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Lawyers offering free legal assistance to Jian Ghomeshi complainants

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TORONTO

Four Toronto criminal defence lawyers are offering free legal assistance to any complainants of fallen CBC icon Jian Ghomeshi.

“We are prepared to assist them if to attend court and vigorously defend their dignity, their honour and their privacy rights,” Marcy Segal said Thursday.

“My colleagues are humbled by the strength and determination of those women to come out. It has been difficult for them and what better reason is there to provide pro bono services because they have changed the events in time,” she said.

“This is no longer a discussion on the backburner and they have paved the way for other women to come forward and receive the full service representation that Ghomeshi will have.”

Segal said Crown attorneys aren’t “able to speak to the complainants alone because they could become a potential witness.”

Victim witness assistance employees, who provide a vital service, “are not in a position to give them legal advice and truly be their advocate,” said Segal. “We can be there from the get go and level the playing field.”

Segal, Jacob Jesin, Alvin Shidlowski and Robert Rotenberg have offered assistance through the legal process to any Ghomeshi complainants.

“Everything a complainant speaks to the Crown is recorded or noted and is disclosed to the defence. Those inconsistencies, even inadvertent inconsistencies, can sometimes hurt the prosecution when they are exposed in cross-examination,” Jesin said.

The trauma of testifying and the fear of the unknown can be reduced by the assistance of complainant’s own counsel, he said.

“Witnesses should testify in a straight-forward manner that allows the testimony to deliver the narrative in a succinct, clear way,” he added.

Alleged victims have equal rights and aren’t “second-class” citizens under the Charter of Rights, says defence lawyer David Butt, who has acted for hundreds of complainants.

Butt represented the alleged assault complainant who wanted to wear a niqab while testifying, a precedent-setting case that went to the Supreme Court in 2012.

Butt said the Crown has a different role and is an impartial minister of justice, so he or she doesn’t advocate for a complainant.

“The Crown represents the community at large, but the complainant, who is the heart and soul of the case, very often doesn’t actually have her own counsel,” said Butt, who has spent the last 13 years as a defence lawyer after spending 13 years as a Crown prosecutor.

sam.pazzano@sunmedia.ca

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