James Sidney Allen, the ‘sadistic pedophile’ who killed eight-year-old Ricky Johnston in an Orleans swamp in 1975, has quietly been released from the Royal Ottawa Hospital’s secure forensic unit in Brockville, Ontario, the Citizen has learned.
Allen, now 51, was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1976 and has been held in a mental hospital ever since.
His discharge, granted by the Ontario Review Board earlier this month, comes one year after the same board refused his release after hearing from a doctor who warned “the risk associated with his pedophilic personality disorder … is that a vulnerable woman or child could be subject to significant harm.”
The family of the dead boy told the Citizen that the public should know that Allen is now living unsupervised for the first time in 37 years.
Because authorities didn’t warn the pubic, the Johnston family wants the public to know that they should guard their children from Allen, now living in an apartment down the road from a school on Pine Street in Brockville, Ont.
“To be quite honest, it’s not only the children that need to be protected but women as well,” said Ricky’s sister Sandra Johnston.
“From what I understand from the dispositions his problems also resonates with women.
“After what has been released in the last few days with Robert Pickton and the Connecticut murders, it’s imperative that we do our moral obligation to society and at least let them know that they are at risk,” Johnston said.
A Crown attorney who spoke at Allen’s Ontario Review Board hearing last year said that a discharge would provide Allen with “more freedom than is actually good for him.”
The review board ruled in 2011 that it would be in the best interests of public safety for Allen, diagnosed as a sadistic pedophile, to remain in a secure forensic unit.
Allen told the review board last year that he needed support from his hospital team, while at the same time asking for a discharge. A doctor told the review board, which annually reviews the cases of killers found unfit for trial, that Allen asks for two different things because his personality disorder is so ‘conflicted.”
In fact, documents reviewed by the Citizen show that last year Allen complained he wasn’t getting enough support from the hospital team and “they are not at hand all the time when he needs them.” The review board also noted in 2011 that ‘he relies on staff support and, insofar as the hospital team is concerned, its ability to respond to the accused’s response to stress is important for his risk management.”
In 1999, Allen was subjected to repeated hormone testing to see if his injection drugs were keeping a lid on his violent sexual urges. Reports show he was still aroused by “sexual sadism and pedophile.”
In recent years, hospital reports indicate “good suppression” from the drugs he administers himself.
Allen was released from the mental hospital earlier this month after he won a discharge, according to an Ontario Review Board order dated Dec. 3.
Allen, for the first time since he killed Ricky Johnston, is now living unsupervised in an apartment on Pine Street in Brockville, Ont., two blocks from a high school and two blocks from the St. Lawrence River.
Allen, who has problems reading and writing, used to tell his hospital support team about his violent sexual fantasies, but lately doctors have reported that he no longer has them. The doctors also say that the only way they know that is from his own ‘self-reporting.’
The same review board that denied his release last year noted in 2011 that Allen reacts to stress by angry outbursts or an urge to drink alcohol. His sexually deviant urges are also triggered by stress, according to documents.
James Allen was 13 when he killed eight-year-old Ricky Johnston. They had met on June 12, 1975 at a baseball game in Orleans. Ricky and his younger sister went to the ball game and when they got to the stands, Allen offered his lap to Ricky. That night, Ricky Johnston’s parents lectured him about sitting on a stranger’s lap. The next day, on June 13, 1975, a Friday, young Ricky and his sister spent the afternoon at an Orleans park. Ricky was showing his seven-year-old sister how to ride a bicycle down a hill. On their way home for supper, they came across Allen sitting on his parents’ front porch. Allen called them over. Ricky’s younger sister told him not to go over to the stranger their parents had warned them about.
Allen persuaded the eight-year-old boy to join him. Allen, according to his statements to police in 1975, forced the boy to strip down to his socks, then strangled him to death in an Orleans swamp by the Ottawa River.
The child killer initially helped in the search, leading police far away from the crime scene. He then co-operated, and later confessed after police found Ricky Johnston’s naked body at 2:25 a..m on June 14, 1975.
Even after all these years, Ricky Johnston’s sister says there’s “nothing you can do to ease the pain.”
“But thinking that even the slightest possibility of protecting and maybe even saving someone from his evil grasp does bring comfort,” said Johnston, adding that she will “beg” Brockville police to patrol Allen’s neighbourhood.
She said the crime, described by the hospital review board as “horrific”, has haunted the family.
Still, Sandra said she and her sisters “try our best not to raise our children in fear of someone hurting them.”
According to his discharge order, Allen is required to check in with the hospital once a week, abstain from alcohol and drugs, submit urine samples, take rehab courses, and notify the hospital of any travel plans outside Ontario.
He is also prohibited from being alone with any child under the age of 16.
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