Can any jail sentence make up for the lifetime of pain caused by child sexual offenders?

One Saskatchewan man, who says he was a victim 50 years ago, says no.

John Gormley began that conversation on Thursday morning on the heels of a police announcement about Operation Snapshot which targeted online sexual predators across western and northern Canada. They arrested 21 and charged 16 people, including 11 in Saskatchewan for child porn and sexual exploitation.

For a caller named Bill from Gull Lake Saskatchewan, that topic takes on a dark and personal meaning. He called in to John Gormley Live on Thursday to share his personal story.

“I’m in my fiftieth year of a life sentence, I started serving my life sentence when I wasn’t quite five years old,” he said.

Although he still couldn’t speak about exactly what happened to him as a child, he says his experience lasted for seven years. Bill says even now, he still wakes up in the middle of the night screaming from the memories of that time.

“The nightmare plays in my head like a never-ending movie,” he explained.

Bill says it took him years before he started talking to a doctor and realized his nightmares were based on real suppressed memories.

“I’ve tried to commit suicide, I didn’t do a very good job,” he said.

Bill says even the woman he loved left him because he was “so messed up.”

“I take medicine every day to control the rage and the anxiety and the depression,” he explained.

As a victim he says the crime of sexual abuse as a child is never truly over, and he has a message for the public.

“This is the life sentence that I’m living – these bastards, bastards should not live,” he said.

Bill says the least the justice system can do is to put people who sexually abuse children away forever.