing protection authorities offered him.

Some prisoners’ rights advocates are curious about the handling of the case.

“You have to ask why the prison authorities didn’t assure the protection of that person,” says Jean-Claude Bernheim, a criminologist who heads Quebec’s Prisoners Rights Committee. “They certainly knew that such a thing could happen. Police spread the information about Sadovski and it circulated around the prison. The authorities have a responsibility to protect people like him.”

Those awaiting trial are usually kept in holding cells at Rivières-des-Prairies. When those fill up, they are sometimes forced to stay at other prisons, such as Bordeaux on Gouin Boulevard.

Bernheim says they serve hard time without being found guilty. “There’s nothing for them to do,” he says. “There’s no correctional plan or programs available for them. If it lasts a long time, there’s a physical and psychological impact because they have no idea what will happen. If these people just spend their days playing pool and watching TV, then we create more problems than we will ever resolve.”

Suzanne Gravel, head of the Inmates Rights Defense Group of Quebec, also questions the handling of those awaiting trial. “Prisons don’t develop programs for these people because they’re there theoretically for just a few weeks. But in recent years, we’ve seen instances where they’re inside for two years. These are situations we had never previously seen before,” she says. “The first days of incarceration should be the first days of rehabilitation and social reinsertion, but the system doesn’t have enough money to take such serious measures.”

Some incarcerated accused even plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit just to get a speedier resolution to their status, she suspects.

Bernheim argues that many accused shouldn’t be in any prison at all. “Prisons are unhealthy places where we put many people who have mental health problems,” he says. “Rather than give them care, we dump them there.”

Bernheim and Gravel agree that federal prisons offer superior rehabilitation services. “Politically speaking it’s not profitable for provincial politicians to fund prisons when they can invest in health,” says Bernheim. “They make these choices and there’s a price to pay for them.”