Moving Beyond the Unilateral Duty Last week, I broadly surveyed the benefits and detriments flowing from R. v. Cuerrier, [1998] 2. S.C.R. 371, the case enabling the Crown to prosecute sero-positive individuals who fail to disclose an HIV transmission risk. While Cuerrier’s “duty to disclose” does serve the social imperative that express misrepresentations of serostatus [...]

Criminalizing Non-Disclosure, Cuerrier and Beyond In September 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in R. v. Cuerrier, [1998] 2. S.C.R. 371 that disclosure of sero-positive status is required to legally validate consent in sexual relations that pose a significant risk of transmitting HIV. What has followed is a lengthy series of HIV-related prosecutions, numbering [...]

“It is tragic but true that people working with the vulnerable sometimes abuse their positions and commit wrongs against the very people they are engaged to help.” In M.E. v. Sproule, 2008 CanLII 58428, Chapnik J. begins by quoting from the decision of McLachlin J. (as she was then) in Bazley v. Curry, [1999] 2 [...]

Last Thursday the Supreme Court decided on two companion cases, R. v. R.E.M. 2008 SCC 51 and R. v. H.S.B. 2008 SCC 52, both of which concerned sexual abuse convictions that were overturned on appeal on the basis that the trial judge’s reasons were inadequate. In both instances the Supreme Court reinstated the original convictions [...]

Sexual assault cases are often very difficult to resolve, particularly those in which the victim is a minor and the offender is a close adult family member. The difficulty arises not only due to the nature of the offence, but also, because more often than not, the only two witnesses to the crime are the [...]