| Pauline Tam | |
| The Ottawa Citizen |
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| CREDIT: Pat McGrath, The Ottawa Citizen |
| Far more women now enter law than when Elizabeth Sheehy graduated in the 1980s. |
Elizabeth Sheehy is not a household name, yet her quiet influence on Canadian law is profound.
As a scholar specializing in women's legal rights, she has been responsible for key research behind the notorious sex assault case that resulted in "no means no" being a feminist rallying cry.
As a legal advocate, she pushed the federal government to review the cases of women who were convicted of killing abusive men in self defence.
When a Toronto woman was assaulted at knifepoint by a serial rapist who broke into her apartment, Ms. Sheehy was part of the legal team that forced the country's largest police force to admit its officers were negligent in the way they investigated sex crimes.
For her contributions to women's justice, the 48-year-old University of Ottawa law professor is being awarded an honorary degree from the Law Society of Upper Canada. Fittingly, the ceremony will take place tomorrow as more than 180 new Ottawa lawyers -- two-thirds of whom are women -- are called to the Ontario bar.
At a time when the number of women graduating from law school is rising steadily, Ms. Sheehy sees a new generation of feminist legal activists, some of whom are her former students.
"There are women entering the legal profession with a passion to ask the tough questions, and to examine the law from a different perspective," she says. "They are the legal dissenters of today and the legal pioneers of tomorrow."
As a student at Toronto's Osgoode Hall Law School in the early 1980s, when women made up only 20 per cent of the class, Ms. Sheehy was among the first to take courses about women and the law.
She went on not only to teach those courses, but to write the textbooks that form much of what students learn today about how the courts treat women, both as victims of crime and as offenders.
In 1999, Ms. Sheehy was named by Ottawa Life magazine as one of the city's most influential women. Four years later, she became the first U of O professor to hold an endowed position in women and the legal profession, funded by Ottawa lawyer and philanthropist Shirley Greenberg.
Since then, Ms. Sheehy has published a vast body of research on legal responses to violence against women. She has also continued to challenge the legal status quo, most recently in the case of a Vancouver woman named Bonnie Mooney, who warned police, to no avail, about her husband's violent outbursts. Ms. Mooney sued the RCMP for failing to protect her after her husband went on a rampage with a shotgun, resulting in his death and the death of Ms. Mooney's best friend.
The trial judge rejected Ms. Mooney's lawsuit, as did the B.C. appeal court, but not before Ms. Sheehy helped the support group, Vancouver Rape Relief, gain status as an intervener.
Even when Ms. Sheehy's research doesn't change the law in the short term, it often has a lasting impact. In 1991, the Supreme Court of Canada threw out the rape shield law that protects sexual assault victims from being cross-examined in court about their sexual history. As one of the advocates of the law, Ms. Sheehy prepared an analysis in support of it, and was pleasantly surprised when then-justice Claire L'Heureux-Dube wrote one of her most well-known and controversial dissents, based on her research.
A year later, Parliament passed a form of the rape shield law, designed to protect complainants from what are known as the "twin myths" of sexual assault: that unchaste women are more likely to consent to intercourse, and they make less credible witnesses in a court case.
Ms. Sheehy's lobbying efforts also prompted the federal government to review the cases of women who killed abusive men in self-defence, but were still convicted of murder or man-slaughter. In 1992, Ottawa Judge Lynn Ratushny was appointed to head the review, with Ms. Sheehy providing research and legal analysis for battered women who have killed violent mates. After the review, the federal government pardoned two women and erased the rest of the sentences of two others.
Ms. Sheehy also helped prepare the legal arguments for a 1999 Supreme Court case against Steve Ewanchuk, a serial sex offender whose court battle fuelled a national debate over sexual consent. The case prompted the Supreme Court to strengthen the country's "no means no" law.
Perhaps the most high-profile case Ms. Sheehy has been involved in is the lawsuit of a woman known simply as Jane Doe, who accused the Metro Toronto police of failing to warn women about a serial rapist on the loose.
As one of the experts on Jane Doe's legal team, Ms. Sheehy found not only negligence, but systemic sexism in the way the force investigated sexual assaults. The practices ranged from belittling comments to would-be victims, to an organized attempt to minimize or dismiss victim complaints.
"It was really disappointing to discover there was a sense of disbelief among police officers, who either didn't believe the victims' stories, or who thought of rape as a sexualized activity -- something men do for their sexual pleasure -- rather than something they do to completely humiliate and dominate women," recalls Ms. Sheehy.
"It just shows you how much of a liberal idealist I am. There were a lot of misconceptions in how the law regarded and understood rape as a crime."
After Jane Doe won her lawsuit in 1998, a city-ordered auditor's report recommended 57 changes in the way police work. They included adding date rape to the sexual assault unit's mandate, having the unit work at night and on weekends, when many sexual assaults occur, and working with paid experts from the women's community.
Ms. Sheehy likens the battle to the current public debate over the extent to which police practise racial profiling.
"In the same way that women's voices and experiences haven't been heard, racialized minorities are having a hard time getting their voices heard. But I'm confident that there is a new generation of legal professionals -- both men and women -- who are willing to fight those battles."