A Canadian federal court justice has resigned after a national disciplinary body voted for his removal over the victim-blaming comments he made to a complainant during a rape trial.
On Thursday, Justice Robin Camp resigned after Canada’s Judicial Council voted 19 to 4 in overwhelming favor of his dismissal, according to TIME. The decision comes nearly three years after Camp accused a 19-year-old rape survivor of not doing more to prevent being raped, an attack that occurred above a sink at a party.
During the trial in June 2014, Camp commented to the survivor, “Why couldn’t you just keep your knees together? Why didn’t you just skin your bottom down into the basin so he couldn’t penetrate you?”
According to Camp, as documented by the statement of allegations, the survivor could have avoided being raped if she “[skewed] her pelvis slightly [to] avoid him. He also told her, “some sex and pain sometimes go together…that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
Camp even alleged that the rape wasn’t a rape: “I don’t believe there’s any talk of an attack really… There is no talk of real force… She knew she was drunk.” Camp also addressed the prosecutor, telling her, “I hope you don’t live too long.”
He also told the accused rapist, Alexander Wagar, to tell his male friends to “be far more gentle” and patient with women in order to protect themselves.
According to CBC News, the woman said the judge’s remarks made her hate herself. “He made me feel like I should have done something, like I was some kind of a slut,” she said.
At the time of the rape trial, Camp was appointed to the Alberta Provincial Court Criminal Division in Calgary, then became a federal judge last year. After the investigation began in 2016, Camp recused himself from any cases involving sex crimes.
“I’m very sorry that, on reflection and rereading what I said, that I intimidated her, using facetious words,” Camp said at his testimony in September. “I can’t guarantee that I’m not prejudiced in other areas… I have learned to be constantly vigilant against it.”
Despite Camp’s apology and his in-depth counseling sessions with feminist scholars, Canada’s Judicial Council voted for his dismissal.
“We find that the Judge’s conduct, viewed in its totality and in light of all of its consequences, was so manifestly and profoundly destructive of the concept of impartiality, integrity, and independence of the judicial role that public confidence is sufficiently undermined to render the Judge incapable of executing the judicial office,” the council said in a statement.
H/T TIME
