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Column: How would your private life hold up in a courtroom, unedited?

Picture a courtroom. Imagine yourself sitting in the dock. The judge, your defence lawyer and a Crown prosecutor are in front of you. A witness is in the stand.
Gavel

Picture a courtroom.

Imagine yourself sitting in the dock.

The judge, your defence lawyer and a Crown prosecutor are in front of you.

A witness is in the stand.

In the gallery, a reporter sits with her pen poised above a notepad, ready to put down in black and white the next thing that witness says:

“He said he liked young boys, but it’s not a sexual thing.”

There it is, hanging in mid-air, unedited, calling for everyone who hears it or reads it in the newspaper to make up their own minds about what it means – with no input from you.

What would your life look like, unedited in a courtroom?

If police descended on your house without warning right now and told you to step outside while they searched your house for evidence of a crime, what would they find?

What would they find on your computer? What websites would they see you’d visited? What strange things would they find in your closets and cupboards that you’d forgotten were even there?

What thing would catch that reporter’s attention and get her pen moving?

Former Metro Vancouver hockey and baseball coach Randy Downes knows.

Two years ago, his glowering police mugshot was splashed over newspapers and projected onto TV screens around the province after Coquitlam RCMP said he’d been charged with voyeurism and making and possessing child pornography.

The investigation had been “rigorous,” they said, and they had been sure Downes hadn’t been a risk to the physical safety of kids or they would have made the investigation public earlier.

At the same time, though, they called for more potential victims and witnesses to come forward.

If that had been you, what would people have said about you after that? Your friends, your acquaintances, maybe the people you’ve pissed off over the last 30 years?

The child porn charges against Downes were dropped this spring because of a lack of evidence, but he was at the New Westminster courthouse this week facing two remaining voyeurism charges.

His guilt or innocence has yet to be decided since the trial has been put on hold until mid-February.

When it starts up again, though, Downes’ life will once again be under the microscope in court.

Maybe you wouldn’t wince seeing the details of your own private life dissected there.

I would.