Nova Scotia Plans Law Change to Allow Suits in Older Sex Crime Cases

Chronicle Herald
March 6, 2015

http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1272922-nova-scotia-plans-law-change-to-allow-suits-in-older-sex-crime-cases

Bob Martin, a victim of sexual abuse by Fen MacIntosh, says he plans to do all he can to ensure the province’s Limitations of Actions Act is amended to allow sexual abuse victims to sue pedophiles without a time limitation.

Nova Scotia’s justice minister said she intends to amend legislation to allow victims of historic sexual crimes to launch civil lawsuits against their abusers.

Lena Diab told reporters in Halifax Thursday she intends to amend last fall’s Limitation of Actions Act in the upcoming spring session.

“It will deal with passing retroactive legislation with respect to sexual assault,” Diab said. “What the legislation will mean is that victims of sexual assault, regardless of when it happened … can launch a civil claims suit.”

The act, previously amended in November, removed time limitations on sexual assault victims’ ability to sue, but not retroactively.

The amendment included a strict time limit for victims of historic sexual crimes, leaving many out in the cold.

Bob Martin of Port Hood, one of six men who say they were abused by former businessman Ernest Fenwick MacIntosh, said there is some cautious optimism about Diab’s decision.

“I’m just the pinch-hitter, but we’re all on the same ball team — we just struck a home run today,” Martin said Thursday from his home.

“Victims just want this in their back pocket. I hate to say this, but it’s almost a feel-good thing. It’s all we have — so why was government taking the side of MacIntosh?”

During two 2010 trials, MacIntosh was convicted on 18 charges of gross indecency and indecent assault against Martin and five other boys in the Port Hawkesbury area in the 1970s. MacIntosh was sentenced to 51/2 years in prison.

But those convictions were later overturned by the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal because it took too long to bring MacIntosh to trial.

Then in December, it was discovered that MacIntosh had been charged with forcing “unnatural sex” on a 15-year-old Nepalese boy.

MacIntosh was recently handed a seven-year jail sentence in Nepal and fined the equivalent of $12,650 for molesting the boy.

Martin said he credits media attention and the advocacy work of MacIntosh’s victims for helping sway the government toward a new amendment.

“She’s not going to mess up this time, because she messed up profoundly the last time,” Martin said of Diab’s actions. “It was flawed; she knew it was flawed.”

Allan MacMaster, the Progressive Conservative MLA for Inverness and the party’s justice critic, said he attempted four times in the fall legislative session to ensure survivors could sue notorious pedophiles, such as MacIntosh, without a time limitation.

“I’m hopeful that they are going to sincerely bring in an amendment that is the same as the one I brought in, but until I see the legislation, I can’t say whether I’m happy about it,” said MacMaster.

“The thing about sexual assault and abuse, especially when it happens to a young person, it can be a lot of confusion. There’s a lot going on there in a person’s mind, and a lot of times they keep it to themselves. For someone in that position, it was really heartless to say, nope, too bad, you kept it to yourself.”

The opposition member asked for Diab to resign after she made comments that there were no other jurisdictions in the country with retroactive legislation such as what MacMaster proposed.

He later pointed to legislation in four other provinces as proof that it would not, in fact, set a precedent.