Justice for a Judge?

A rare public inquiry into a Mantioba judge's sex life hopes to determine if the public trusts her enough to let her keep her job.

A public inquiry will determine what, if any, wrongdoing was committed by a Manitoba family court judge whose lawyer husband posted nude photos of her online and tried to get one of his clients to have sex with her. The Winnipeg Sun urges Justice Lori Douglas to quit before the public inquiry opens, so as to spare her and her profession the indignity of having lurid details of her sex life cross-examined. “What ultimately proves Douglas' unworthiness to be a judge is what she did outside the bedroom, once she became aware of her husband's misdoings: Nothing,” the editorialists claim. However, it's been reported that she disclosed the incident when she was promoted to the bench in 2005; if her honesty was good enough for her justice peers then, why should it be discounted now?

Christie Blatchford, writing for the Postmedia chain, argues that Douglas has done nothing wrong, and is suffering for the mistakes her husband made while in the throes of depression. “What is missing from all this is what exactly Douglas is alleged to have done that is wrong,” notes Blatchford. “She didn't post those pictures on the web. She didn't have an inappropriate relationship with a client or hurt his feelings by allegedly sexually harassing him.” The hounding of Douglas is just the Canadian incarnation of the “damaged goods theory,” Blatchford posits: “If a girl or woman is deemed to have been overtly sexual, or too sexual, or hell let's be frank, sexual at all, she will be brought down.” We doubt that all this has befallen Douglas just because she's a woman (it's easy to foresee the same reaction to nude photos of a male justice), but Blatchford's bang-on about our eagerness to pillory anyone publicly demonstrating their sexuality.

Striking a balance somewhere between those two ends is the Winnipeg Free Press, whose editorialists contend that only an inquiry “can decide whether public confidence in the judge has been hurt to the extent she could not continue on the bench.” What tips the scales in favour of a public inquiry, according to the Free Press, is that Douglas presided over a family court, where many of those appearing before her might be uncomfortable knowing that lascivious photos of the woman who decides who gets custody of their children are circulating online. And therein lies the rub: Regardless of whether Douglas did anything illegal – and it appears as if she didn't – restoring public trust to the justice system is paramount.