BCIFV home > Media Releases > June 15, 2000

For Immediate Release
Contact: (604) 669-7055
June 15, 2000

Should Bastarache recuse himself
from Latimer appeal?

Or does he have exactly the insight required to see that justice is done?

A pioneer in the field of educating children with disabilities questions whether Justice Michel Bastarache is a conflict-of-interest regarding Robert Latimer's Supreme Court appeal, or is perceived to be because of negative social attitudes toward people with disabilities.

"It makes sense to me that a judge would recuse him or herself from a case because of a clear conflict of interest, such as that the accused had murdered a member of the judge's own family," says Dr Sally Rogow, a retired UBC professor of special education.

"But when you strip Robert Latimer's Supreme Court appeal down to basics, Justice Michel Bastarache is recusing himself from hearing the appeal of a man convicted of murdering his child because the Justice's own two children have died.

"These are different situations," says Rogow, who is also program director of The Person Within, a 30-minute video and two-day workshop designed to educate professionals and the public about abuse of children with disabilities.

"The fact that all the children in question had disabilities should be as irrelevant as if they were all the same age or gender," she says.

"The fact that people perceive a conflict of interest in the former situation but not the latter speaks volumes about our society's tendency to see people with disabilities as a group of beings who can be lumped together and collectively denied fundamental rights.

"The fact is that people with disabilities are individuals with as many rights as anyone else -- including the right not to be killed by those who should value their lives the most.

"I am not a legal expert, but ethically I would argue that as the loving father of children who died as a result of their disabilities, Justice Bastarache might be the best qualified of all the Supreme Court Justices to understand Mr Latimer's situation and assess the fairness of his sentence."

Dr Rogow can be reached for comment, and The Person Within workshops can be scheduled, through the BC Institute Against Family Violence at (604) 669-7055, reception@bcifv.org, or www.bcifv.org.

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