Military Police resurrect Canada’s Long-dead Anal Sex Law
Buggery may not be illegal anymore, but that hasn't stopped police in Ontario from charging a man in his 70s with an offence that's almost 40 years old.
Details are gradually emerging about the case against a retired army chaplain, but crucial questions - including why police are using an archaic law to prosecute him - have yet to be answered.
When the alleged encounters happened, Roger Bazin was a young man and Roman Catholic chaplain at CFB Borden. Before retiring in 1995, he achieved rank brigadier-general and chief commander of all Catholic chaplains in the Forces.
The Toronto Star is reporting today that Canadian Forces paid a settlement to the family of another (male) teen in 2006 because of his relationship with Bazin.
Now the retired chaplain faces a basket of charges, including sexual assault.
Bazin was also charged with buggery, a now-abolished law, a fact that has alarmed gay activists.
"Certainly, you wonder why they're using that," says Richard Hudler, one of a clutch of seasoned gay activists working with the newly-formed Queer Ontario.
He suspects that Bazin's lawyer will petition to have the buggery charge dropped. He says that in the 1990s, men were charged with breaching an anal sex law that had been ruled unconstitutional. But because men didn't know they could challenge the law, police used it to leverage longer prison sentences and as a weapon during plea-bargaining.
"Most of the people who were charged didn't know that it had been found unconstitutional and some plead guilty," says Hudler.
In 1972, at the time of the alleged offence, anal sex was illegal unless it was conducted in private, between two people, and both parties were at least 21 years of age.
Peter Bochove, a Toronto bathhouse owner and longtime gay activist, says that while he hasn't been following the case closely, the reports so far raise more questions than they answer.
"How will this man defend himself nearly four decades after the fact? For that matter, how can there be any evidence to prosecute him successfully?" he says.
A spokesperson for the Canadian Forces investigation service insists that the application of the law as it stood in 1972 is both legal and ethical.
