Supreme Court reviewing voyeur case

Canada’s top court is set to hear the case today of a high school teacher acquitted of voyeurism even though he used a pen camera to secretly record video of the chest area of his female students.

The case raised eyebrows when the trial judge decided Ryan Jarvis, of London, Ont., had violated the teens’ privacy but had no sexual intent in doing so.

The Ontario Court of Appeal — in a split decision — disagreed with the judge on both key points, but nevertheless upheld the acquittal. While Jarvis was surely sexually motivated, the Appeal Court said, the students had no reasonable expectation of privacy at school where the filming occurred.

In its appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, the prosecution maintains the Appeal Court’s view of privacy was far too narrow.

“The students had a reasonable expectation that they were in circumstances where their privacy interests related to their sexual integrity would be protected,” the government says in its written filing. “Here the impact of the recording on the students’ dignity and sexual integrity was significant.”

Jarvis, however, maintains the students were in classrooms or other common areas where anyone could observe them. Concluding they had a reasonable privacy expectation, he says, could see the criminalization of a wide range of conduct, such as staring at someone from behind tinted sunglasses.

“Reasonable people can debate whether all surreptitious recording of people for a sexual purpose should be made a criminal offence,” Jarvis says. “(But) the court should be very hesitant to expand the concept of ‘reasonable expectation of privacy‘... lest it disturb the delicate balance the courts have attempted to strike between the interests of the state and the individual.”