Tribunal to rule if Crown policy is anti-male
By Gerry Bellett
The Vancouver Sun
20 August 2004
The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal will hear the case of a man who claims the Crown
counsel's office is gender-biased and routinely discriminates against men when
laying domestic violence charges.
Scott Crockford was charged with assault after a fight with his common-law wife
on March 16, 2003.
He claimed she was the aggressor, but police and the Crown agreed Crockford
should be charged with assault. The charges were ultimately stayed.
Crockford's complaint to the tribunal was accepted and a two-day hearing will
commence Aug. 30.
In the written complaint, Crockford says police and Crown counsel follow an
official policy that is gender-biased.
"Apparently there exists a mandate that is based on gender in regards to
men's violence against women," he wrote. "As good as the intentions
may have been, it has opened the door for legal discrimination against men and
in my case enables women to use violence against me without fear of
repercussion."
Crockford says he suffers from physical and mental disabilities that made him
physically weaker than his spouse, who he says was the aggressor during the
fight.
The hearing will proceed despite objections from the B.C. attorney-general's
ministry that the tribunal has no jurisdiction to examine the discretion of
Crown counsel in laying charges.
Tribunal member Tonie Beharrell dismissed the ministry's objection that the
exercise of "prosecutorial discretion is immune from court or tribunal
review as a matter of policy and constitutional imperative."
Relying on statements by the Supreme Court of Canada regarding the role of human
rights legislation, Beharrell said: "I find that there is a strong public
interest in the application of the [Human Rights] Code which, in any given case,
may outweigh the rationale for deference towards decisions made in the exercise
of prosecutorial discretion."
The ministry argued policy played no part in the decision to lay charges and
that the Crown counsel who recommended charges didn't take the gender of the
parties into account. Further, a review of the case showed no evidence of
malice, bad faith or that the sex of Crockford or the complainant were an issue,
the ministry said.
But Beharrell had "some concerns" with the assertion that the role of
the policy was immaterial because the decision to approve a charge was not
discriminatory.
"In this case it is clear that the complaint includes an allegation of
systemic discrimination relating to the policy. Specifically, the complaint
alleges that the mandate or policy is gender-based and therefore discriminatory
as it is based on assumptions that men will always be the aggressors and women
always the victim in situations of domestic violence.
"Thus, the complaint includes the allegation that the approval of the
assault charge is part of a larger pattern of behaviour: that is, the alleged
facts were the result of a systemic policy."