Nude pic probe smacks of witch hunt
If it looks like a witch hunt and stinks like a witch hunt, it’s probably a witch hunt, however it’s dressed up.
So it is with the Canadian Judicial Council’s release Thursday of the formal allegations against Manitoba Associate Chief Justice Lori Douglas.
The matter moves to a hearing in Winnipeg this month.
This mess first hit the fan about two years ago when the CBC, with egregious smarminess, broke the story about how, a few years before Judge Douglas was appointed to the bench, her lawyer husband Jack King had posted sexually explicit pictures of her on a website, advertised her alleged fondness for black men and then tried to set her up with one such, a former client named Alexander Chapman.
Chapman, a quick study (he was convicted of arson, theft and uttering death threats in 1993 but legally changed his name and got a pardon), had a lawyer send what was essentially a demand letter for $100,000 to King’s firm.
King, who as it turns out was in spectacular midbreakdown, had to come clean about what he’d done, to his firm and his wife, paid Chapman $25,000 personally in exchange for his signature on a confidentiality agreement and a promise to destroy all the pictures, left the firm and spent a year off work, being treated for depression.
That was in the early summer of 2003.
The scandal was the talk of, if not the town, at least of the local legal bar.
By December 2004, when Douglas filled out the application form for the judiciary, everyone who should have known, and their dogs, knew.
According to the response filed by Sheila Block, Douglas’s lawyer, the then-chief justice of the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench, Marc Monnin, was at that time “aware that nude photos of a private nature had been posted on the Internet.” He was sufficiently concerned about the risk of blackmail to not support Douglas’s candidacy.
But by the fall of 2004, with nothing further having surfaced, the chief justice “removed his objection, members of the bench encouraged Ms. Douglas to apply,” and so she did.
The judicial appointments committee that in 2005 considered her application was aware of King’s conduct, and asked its lawyer to contact her “regarding the intimate photos that had been placed on the Internet.” The lawyer did that. She answered all of his questions.
According to Block’s response, “a member of the (justice) minister’s staff, who was aware of the fact that her husband had once offered her for sexual services” also spoke to Judge Douglas.
The matter was fully discussed at the committee, where members “knew that the pictures were sexual in nature” and that they had been on the web, but the committee still recommended her.
But they also flagged her application “for the minister” — it was then-Liberal justice minister and now MP Irwin Cotler — “so he would be aware of it.”
Furthermore, in the fall of 2005 at another proceeding (the documents don’t say what that was), four judges of the Manitoba Court of Appeal also learned of the pictures, that they had been placed on the web in violation of Douglas’s privacy rights, and sealed the record.
What Douglas didn’t do, when filling out the “personal history form” for appointment, was to try to reduce this ghastly and convoluted tale to print. Asked, “Is there anything in your past or present which could reflect negatively on yourself or the judiciary, and which should be disclosed?”, she answered, “No.”
That is her alleged failure to disclose, though in fact, Judge Douglas had disclosed all over hell’s half acre.
She is also accused of sexually harassing Chapman. It was, of course, King who did that.
Block’s response flatly calls this charge “a complete fabrication. She has been the victim of wrongdoing by both her husband and Chapman.” The judge knew nothing of what her husband was doing online.
The final significant charge is that this whole sorry saga, and the fact that sexual pictures of Douglas were posted on the web without her knowledge, is alleged to mean that the “confidence of individuals appearing before the judge, or of the public in its justice system, could be undermined” and that she is thus incapable.
There are two important things to remember. One is that when the CJC’s inquiry committee first ruled on this, last month, it found that “it is in the public interest that even very weak claims be publicly tried,” legal politesse for, “This is a really crappy case but we’re moving on with it anyway so we don’t seem to be hiding anything.”
Finally, as Block put it so magnificently in part of her response, “a candidate is not measured by the conduct of his or her family members.”
Nor should a judge be so measured, or to put it in plainer English, fitted for the stake.