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NEWMARKET, Ont. — Recent changes to sexual assault law that guarantee complainants the right to be heard on the admissibility of evidence of their sexual history and to be assisted by counsel seriously jeopardize trial fairness, an Ontario Superior Court judge has been told.

It is believed to be the first constitutional challenge to the new law, passed last December, in Ontario at this court level.

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At the centre of it is the R v A.C. case, where a man identified as A.C. is accused by his ex-wife J.T. of two counts of sexual assault dating back to 2007 and 2009.

Or, as J.T.’s lawyer, Jeremy Butt, put it in his factum, “A discussion is to take place about whether messy details of a person’s sex life should be aired in the cold sterility of a courtroom.

“Should the very person whose sex life risks humiliating public display be able to participate? Or should she be silenced while others decide on exposure of one of her most intimate spheres of being?”