Women have their uses. In the case of Federal Court Judge Robin Camp, it’s as a backdrop, a sort of wallpaper but with soft fabrics and flowing hair.

I have written before about using fellow humans as “flattering adjacencies,” which means standing beside people who make you look morally fabulous in comparison. You will always look shiny next to Gary “Aleppo” Johnson or Kellie Leitch. So go stand next to them. No?

Camp, South African-educated, is appearing before a Canadian Judicial Council committee after numerous complaints about his extreme misconduct towards a complainant, a 19-year-old homeless indigenous woman allegedly sexually assaulted by an Alexander Wagar in a bathroom. (After this notorious Alberta provincial court case, Camp was promoted to Federal Court, where appeals from female refugees fleeing sexual violence are often heard.)

Camp showed up like the Canadian flag, a human maple leaf (in a pink tie) flanked by wife and daughter the way we are flanked by oceans. Camp doesn’t want to look fabulous in comparison to them. He wants to be seen as someone they are willing to be in a room with, a voluntary adjacency. His photo-staging declares “I know women! Some women like me!”

In the 2014 trial he had referred to the complainant as “the accused,” asked why she didn’t keep her knees together, asked why she had allowed the sex to happen “if she didn’t want it” and had told the female Crown, in a bizarre joke, that he hoped she “didn’t live too long.”

Camp defended himself in a letter to the panel on Friday, saying he regretted “almost all” his remarks in court. And then he spoke. “The things I feel worst about are the questions I asked about the accused,” he said, again astoundingly referring to her as the “accused.”

In exculpation, he told the panel he often refers to the “dishwasher” as the “washing machine,” so there’s that. He then re-insulted her by calling her a “fragile personality.” And 40 minutes later, he once again called her the “accused.” But not a “washing machine.”

As for his daughter, who told the hearing that Camp had been very kind to her after she was raped in her own home, her statement wasn’t as helpful as she’d hoped. The case in which Camp tormented the complainant occurred years after his own daughter’s rape. He had learned nothing.

We’ve seen a lot of voluntary female adjacencies recently. Nate Parker, the American director of The Birth of a Nation, who was acquitted in 1999 of raping a fellow student who later killed herself, has wrapped himself in chance adjacencies. “I’ve got five daughters and a lovely wife. My mom lives here with me; I brought her here. I’ve got four younger sisters,” he told Deadline when the rape case came up as his movie was beginning its triumphal opening march. I know women! Some women like me!

The notorious ex-CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi, eventually acquitted of sexual assault, and showed up in court with his mother and sister.

Bill Cosby is amply defended by his wife, a significant adjacency for a man accused of having spent his adult life drugging and raping unconscious women. And now he is claiming to have gone blind, so it is really good to be seen leaning on the arm she offers.

Roger Ailes, a tormentor of women at Fox News, hired a self-proclaimed feminist lawyer, Susan Estrich, to defend him and then negotiate his exit. She did a good job. He will get $40 million (U.S.) from Fox as he departs, double what one of his victims, Gretchen Carlson, will get.

Camp was supported in the hearing by big-league female witnesses — Manitoba Judge Deborah McCawley, who mentored him, sexual diversity expert Brenda Cossman, who guided him, and psychologist Lori Haskell, who questioned him — hired by him to train him in what we thought judges understood: the law and courtroom behaviour. They were enthusiastic about his eagerness to learn. Camp’s remark that “sex and pain sometimes go together” was brushed away, as was every grotesque thing he said in court. They were his voluntary adjacencies.

Cossman defended Camp’s comments, like the one about women keeping their knees together, as genuine though insensitive evidentiary inquiries. It was puzzling, as these rare judicial hearings always are. But to see Judge McCawley metaphorically wrap her legal robes around Camp and exclaim over his enthusiasm? Now that is flattering. Maybe the trio could start their own agency, The Adjacency Agency.

“I was very unhappy,” Camp said of Alberta Justice Minister Kathleen Ganley’s complaint that triggered the hearing. “My thinking isn’t really sexist but old-fashioned.” He believed “that women all behave the same way” when they are attacked.

I am grateful that feminist groups like LEAF have intervenor status at the hearing, and that the rape case itself will be heard again before an educated and civilized judge. I hope the panel will recommend Camp’s removal and the council will ask the federal justice minister to consult Parliament. I cannot see how a modern nation with a feminist prime minister can have judges like this.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

One sees a lonely figure. She is a raped indigenous Canadian woman who has wanted to kill herself since these events. She is a University of Pennsylvania student who committed suicide after her rape case failed. She is a helpless actress, felled by a famous predator’s drug.

These women have no flattering male adjacencies. There is no team of men surrounding them with aid, advice and care. It has always been thus.

Read more about: