[LINK] "When restorative justice isn’t enough"

[rfmcdonald]

Emma Teitel of MacLean's is very skeptical about the idea of restorative justice as applied to the male Dalhousie University dentistry students who were joking on Facebook about sexually assaulting sedated patients (among other things).

The group, Class of DDS 2015 Gentlemen, deleted shortly after an anonymous source alerted the press to its existence, was a mecca of juvenile, hateful material. It was not, as many of its defenders claim, home to harmless, sexist jokes of the “make me a sandwich” variety. In addition to a quiz about female dentistry students entitled “Who would you hate-f–k?” (sadder still is that these geniuses had to borrow their sexist barbs from Jian Ghomeshi), the group’s content included explicit jokes about sedating women for sexual purposes. In one post, a photo of a man holding a rag up to a woman’s face was accompanied by the caption: “Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?” To add insult to injury, the group’s creators also exhibited a very poor understanding of human biology. In the now-deleted words of one member: “Penis . . . The tool used to wean and convert lesbians and virgins into useful, productive members of society.” In short, the so-called dentistry gentlemen not only implicated themselves as deviant pricks, but as unprofessional, irresponsible dolts. This isn’t a case of “rape culture.” It is one of malpractice.

Yet the school has decided to handle the issue behind closed doors with the promise, says Florizone, that the process will be “victim-centred.” In Florizone’s defence, Gerald Hashey, a senior manager with the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, told the CBC, “The restorative approach is the best way to ensure that community interest, public interest and the interests of the female students are kept at the heart of the issue.”

A restorative approach to justice in this case may benefit the victims—if, of course, the victims wish to resolve the issue as quickly as possible without fear of being named, even at the expense of the “gentlemen” getting off scot-free (and let’s face it, scot-free in this case means any punishment short of expulsion). But the suggestion that restorative justice will benefit the community and the public at large is a sick joke. For starters, dentistry school is not a community. It is a professional school: a launching pad into the world—which was a public place, the last time I checked. And the public will not benefit from a closed-door approach to rape jokes made by aspiring dentists. Something tells me the guys responsible for this Facebook group might have a thing or two in common with the doctor who allegedly took a selfie with an incapacitated Joan Rivers minutes before her death. In other words, the sooner we know their names, the better.

After all, according to Dal’s faculty of dentistry website, the school and its students have been “providing public dental care for over 100 years.” The students, no doubt, were among those to “provide care for approximately 10,000 patients a year . . . at a reduced rate,” as the website reports. Natasha Legay, a 19-year-old student at Halifax’s Mount Saint Vincent University, is one of those patients. She can’t afford to go to a professional dentist and is very uncomfortable with the possibility that one of the guys in the Facebook group might have worked on her teeth in the past—or might in the future. “I was hoping the students would be suspended, just for my peace of mind,” she says. Her peace of mind doesn’t appear to be of great concern to an administration more interested in covering up a scandal than laying it bare. Rather than suspend or expel the students responsible, Dal dentistry has chosen to temporarily close its public clinic until Jan. 12, indirectly punishing the low-income people who rely on its services, for the bad behaviour of 13 students.