Man Ordered To Pay Child Molester Judge: Father’s Attack On Man Who Raped Daughter Vigilantism

A Vancouver Island man ordered to pay $42,000 in damages to the man who molested his 15-year-old daughter has had his wages garnisheed to make sure he pays.

‘I went to work, and one of the union representatives came up to me,” the father said Thursday.

“He said: ‘I’ve got some bad news for you. They’ve just garnisheed your wages.”’ The father hit Shane Mack with a baseball bat days after Mack sexually assaulted his 15-year-old daughter.

Mack was convicted in October 1992 of sexually assaulting the 15-year-old girl during an aboriginal healing ritual at the family’s home in Parksville.

He was sentenced to 10 months in jail.

“They had to wait for him to serve his jail time for assaulting my daughter,” the father said.

“They had to wait until my divorce proceedings and bankruptcy were discharged in June 1995. I lost everything.”

The father, who has been told it would cost $10,000 to appeal the civil judgment, now has to decide whether to go to work when he knows Mack will profit.

“The union told me they’ll be taking two-thirds of my pay,” the 46-year-old millwright said. “Can you see going to work in a pulp mill to give two-thirds of the pay to this guy? I can’t.”

The father, defended by a lawyer, was cleared in criminal court of assaulting Mack.

Short of funds, he defended himself against the lawsuit in B.C. Supreme Court but lost.

“When you find you’re cleared in criminal court, you figure you’re safe,” said the father, who lives in Port Alberni. “I figured I might get $5,000, and even then I didn’t want to pay this guy.”

But Justice Kathleen Downs called the man’s attack on Mack “an act of vigilante justice.”

“It is completely inappropriate for citizens to take the law into their own hands to right an alleged wrong,” she said. “Whether or not such a wrong was committed is of no relevance.”