THE CANADIAN PRESS
QUEBEC — Myriam Bedard may have been one of Canada’s greatest athletes but a judge said during her sentencing Tuesday that she is showing all the signs of someone who seriously needs help.
Bedard, once known as Canada’s golden girl for her double gold medal win at the 1994 Winter Games, got a conditional discharge Tuesday after a jury convicted her last month on a charge of violating a child custody order involving her daughter.
Bedard must hand over any firearms and her passport to authorities and will have to serve two years’ probation.
In reaching his sentence, Quebec Superior Court Justice Jean-Claude Beaulieu took into account that Bedard had already served two weeks in jail in the United States and had come under intense media scrutiny.
Bedard listened with no expression as he also noted the aggravating factors that prompted him to reach his decision.
Beaulieu said Bedard had never showed any remorse and noted she blamed Jean Paquet, her daughter’s biological father, for everything.
"Without being a psychiatrist, a psychologist or a doctor, you present all of the characteristics of someone who needs help," Beaulieu told Bedard, who did not speak to reporters later.
He noted Paquet and her family only want to help the 37-year-old athlete, who has been hired to create a biathlon team for India over the next decade.
"If your relatives are convinced it is necessary to protect you from yourself, a legal recourse will be taken to that effect," the judge added.
Bedard, who wants to testify internationally on doping in sports as well as participate in the construction of a biathlon museum and training facility in Las Vegas, will have to put any travel on hold during her probation.
Bedard’s lawyer, John Pepper, who is already appealing the guilty verdict, had wanted an absolute discharge so Bedard could travel unrestricted.
"Justice follows its course and if there are future arguments to be made before the Court of Appeal we will make them then and there," Pepper said.
"Ms. Bedard is happy to not be imprisoned but she is disappointed to have not obtained all of what we asked for, an unconditional discharge."
He would not comment on Beaulieu’s suggestion Bedard needs help.
"I am not a psychiatrist, I am a lawyer," Pepper said.
Josee Lemieux, the Crown prosecutor did not regret asking that Bedard be imprisoned.
"The request for imprisonment was justified by the need for dissuasion and by the absence of remorse," she said outside the court.
Bedard was charged after she went to the United States last October with her daughter without Paquet’s consent and stayed there for nearly three months.
Bedard and her current boyfriend, Nima Mazhari, said they made the trip to denounce "Canadian bureaucratic terrorism" and had intended to stay for only a couple of weeks.
Pepper argued during the trial that Bedard did not prevent her ex-husband from seeing the girl, who was then 11, and that he was often unavailable. The Crown, which wanted a sentence in the community, argued the opposite.
Bedard, who spent 14 days behind bars in the United States before returning to Canada last December, faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
Known as an unquestionably strong athlete, Bedard has gone from drawing cheers from Canadians to making them shake their heads in recent years.
She has gathered headlines not for sports accomplishments but for sparring with her sports federation and making sensational allegations during the federal sponsorship scandal.< .
Bedard, a native of Loretteville, near Quebec City, sued and settled out of court in 1999 when Wrigley Canada Inc. once ran an ad featuring an altered photo of her that she said made her look masculine.
She tussled with Biathlon Canada over training alone and endorsements. She expressed gratitude to the organization at the 1994 Olympics but also suggested she might train elsewhere if her funding was cut.
But Bedard really started raising eyebrows with charges during the federal sponsorship scandal in February 2004.
The biathlete said she was forced from her Via Rail job because she raised questions about inflated payments to Quebec advertising firms.
Via chairman Jean Pelletier was fired by then-prime minister Paul Martin when he belittled the sports hero as a "pitiful" single mother who was seeking publicity.<
Pelletier has since won wrongful dismissal lawsuits against the government. An arbitrator has also ruled that Bedard left her job voluntarily.
Bedard also testified in March of that year she was told that racing driver Jacques Villeneuve was paid US$12 million to wear the Canada logo on his uniform and that the Groupaction advertising agency also trafficked in drugs — claims that have been denied by Villeneuve and the ad firm.
The blue-eyed blond credited Mazhari with giving then-prime minister Jean Chretien advice to keep Canada out of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.< .
(With files from Nelson Wyatt in Montreal)