Investigation finds many legal professionals kept or regained licences despite serious wrongdoing involving minors
Ontario’s legal regulators are facing renewed scrutiny over how they handle child sexual offences and misconduct by lawyers after an investigation found many legal professionals kept or regained their licences despite serious wrongdoing involving minors.
An analysis by the Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB) under the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health identified 35 cases since 2000 in which Canadian lawyers and judges were criminally convicted or professionally disciplined for child sexual offences or misconduct. Only 14 of those cases resulted in licence revocation, while most others led to suspensions, fines or retirement in lieu of permanent removal from practise, according to the IJB.
The IJB also found four additional cases where lawyers were licensed after prior criminal convictions for child sexual offences, bringing the total number of cases reviewed to 39. The investigation concludes these files “reveal a system that is slow to respond when legal professionals commit offences or engage in misconduct including child luring, sex with minors and possessing child sexual abuse material,” and that penalties often fall short of what some observers consider meaningful accountability.
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