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There is a particular cruelty in what Kenneth Law built: a business that found its customers at their most broken, offered them the means to die, and then moved on to the next order. This week, at a sentencing hearing in Ontario, Canada, the people left behind by that business finally got to say so in court.
Law, a former chef, has admitted to 14 counts of aiding suicides in Canada after connecting with vulnerable individuals through online suicide forums. Canadian authorities say he sold roughly 1,200 packages of toxic substances to recipients across 40 countries, with approximately a quarter of those packages sent to the United Kingdom. Nearly 80 deaths in the UK have been linked to him. As part of a plea deal with Canadian prosecutors, he will not face charges over any of those British deaths, making this four-day sentencing hearing the only formal reckoning many affected families will ever see.
A Survivor Puts a Face to the Exploitation
Until Wednesday, Elisabeth Belien had not been publicly identified as one of Law’s customers. She chose to come forward at the hearing, telling the court she had been 23 years old and at her lowest point when she purchased toxic chemicals from him in January 2023. Medics administered an antidote in time, and she physically recovered. The psychological damage has proven far harder to undo.
“Kenneth Law made it a lot easier to act on that despair,” she told the court, describing ongoing intrusive thoughts and flashbacks. She also spoke of guilt, both for surviving when others did not, and for the belief that her purchase had helped sustain his operation. “I felt like the purchasing from Kenneth Law, I enabled him to continue his business, supplying his products, to other people who might have been vulnerable, like I was,” she said. “I felt guilty for surviving.”
Her testimony closed on a note of hard-won hope. “I’m learning that things can get better,” she said. “I’m learning to be excited to see what the future holds for me.” The gratitude, she added, does not erase the trauma.
Families Describe What Cannot Be Undone
The hearing has also heard from the families of British victims, whose impact statements are being read into the record even though Law faces no legal consequences for those deaths under the terms of his plea agreement.
David Parfett, whose son Tom died in October 2021, described how grief had fundamentally changed him. “I’m still, after five years, unable to fully process Tom’s death,” he said, noting that in the immediate aftermath he had channelled his energy into understanding and exposing the online platforms that allowed Law to operate, leaving little room to mourn. “I’m a very different person to who I was before Tom took his own life, having previously been gregarious, outgoing.”
The parents of Henry Tucker, a 14-year-old British boy who also died in October 2021, added a layer of particular anguish to the proceedings. Kate and Henry Tucker Sr. explained that their son had been misdiagnosed with autism when he actually had a neurological condition that could have been treated with antibiotics. “The realisation that his suffering and his death could have been prevented is a weight that is impossible to bear,” their statement read.
Norson Harris, father of Ashleigh Harris, addressed Law’s failure of basic human decency directly. “Rather than offer the help needed, that individual Kenneth Law sold her a chemical that Ashleigh took to end her life,” he said. He expressed a wish that Law would one day recognise that the right response to everyone who reached out to him “should have been that they were loved and there was help available to them.”
Stephen Mitchell Sr., whose son Stephen Mitchell Jr. died on March 25, 2023, spoke directly to Law in the courtroom. He drew a pointed parallel between the despair his son had felt and any moments of helplessness Law himself might have experienced during incarceration, before making the distinction clear: “Mr Law robbed my son of that chance to be well.” Sandra Scott, mother of Amara Scott who died on February 9, 2022, aged 25, described a family that had been actively trying to help her daughter through a mental health crisis when Law intervened. “Our efforts were cut short when, in her most vulnerable state, she made contact with the accused,” she said.
The Structural Problem That Outlasts the Verdict
Law was arrested in May 2023 following a complex, multi-year investigation involving at least 11 law-enforcement agencies from roughly a dozen countries, including the UK, Italy, and the United States. The scale of that effort underscores how difficult it is to police a crime that operates across borders through encrypted forums and international postal networks.
The plea deal that keeps Law from facing UK charges is a practical consequence of that complexity. Canadian prosecutors secured a conviction; pursuing parallel proceedings in Britain would have been legally and logistically formidable. But for the families of the nearly 80 people who died in the UK, the arrangement means the man they hold responsible for their loss will be sentenced only for the 14 deaths he formally admitted to in Canada.
What this case ultimately illustrates is not simply the danger of one individual, but the vulnerability of online spaces to predatory actors who target people in crisis. Law did not find his customers by chance. He sought them out in forums built around suicidal ideation, which means the platforms that hosted those communities are part of the story too, a point David Parfett made explicitly when he described spending the years after his son’s death trying to expose the role of internet platforms in enabling Law’s trade. The sentencing hearing continues, but the questions it raises about online safety, cross-border accountability, and the limits of plea agreements in transnational crimes will persist long after it concludes.
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