OPINION
8 Obiter Dicta
Shaming All the Wrong People:
Your Life Can and May be Used Against You
This article was published as part of the Osgoode chapter of Canadian Lawyers for International Human
Rights (CL AIHR) media series, which aims to promote an awareness of international human rights issues.
- ian
mason
Just in time for the first week of our Ethical
Lawyering classes, Lori Douglas recently spoke out
about the humiliating experiences that led to her premature retirement. For those of you who don’t recall,
Lori Douglas is the Manitoba judge whose career was
ruined after nude photographs of her became public
knowledge. The photos were posted online without
her knowledge by her husband — himself a lawyer
— and used to sexually proposition one of his clients,
who sued them both for sexual harassment several
years later. The case dragged on until she resigned
in November and, unsurprisingly, she compared the
experience to being repeatedly sexually assaulted.
Surprisingly, she did manage to forgive her husband,
who died with little fanfare in 2014.
Do you remember his name? If you don’t, that’s
okay. His name was Jack King and I had to look it up
too.
Justice Douglas was
punished because her
husband failed to
respect her privacy
That’s one of the things I wish to address in this
article: a pervasive attitude regarding sexual matters that lingers in almost every corner of our society and culture. Lori Douglas was the victim of an
appalling invasion of privacy, but when all was said
and done, she might as well have been the party who
showed revealing photos of her spouse to a client. If
anyone should have become a household name for
failure to separate one’s private and personal life, it
was Jack King. Believe it or not, I’m not actually going
to suggest that she was dragged through the mud specifically because of her gender (though that’s not an
unreasonable conclusion). I’m saying that our society is so predisposed to shaming people over their
sex lives that some of us will shame a judge who was
first and foremost the victim of her husband’s indiscretion. Perhaps he would have been the publicly
shamed party if he had more to lose, but for whatever
reasons, he escaped mostly unscathed.
The second thing I wish to discuss is the extent to
which our personal lives can come under extreme
scrutiny in the legal profession. Lori Douglas is a
human being, and like a lot of people, she clearly had
some kinks. None of them should have ever become
public knowledge, and they certainly shouldn’t have
led to the end of her career, especially considering
they became public knowledge by little — if any —
fault of her own. Unfortunately, her private life did
become public knowledge and it did ruin her career.
It’s not fair and I sincerely hope something changes to
protect people in her situation, but as things currently
stand, you can be punished for something that was
supposed to remain behind closed doors. The phrase
“watch your back” is usually viewed as a threat, but
in some circumstances, it’s sincerely friendly advice.
You don’t have to live in fear of betrayal but you do
have to be careful.
I urge this caution as someone who is fairly likely
to have his personal life scrutinised at some point
during his career. Amusingly enough, the day after
laws surrounding bawdy houses were addressed
during a criminal law lecture, my band was invited
to perform as the musical entertainment at a sex club.
I declined to perform due to personal reasons unrelated to the venue, but I have performed there before
and will likely do so again in the future. Mostly, it’s
because a gig’s a gig and an audience is an audience,
but it’s also because there is a strong expectation of
privacy in such places. Between two gigs, there’s only
one photo of our band within the walls of the club and
we’re all wearing suit jackets and dress shirts. We had
to assure management that we would record nothing else. For the most part, we got in, played our set,
and got out. We were paid in club memberships we
never used. It’s not as boring as I make it sound, but
it’s nowhere near as crazy as one might expect.
The point is that someone hypothetically could
have snapped a photograph of us and used it to extort
me. Even our normal gigs can be morally dubious.
One of our songs is about an internet predator who
gets his comeuppance, but if you only hear the first
two verses, you could mistakenly believe we were
encouraging such behaviour. If someone really tried,
they could likely use my limited musical career
against me, and it’s not like I don’t have my days as a
teenage dirtbag to worry about. Being a bass player in
a raunchy rock band is far from the most questionable
thing I’ve done in my life (and I don’t plan on quitting
any time soon), but I can still see it being a problem.
That said, I do want to return to how clumsy our
society can be when it comes to addressing sexual
matters, especially victims of someone else’s indiscretions. Justice Douglas was punished because her
husband failed to respect her privacy. Robin Camp
showed that even Federal Court judges are willing to
“slut shame” sexual assault victims over little more
than personal prejudice or ignorance. Even male victims of sexual assault have their experiences trivialised. Without going into too much detail, I once
had a guy grope me when I passed out at a party,
and people have criticised me for not getting up and
fighting him. I was so drunk I hadn’t realised what
happened and only vaguely remembered slapping
someone’s wrist. The point is that you can be a FVV