Sudbury judge accused of interfering in mother's attempt to regain custody of her daughter

A Sudbury judge could be kicked off the bench for allegedly attempting to interfere in a child protection matter affecting a girl and her mother.

CBC is prohibited from identifying the individuals involved due to a publication ban on their identities.

Justice John Keast is facing a disciplinary hearing this week in Toronto held by the Ontario Judicial Council.

He is accused of exchanging text messages with long-time friend Lynda Cullain who was a manager at the Children's Aid Society of the Districts of Sudbury and Manitoulin.

Keast is alleged to have gained access to confidential information regarding a child protection matter involving a child and her mother.

The mother, who was trying to regain custody of her daughter, obtained the series of text messages and provided them to the children's aid society, which then passed them onto the judicial council, sparking the disciplinary proceedings.

Those messages had been taken from Keast's phone.

The mother died before she could give evidence at a preliminary motion in the matter.

But the four-person panel who will rule on whether or not he did anything wrong did hear the mother's voice on Monday.

Conversations she recorded with children's aid officials were played in the hearing room.

The mother is heard saying that she knows Keast would find out that she provided these texts to the CAS and wanted to be prepared "when he flies off the handle."

"I'm going to tell him that he did it to himself," the mother is heard saying.

"I know he's been pulling strings from the get go. I know that both of them have been doing this for some time."

But the mother is also heard repeatedly expressing concern that Justice Keast might be punished.

"I don't want something bad to happen to him," the mother says on the recording.

"I don't want him to lose his job over this. And I can see it happening."

CAS employees Olwen Lavoie and Tricia Biasucci were on the witness stand Monday and listened to recordings of their meetings with the mother.

Lavoie is heard apologizing to the mother that a CAS employee texted this confidential information about her to Justice Keast.

"I can't tell you how sorry I am," Lavoie is heard saying on the tape.

"This is not the way we provide services. We'll figure out what's going on ... what's most disappointing to me is that you may not have trust in our organization." 

'Stop. This is wrong'

On the tape, the mother several times expresses her concern about how the text messages would be used and who would get access to them.

"I would hope I can keep this in confidentiality with you. He doesn't know that I have seen this," the mother says.

But Lavoie repeatedly testified that she gave "no assurances" as to how the texts would be used after the mother handed them over.

​The hearing also heard that the texts contain "rude" and "negative" comments about certain children's aid employees, including the executive director and the two women who testified Monday.

The lawyer for Justice Keast urged the panel hearing the matter to throw out the text messages. He argued CAS had an obligation to honour the woman's wish that her meeting with them remain confidential.

"This was a serious invasion of privacy with no state actor saying 'Stop. This is wrong,'" lawyer Paul Stern told the hearing.

He also argued that Keast's personal privacy was infringed when "stolen" private correspondence was used against him by two government organizations.

Stern suggested that some may say that Keast "brought it on himself" but argued that the judge had suffered "serious impact" from this private conversation being made public.

If the panel of the Ontario Judicial Council, chaired by Justice Eileen Gillese of the Ontario Court of Appeal, rules the text messages are inadmissible, the case against Keast will be dismissed.

That decision could come Tuesday when the hearing resumes in downtown Toronto.