Allegations that nude photographs of a senior Manitoba judge in bondage, chains and performing oral sex were posted on an Internet porn site have kindled debate about how much of a judge’s private life is private.

The Canadian Judicial Council’s Ethical Principles for Judges — which judges are encouraged but not required to follow — say they should strive to conduct themselves with integrity and avoid conduct that would diminish public respect for the judiciary.

Can someone who poses naked with a whip be considered a person of integrity, or does the question open the door to inappropriate moral judgments about an individual’s personal life?

“Do we imagine that judges never disrobe or that judges never have sex lives? Of course they do,” said Bruce Ryder, an Osgoode Hall Law School professor who teaches in the area of judicial independence and ethics.

Ryder worries that “prurience” and “moral prudery” will drive the debate over whether Associate Chief Justice Lori Douglas of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Manitoba should be removed from office.

Manitoba Chief Justice Marc Monnin announced Wednesday that Douglas, of the court’s family division, has asked to be “temporarily relieved of her duties as a sitting judge” and will work in an administrative capacity until a complaint to the judicial council is resolved.

Less than 24 hours earlier, the CBC had reported that sexually explicit photographs of Douglas are part of the complaint made in July by Alexander Chapman, a 44-year-old computer specialist, who says he was harassed by the judge’s husband to have sex with her.

Chapman said after he retained Winnipeg family lawyer Jack King in 2003 to handle his divorce, King showed him about 30 nude photographs of Douglas and supplied him with a password for a porn website devoted to interracial sex.

Posted on a section of the website entitled “Our White Princesses” were naked photos of Douglas, then a lawyer at King’s firm, Thompson Dorfman Sweatman, Chapman said.

The CBC said it has seen an ad from a website known as “Darkcavern” that featured nude photos of Douglas and sought a “smooth black male or Mexican” to join her and King for “multi-partner” sex in Cancun in 2002.

King said he was depressed over the deaths of his best friend and his brother at the time, and Douglas did not know he had posted the photographs

Chapman accepted a $25,000 settlement from the lawyer in July 2003 that required Chapman to delete photographs of Douglas from his personal computer.

“He lied about that,” Bill Gange, King’s lawyer, told the Star, adding the pictures were removed from the Internet prior to the 2003 settlement.

Douglas was appointed a judge in 2005 and promoted to associate chief justice last year.

The conduct of judges prior to appointment can “absolutely” have a bearing on their fitness to remain in office, said Norman Sabourin, the judicial council’s executive director.

The Supreme Court of Canada made that clear in 2001 in upholding a decision to remove Justice Richard Therrien from the Court of Quebec.

Therrien failed to disclose he had been convicted 25 years earlier of helping hide four FLQ members involved in kidnapping and murdering cabinet minister Pierre Laporte.

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The court said the public demands “virtually irreproachable conduct from anyone performing a judicial function.” But questions persist about where to draw the line.

Should a judge be kicked off the bench for adultery? What about a woman who pays her way through law school by pole dancing? Is she disqualified from being a judge?

If a lawyer deliberately posts nude photos of herself on Facebook or on a website it could later undermine public confidence in her ability to serve as a judge, said Lorne Sossin, dean of law at Osgoode.

However, if the photos were taken in the context of an inherently private relationship and posted without her consent, Sossin said, it’s hard to imagine she should be judged negatively.

Sossin suggested it would also be unfair to find Douglas unfit for judicial office simply on the basis of her sexual predilections. At an earlier time, the same might have been said about homosexuals, he added.

Adam Dodek, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, who writes on legal ethics, said turning judicial appointments advisory committees into morality police probably isn’t where the country wants to go.

“If she (Douglas) wasn’t aware of photos being posted on the Internet and she wasn’t involved in this plan to try to seduce her husband’s client, then what you’re really left with is somebody who is engaged in, let’s say ‘sexually graphic’ actions that some people might find offensive,” Dodek said Wednesday.

That said, Dodek believes the advisory committees, which recommend candidates for judicial office, are lagging behind human resources specialists who routinely check social networking sites and the Internet in vetting job applicants.

Ryder, of Osgoode, believes if a judge isn’t involved in anything illegal or something that could give rise to a conflict of interest — such as a citizens’ crusade against city hall — their private lives should not be up for discussion.

“We really have to start by asking ourselves, what exactly has Justice Douglas done wrong?

“Based on what we know so far,” said Ryder, “maybe she deserves our sympathy more than our condemnation, because it seems she has been the victim of an egregious invasion of privacy.”