A Canadian judge could lose his job after he told an alleged teenage rape victim ‘to keep her knees together.’
Judge Robin Camp faces six allegations from a 2014 trial, where a 19-year-old homeless woman accused Alexander Scott Wagar of raping her at a house party, News.com.au reports.
Allegations, according to The Globe and Mail, include: ‘belittling sexual assault victims, demeaning the prosecutor, advancing rape myths and stereotypes, and showing antipathy to the law on sexual assault, in particular its courtroom protections for vulnerable victims.’
The allegations come from a 2014 trial where a 19-year-old homeless woman accused Alexander Scott Wagar of raping her at a house party, news.com.au reports.
During the trail Camp was reported asking the victim, ‘Why couldn’t you just keep your knees together?’
And, ‘Why didn’t you just sink your bottom down into the basin so he couldn’t penetrate you?’
‘If you were … frightened you could have screamed.’
The judge acquitted Wagner of the charges, reminding him: ‘You’ve got to be really sure that she’s saying yes … so remind yourself every time that you get involved with a girl from now on and tell your friends, okay?’
As for the victim, Camp wanted to make sure she wasn’t confusing sex with pain.
‘Sex is very often a challenge,’ he said. ‘Sex and pain sometimes go together, that … that’s not necessarily a bad thing.’
The court transcripts were released last year when Alberta’s Court of Criminal Appeal overturned the acquittal and ordered a new trial.
A hearing will be held in August over the Judge’s behaviour, where Camp hopes to save himself from losing his job.
He believes ‘his training, counseling and this process as a whole have left him better equipped to judge cases with the empathy, wisdom and sensitivity to social context to which all judges aspire.
‘He now understands that some of his prior thinking was infected with stereotypical beliefs and discredited myths.’
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