The two men behind a free Toronto-area newspaper that promotes legalizing rape and denies the Holocaust were found guilty on Thursday of promoting hatred against women and Jews.
In delivering his decision against James Sears and LeRoy St. Germaine, Ontario Court of Justice Judge Richard Blouin cited overwhelming evidence of their guilt.
Sears, 55, the editor in chief, and St. Germaine, 77, the publisher, had argued Your Ward News was meant to be satire, but Blouin said there was nothing funny about their odious views.
If what they were doing didn’t amount to wilful hate promotion, the judge said, nothing would.
“Both men were fully aware of the unrelenting promotion of hate in YWN,” Blouin said in his ruling. They “intended that hatred to be delivered to others.”
After the decision was handed down, Sears, who compared himself to a persecuted Jesus, said he would be appealing.
Sentencing is set for April 26.
Misogyny, anti-Semitic conspiracies
The prosecution argued Your Ward News was filled with “vile and degrading” articles and imagery.
Prosecutor Robin Flumerfelt told the trial the publication demonizes feminists as “dangerous people” and calls women “tri-orficed chattels.” The paper also brands most feminists as “satanists exhilarated by abortion,” and claims women are inferior and feminism encourages rape, court heard.
The paper also contains repeated claims of a worldwide, blood-thirsty Jewish conspiracy. Flumerfelt said its imagery depicts Jews as devils with serpent tongues and reptilian hands, argues Jews were behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Holocaust was a Jewish myth to strengthen their control of the world.
“These are examples of the communications that the defendants made available to hundreds of thousands of homes without being asked,” Flumerfelt told court.
Sears and St. Germaine had pleaded not guilty to two counts each of wilfully promoting hatred against identifiable groups.
Sears’s lawyer, Dean Embry, had tried to argue that the courts should not criminalize anti-feminist sentiment. The publication, the lawyer said, only takes aim at some women and some Jews, and while it may be offensive and go too far at times, it doesn’t advocate hatred or violence against those groups.
St. Germaine and Sears, who lost his medical licence in the early 1990s for sexual misconduct with three women, each faces a maximum sentence of a $5,000 fine or six weeks in jail.
from Update Trend News http://bit.ly/2RJVWYk
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