CKNW Editorial
for April 19, 2000

Today I’m going to don my robe, put on my tabs and go to work as counsel again. I’m appearing before Her Honour Shirley Giroday whom I last saw in Law School eons ago. In fact she was so smart that when she went into Third Year Law her notes for Second Year were reproduced and sold, as what we called canned notes, to most of my class nearly all of whom owe their passing to this early bit of commercial law. But I mustn’t unduly butter up to the judge so I’ll get on with my defence of the accused Heather Ingram, whom I’ve never met, incidentally.

Your Honour … the paper says you may send my client to jail. I beg of you not to do that. For what she stands charged and now convicted of, by pleading guilty, is really being in love with the wrong person, at the wrong place, at the wrong time. She is not convicted of taking advantage of anyone let alone any sort of sexual aggression – just with letting love make a fool of her.

The facts are simple. When she was 29, and teaching school, she fell in love with a male student aged 17 who, the prosecutor admits, initiated the liaisons. Ms Ingram was dismissed from her employment and may indeed find it difficult ever to teach in the education system again. I’m troubled by the prosecutors allegation that occasionally drugs were involved but since he didn’t ask to call witnesses on the sentencing I think we can assume that this was probably marijuana and though that’s illegal, and scarcely goes to her credit it surely is not, in light of what I’m going to say, enough to tip the balance in favour of a jail term.

What my client did was pretty stupid. There is no question about that. But, your honour, these two are now living together – and it’s well over a year since the time giving rise to these charges. This is not an assault or a one night stand – this is, from my client’s point of view and I think the young man’s too, a matter of falling in love.

To understand the nature of that love I think you must, with respect, consider just who my client is. A winner of the Governor-General’s medal in high school, a scholarship student at Simon Fraser University she graduated at the top of her class in her Bachelor of Education class. Now you might say that being that bright, she should have known better than to take up with a student 12 years her junior, or indeed any student at all – and there is force in that argument - but I submit that this woman was so in love that she was prepared to risk all that for her young man.

Love is not only a many splendoured thing as the song goes, it’s a complicated emotion that has driven men and women to incredible stupidity over the eons. You as a judge and as a human being know what love, desperate love can do. The wildest chances are taken in its name – the most idiotic actions often result from this deep emotion.

Now, your honour, my client must be punished. It just won’t do to have teachers having affairs with pupils. But the main reason for this sensible rule is that usually sexual affection shown by teacher to pupil comes from the former using his or her position to take advantage. That’s clearly not the case here. And though my client is no less guilty because she didn’t force her attentions on this young man it does go to the question of sentence.

What I ask for my client is justice … but justice tempered with mercy. You know what she has already suffered and you also know that we’re dealing here not with a victim but a young man mature for his years who took the lead … a young man old enough for the armed forces and now, a year later, old enough to vote. You also know that my client has an unblemished record.

This, your honour, is a case of love, misplaced perhaps, inappropriate, no doubt but none the less love for that.

We lawyers love the Latin so may I ask you, Your Honour, to show, that when there is no force, no advantage of position, no unfairness, that however ill timed and misplaced it may be – amor omnia vincit … love conquers all.