Bob Bernardo Essay

Bernardo didn’t have the best childhood growing up. Even though he seemed to trick those around him into thinking he was a happy go-lucky kid, back at home it was a lot more troublesome than it had seemed. His father, son of an Italian immigrant and English woman, and his mother, adopted by a wealthy lawyer and his wife, both had mental issues themselves. Bernardo’s father had been caught watching young women through their windows at nighttime and was even charged with child molestation after fondling a young girl (Murderpedia, unknown). As shown in a timeline of events from Goswami et al. (unknown), it was later also discovered that Bernardo’s father had been molesting his younger sister and had eventually went to jail for all of his sexual …show more content…
He was both mentally and physically abusive towards his family causing the mother’s mental state to slowly worsen (Murderpedia, unknown). She would start to isolate herself by staying in the basement and even went to the point of not taking care of herself. According to Murderpedia (unknown) it was noted that even though Bernardo’s two siblings had shown the effects of the dysfunctional upbringing, Bernardo was still his usual self leaving his family and neighbours to think that everything was going fine for him. He was still able to maintain his good grades in school, stay committed to the Boy Scouts, and kept his well mannered image. It wasn’t until Bernardo started to get involved in relationships that people were seeing through his ‘good boy’ reputation. Stated on the Paul Bernardo page by Goswami et al. (unknown), Bernardo’s girlfriends would find him to be “very controlling and protective” and he even went as far as threatening to kill them if any of them told him that they wanted to leave. For some who decided to leave him, he would make obscene phone calls to them which lead to a few restraining orders held against him (Goswami et al.,