The lawyer for an Ontario children’s aid society has been fired after claiming a 14- or 15-year-old girl is a “sexually mature young woman,” not a child.
Toronto lawyer Gary McCallum first made the claim in a written statement last year during court proceedings for a civil case, in which a woman is suing Kenora-Rainy River Districts Child and Family Services. The woman claims she was sexually abused by her foster father in the 1980s, when she was a teen and under the care of a preceding agency in the Northwestern Ontario city.
“This statement is appalling and intolerable, and I agree with comments reported regarding the abhorrent nature of this statement,” Leonard continued.on McCallum’s statement on Sunday. In an interview with CTV’s Your Morning, Torkin Manes lawyer Loretta Merritt, who represents victims of sexual abuse, called it “appalling.”
Legally, the statement is “simply wrong,” she added. Anyone under 18 is considered to be a child under Ontario’s Child and Family Services Act, which is the law that governs the Children’s Aid Societies. In criminal law, anyone under 16 is a child and incapable of consenting to sexual activity.
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