Helen Naslund at the Edmonton Institution For Women, where she is serving a sentence for killing her abusive husband, Miles Naslund, in Edmonton, on Aug. 2.Amber Bracken/The Globe and Mail
A 58-year-old mother and grandmother convicted of killing her abusive husband in rural Alberta has been granted the first steps toward release from prison, after a parole hearing in Edmonton on Wednesday.
“It’s going to take a long time to come back and heal from all of this … but I’m ready,” Helen Naslund told the two-person parole board panel, during her hearing at Edmonton Institution for Women. “Everything can’t be healed in here. I have to be out and working.”
The Parole Board of Canada granted Ms. Naslund’s application Wednesday for unescorted temporary absences but also granted her day parole, which will take effect when she’s eligible in March. By then, Ms. Naslund – who has been in prison since the fall of 2020 and also spent time in custody before being granted bail – will have served a third of her sentence.
Discussing the risk to public safety, parole board member Delaine Dew acknowledged Ms. Naslund had committed a violent offence, but added: “We must consider this in the context of the battered woman syndrome, which overwhelmingly applies to you.”
A number of supporters from around the country attended the hearing virtually, and Sen. Kim Pate joined Ms. Naslund in person as a support and advocate. Ms. Pate said more than 100 letters were filed on Ms. Naslund’s behalf, both from people who know her personally, and others who connected with her after learning about her case. She said some of the letters are from women who’ve escaped domestic violence themselves.
The parole board heard that Ms. Naslund has been an exemplary inmate who had no previous criminal history, maintains the support of her family and community, and is considered to be a very low risk to reoffend.
Ms. Naslund and her youngest son were charged with first-degree murder after the remains of her husband, Miles Naslund, were found in a dugout near their property in September of 2017. After her arrest, Ms. Naslund told RCMP she shot her husband in the back of the head while he slept on the Labour Day weekend of 2011, then, with the help of her son, disposed of her husband’s body, car and guns, and reported him missing to RCMP.
Decades of abuse, then years in prison: Inside Helen Naslund’s fight for her life – and justice
Ms. Naslund, her sons and others who knew the family reported that she had been abused by her husband for nearly 30 years, including being threatened and held at gunpoint by him the evening before he was killed.
She pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2020 and was sentenced to 18 years in prison, after a plea deal between her lawyer and the Crown. Under the terms of the deal, the first-degree murder charges against Ms. Naslund and her son were stayed.
The sentence was one of the longest manslaughter terms a woman has received for killing an abusive spouse in Canada, and sparked a backlash around the country. The sentence was lowered to nine years by the Alberta Court of Appeal in 2021, after an appeal filed by defence lawyer Mona Duckett.
Speaking before the parole board on Wednesday, Ms. Naslund described meeting her husband at a young age, and being subject to verbal and physical abuse throughout their relationship.
“If it wasn’t myself, it was the kids. That was very hard on me,” she said. “I could take the punishment of me, but I couldn’t stand that.”
She said there were multiple incidents in which her husband held a loaded gun to her head.
Ms. Naslund said she doesn’t remember the exact moment of the shooting, but told the board she accepts full responsibility for it. She said both her sons who were in the house that night were asleep downstairs at the time. (Her third son had moved out and was not at the farm.)
The killing came to light in 2017, after Ms. Naslund’s middle son went to RCMP. Asked by the board whether she would ever have come forward, Ms. Naslund said she wasn’t sure, but didn’t think she could have kept living with it.
“It was eating me up inside,” she said.
Ms. Naslund told the parole board she has been learning to value and take care of herself, and that her priorities when she is released are to work and to spend time with her family. She will live with one of her sisters and her two cats in a small town outside Camrose, southeast of Edmonton.
“I truly feel that I’m ready to move forward,” she said. “I’ve come a long way, and I want to get back to what I’d call a more normal life.”
Under the board’s decision, she will be able to leave the prison for one unescorted absence in January, and another in February, then commence with day parole in March.
Ms. Pate said she was pleasantly surprised by the board’s decision to grant both the unescorted temporary absences and day parole, and that she hopes the steps are the beginning of a positive new chapter for Ms. Naslund.
“It feels like Helen has been on an uphill battle for so much of her life,” she said.