A Canadian federal judge could be kicked off the judiciary for blaming the 19-year-old accuser in a rape trial of not doing enough to defend herself. Justice Robin Camp had lots of questions for the victim in the 2014 trial, including, “Why couldn’t you just keep your knees together? Why didn’t you just sink your bottom down into the basin so he couldn’t penetrate you?” He also told the woman at one point that “pain and sex sometimes go together … that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” added that “sex is very often a challenge” and often referred to the accuser as “the accused” during the trial. As if that weren’t enough, he also suggested the accuser was to blame because she was intoxicated: “She knew she was drunk … Is not an onus on her to be more careful.”
Not surpririsingly, Camp acquitted the man accused of rape, saying his testimony was more credible. But that decision was overturned on appeal and a new trial was ordered. The Canadian Judicial Council is now analyzing whether to oust the 64-year-old judge, who was born in South Africa but moved to Calgary in 1998. At a hearing on Friday, Camp apologized and said the comments he made during the trial were “unforgivable.” But he blamed a lack of knowledge about Canada’s sexual assault laws for the remarks during the trial. His excuse? He had been in South Africa from the 1960s through the 1980s and was not really aware of how much Canadian sexual-assault law had changed. And when he was asked why he didn’t try to educate himself? “I didn’t know what I didn’t know.”
The closing arguments in the hearing are expected on Monday.
