On June 9, 2024, WiCCD released an interview with Ottawa Criminal Defence Lawyer Natasha Calvinho, about her representation of Pat King in the context of proceedings arising from the trucker convoy situation.

Here is the link:

Natasha opens up in this episode about a recent incident in which she says a male colleague did three things: (1) suggested she was not a good lawyer; (2) indicated his distaste for her representation of a client in another matter because of his personal involvement in that case; and (3) made – according to Natasha, unfounded — allegations about her professional conduct during that other case.

I am enormously grateful to Natasha for her courage and candour in this episode, which is hugely important for WiCCD members. By the end of this episode, WiCCD members should be left with the impression that should this happen to them, they will not be alone, as Natasha had the support of WiCCD, both organizationally and from individual WiCCD members. Just as it should be. And precisely what my goal was in founding, establishing and growing WiCCD into the 550 women strong national organization that it has become.

Personally, I found Natasha’s episode difficult to get through and will admit that I broke down listening to her story and also hearing about the support she got from the women in our bar through WiCCD and the lack of support from male colleagues.

Until I heard Natasha’s description of what has happened to her recently, I don’t think I had really processed all that I suffered in the lead-up to the formation of WiCCD. And just how alone I had suffered all of it. Which resulted for me in a very serious persistent depression that was hard to shake.

The weird thing is that the person who chose to take to the internet and make these comments and allegations about Natasha somehow managed to do three things at once, which took at least three different male lawyers to do to me – but all of it happened to me, over the course of a number of years leading up to when I had finally had enough. I had enough of the defamation, the stalking, the harassment, the public abuse, the unfounded allegations, the character assassination and the silencing.

And I really had enough of trying to persuade, even beg, men in the bar and organizations run by these men, to support me. They never did. And they were never going to. Some would email or call privately expressing concern, alarm or even shame at the public behaviour of their male colleagues but I never saw those individuals publicly, or for that matter even heard that they were privately, reprimanded. And I never received a single acknowledgement or apology from the bad actors. They believe themselves beyond reproach and refuse to be held accountable. That’s their profound arrogance I hope to shake loose in due course.

But even my women colleagues couldn’t really stand up for me then, because when they tried, they suddenly drew attention to themselves and then were targeted. Because we didn’t have the strength of our numbers. We were all alone and we were all targets. But never again. We now have each other. This empowers us to speak up in defence of our women colleagues and telegraph that any retaliation will be met with an equally powerful response. Turns out, this works. And I am just so glad.

For a full historical context of some of the events that eventually led me to form WiCCD and my thinking on the issues, you can refer to this blog on a number of fronts as follows:

First, the history of what I observed of the misogyny in the defence bar and how our male colleagues communicated with and about their women colleagues coupled with how that was linked to women leaving criminal defence and why an all woman run organization was the only real solution – hence, WiCCD!

Second, the sad and sorry saga of the stalking, harassment and attacks I endured at the hands of two lawyers who created at least two anonymous social media accounts, for starters, and eventually devoted at least one of them just to defame and denigrate me with baseless personal attacks, escalating to other online harassment and threats because they were angry I left them after they threw a fit because they didn’t get a file referral they somehow felt entitled to.

There are some really twisted toxic people in this profession, fueled by envy who simply cannot sustain either professional or personal relationships that are built on genuine admiration, trust or affection. A lot of broken people practice law, do it reasonably well, while privately devoting much of their time to their personal agenda to put and keep women down, silent and “in their place” for fear the status quo that once belonged to the old white man might slip away from their cold tight grip. Sad to see and confounding and hurtful to experience, until you get it.

Once you appreciate the systemic issues, it’s a lot easier to ignore the individual offender. The problem that remains are the masses of young women lawyers who continue to operate under effectively coercive control of that generation of old white men, mis-perceiving as mentorship some relationships that are actually toxic. There’s a whole city full of such “pairings” in small criminal defence firms for example, that is glaringly and bizarrely built on dozens of replications of this dysfunctional model.

That’s sad, but I can’t fix it all. Those young women will either see the light one day or languish where they’re at. All I can do is shine that light for them to follow a path of emancipation if they see it and find the strength. At some point, however, as they mature, they do become willing and complicit actors and must be left to their own devices. In one very real sense, people must make their own mistakes to truly learn from them.

I can’t really blame anyone for being slow on the uptake to recognize the individual abuse they’re suffering in real time. I certainly allowed bad things to happen to me while I turned a blind eye, was probably willfully blind even, to my own situation until it ended in a supernova of high conflict drama and I slowly came to discover what had gone on behind my back in the meantime, which is chilling.

Here is a reasonably up to date chronicling of that particular story from my lived experience, which I found devastating and took years to recover from.

What I haven’t written about yet, that I might turn my mind to next, are the details of the public train-wreck one lawyer caused that really lit the fire under me for starting WiCCD in the moment and why that man decided to take to a public forum to cause trouble. How those toxic communications were intended to pit women against each other and managed to cause harm for years to come as a result.

And the other thing I have yet to address is the amazing tenacity of a third male lawyer in their attempt to force me off a file where they were personally involved and couldn’t handle my capable representation of the accused person. These are all tasks for another day, but stories, like Natasha’s, that need to be told.

Because a #metoo type reckoning in the legal profession awaits us. Not just about sexual harassment and assault, which is a predictable extension of permitting implicit and express sexism to percolate in daily interactions, without intervention, but the ongoing massive problem of the abuse women generally are subjected to particularly in criminal defence. It’s time for an open, honest and difficult conversation.

For some statistics on the problem, see WiCCD’s Surveys here:

WiCCD is committed to addressing issues of all forms of harassment of our members and have been working on these issues since our inception.

I am absolutely gratified to know that WiCCD has attained its stated purpose.

Natasha was not alone.

Nobody else should ever have to suffer what I have been through, without supports.

Here is just one of so many joyful photos of our 550 WiCCD Women who now have each other’s back. This one was taken when Her Honour Louise Arbour visited with us on the occasion of our 2nd birthday in early 2024.