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Sex With Supervised Student Draws Revocation

By Michael Frisch

The Ontario Law Society Hearing Division has revoked the license of an attorney for misconduct as a paralegal instructor at St. Clair (Windsor) College

The College’s paralegal program had a mandatory field placement component that required 120 hours of supervised paralegal work. Completing this field placement component is a mandatory requirement for a P1 licence.

Complainant was 21 years old when she entered the program in 2019; she did her field placement work under Respondent’s supervision.

During the first two months of the mandatory field placement, the respondent made remarks such as he would “come for” the complainant if she was not his student and did not have a boyfriend.

The respondent also discussed with the complainant the women that he slept with, including an instructor at the College. He also showed the complainant a picture of a naked woman on his computer.
 
When the complainant and respondent would attend court together, the respondent would sometimes quietly point out women that he had slept with or dated.
 
As time went on, the respondent started touching the complainant. He put his hand on the complainant’s knee under the table, brushed her shoulders as he passed behind her, and grabbed her hand.
 
The complainant did not tell the respondent that she was uncomfortable or ask him to stop touching her out of concern that it would jeopardize their relationship and her placement since the respondent had taken her on after she had completed only one semester of the program.
 
Around this time, the complainant also divulged some personal details about her life to the respondent; this included a past sexual assault, and issues with her boyfriend. When she broke up with her boyfriend around February 2020, she told the respondent this fact and that the breakup was hard for her.
 
Shortly after telling the respondent about her breakup, the complainant drove the respondent to see a client in the Chatham area. In the car, the respondent suggested playing a game of “Truth.” In the course of this “game” the respondent asked the complainant questions of a sexual nature, such as how many people the complainant had been intimate with, whether she would ever sleep with someone a lot older than her, if she found him attractive, what she liked in bed, what she wanted to try, and what she wore to bed.
 
 On the drive back from Chatham, the respondent continued asking questions of a sexual nature. He also put his hand on the complainant’s thigh, squeezing it sometimes, and slowly moved it upwards towards her crotch. When they stopped for gas, the respondent told the complainant that he had an erection. When they arrived back at the office, the respondent told the complainant that he wanted to kiss her, but she refused. The respondent persisted, so the complainant gave him a kiss on the cheek.
 
A sexual relationship then commenced that began with kissing, digital penetration and
 
Eventually during March break, the complainant went to the respondent’s house, and they had sex. Thereafter, this arrangement of having sex at his house occurred five to ten times and lasted until June or July 2020. Sometimes they would go from the office to his home to have sex.
 
The sexual relationship ended around June 2020 and the relationship ended around July 2020
 
In October 2021, the complainant told another instructor at the College about her relationship with the respondent. The instructor encouraged her to report her interactions with the respondent to the College and to the Law Society, which she did.
 
Severity of misconduct
 
The sexual relationship lasted from March 2020 to June 2020. Prior to the start of the sexual relationship, in January and February 2020, the respondent started to make inappropriate comments that were sexual in nature to the complainant and started to touch the complainant in an unwanted and inappropriate manner. In total, the inappropriate relationship lasted from January to July 2020. This is not an insignificant amount of time.
 
Respondent had taken advantage of his position, the misconduct was not a “momentary lapse” and Respondent had not admitted it

 In the circumstances of this case, where there are no extenuating circumstances, no material efforts at rehabilitation, and little, if any, genuine remorse, and where we have no confidence that the respondent’s misconduct will not be repeated, the revocation of the respondent’s licence to provide legal services is the appropriate penalty.

(Mike Frisch)

Posted in:
Bar Discipline & Process