| In the year since Terrence Haldane was arrested in a police raid on a Calgary gay bathhouse, he’s had regular nightmares and has even been rushed to the hospital because of a severe panic attack. Now he’s decided to fight back.
Haldane and his lawyers, who appeared in court on November 17, are planning to argue that the section of the Criminal Code under which he was charged violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Haldane was charged with being found in a bawdy house after police raided Goliath’s Sauna and Texas Lounge on December 12, 2002. It was the first raid on a gay bathhouse in Canada since 1981 and it provoked national outrage in the queer community. Haldane says he’s fighting the charge because he wants to prevent the same thing from happening again.
"(The Calgary Police Service) will do it again or some other police service in Canada will do it again. I would feel really badly if I didn’t do something so gay men don’t have to go through this in the future," says Haldane.
Haldane describes the raid as "horrifying and traumatizing."
"All I heard was the thunder of feet on the stairs and one cop yelled ‘Stay where you are. You’re under arrest.’ I couldn’t believe this was happening in Calgary," he says. "It really reminded me of the Nazis rounding up Jews into boxcars."
He estimates more than 30 cops raided the bathhouse and says he was offended to see many of them wearing elbow-length gloves.
"When they were searching the rooms they had these huge rubber gloves – autopsy gloves. They were blue. God knows what they thought they would find. Some of them had them on right from the start," says Haldane. "I even said to one of them ‘What the hell do you think you’re going to get?’"
Fast Forward called the Calgary Police Service for comment, but didn’t receive a response by press time.
Haldane’s lawyer Simon Lord says the bawdy house section of the Criminal Code is outdated legislation that allows "unwarranted intrusion" into peoples’ private lives.
A bawdy house is defined as any public place where "acts of indecency" are occurring. However, indecency isn’t defined. That’s left up to the police and the courts to determine, says Lord.
"The way the law seems to read at the moment, a place can become a bawdy house because people are doing consensual things outside what conventional society might approve of," says Lord. "What it results in for the gay man on the street is a lot of stress and uncertainty. Terry was just an ordinary person doing something that he thought was perfectly legal. Suddenly he finds himself charged and humiliated. It’s only because he’s out that he can say, ‘I think this is wrong.’"
If the constitutional challenge proceeds, lawyer Joe Arvas of Victoria will take over as lead counsel.
Arvas has won many constitutional challenges for his clients, including the Little Sisters bookstore case in which he successfully argued that Canada Customs violated the Charter by preventing gay and lesbian books from crossing the border.
Haldane’s case was adjourned until December 1.
Meanwhile, four men charged as keepers of a bawdy house after the raid had their trial adjourned until December 2nd. |
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