The court also agreed to anonymize the lawyer’s identity to protect his daughter, one of his victims
An Ontario court must conduct a fresh assessment of whether an aspiring lawyer with a history of sexually abusing children is of “good character,” a requirement that must be met by all licensed lawyers and paralegals in the province, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled Monday.
The decision in Law Society of Ontario v. AA marks a victory for the Law Society of Ontario, which had appealed multiple tribunal and court rulings determining that the aspiring lawyer, who sexually abused three children in 2009 and is only identified as AA, met the good character requirement under the Law Society Act.
Monday’s ruling also granted a motion by AA to keep his identity anonymous during the proceedings. In the unanimous decision by a panel of three justices, Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Lorne Sossin wrote that the anonymization was needed to protect AA’s victims, including his daughter, who does not know she was sexually assaulted.
“Recent jurisprudence shows that the existence and details of an assault that a sexual abuse survivor has suffered is information so sensitive that its publicity could be an affront to dignity that the public would not tolerate, even in service of open proceedings,” Sossin wrote.
AA first sought to be licensed as a lawyer in 2012, three years after he sexually abused the three victims in a close-knit religious community outside of Canada.
For a decade, AA downplayed the extent of his abuse to medical practitioners, child protection authorities, and the LSO. He withdrew his licensing application in 2017 after the LSO received an anonymous tip about the abuse and conducted an investigation.
In 2019, AA requested the resumption of the licensing process, prompting an investigation and a referral to the Law Society Tribunal. The tribunal granted AA his license in 2023, on the condition that he does not meet with “minor children” unsupervised.
The LSO appealed the tribunal’s decision with an appeals division, then asked the Ontario Superior Court of Justice’s Divisional Court to review the tribunal proceedings. Neither bid was successful, prompting the LSO to turn to the Ontario Court of Appeal.
On Monday, Sossin wrote that the Divisional Court, the last venue to consider the case, had engaged in flawed reasoning with respect to its good character finding. This produced an incoherent decision that simultaneously found that AA was of good character and could not be trusted to be alone with children.
However, Sossin wrote that he was not ruling out the possibility that the Divisional Court could again find that AA is of good character, once the lower court engages in the proper legal analysis. The justice directly addressed one of the key questions he posed to all the parties at a hearing last summer: Are certain offences so severe that a person who committed them will never be able to meet the good character requirement?
“If I was of the view that certain conduct, such as child sexual assault, could forever preclude a person from being found to be of good character, then [replacing the Divisional Court’s ruling on the matter with an appellate court finding] would make sense. Why remit a matter whose outcome is inevitable?” Sossin wrote.
However, he said that the stance that certain behaviour can never be compatible with a good character finding does not align with s. 27(4) of the Law Society Act, which gives aspiring lawyers the right to an LSO tribunal hearing before their licence can be refused.
“If certain misconduct precluded an applicant from demonstrating good character, there would be no need to refer every good character matter for a hearing under s. 27(4),” Sossin said.
In a statement to Law Times on Monday, a spokesperson for the LSO said the legal regulator “welcomes the guidance that the court has provided in this decision.”
“In the Honourable Justice Sossin’s reasons for allowing the Law Society’s appeal, the court has emphasized that the protection of the public interest and public confidence in the legal professions are the overriding principles which must be weighed in licensing decisions,” the spokesperson added.
James Melnick, a sole practitioner who represents AA, said that from his perspective, the appellate court “is a court of the highest quality, and this decision will no doubt reverberate through subsequent hearings.”
Melnick said he was still reviewing the decision and could not comment on whether he agreed or disagreed with it. However, he said that the “legal work done by all parties on this matter was exemplary, from where I stand.
“There is no room for doubt that public confidence in the legal professions is of paramount importance in all licensing applications. I hope this decision helps bring clarity and a sense of confidence to that desired end.”
