Courage is grace under pressure.
Ernst Hemingway
Identifying 3 lawyers implicated in alleged tip off would ‘destroy’ reputations, judge rules, Police believe Halifax lawyer Billy Sparks was told by fellow lawyer he was being investigated for sex assault by Richard Cuthbertson, CBC News, May 06, 2025
A Nova Scotia judge is keeping secret the names of three lawyers that a Halifax police detective suggested last year were implicated in tipping off another lawyer that he was under investigation for sexual assault.
Lawyer Billy Sparks killed himself in March 2024, days after police searched his home near downtown Halifax over allegations he had sexually assaulted and extorted intimate photos from vulnerable young men who were his clients.
According to an affidavit sworn by Det.-Const. Michael Sullivan to obtain the search warrant, Sparks had learned of the investigation 10 days earlier when he was called by a lawyer asking if he needed legal representation because she heard he’d been arrested for sexual assault.
That lawyer was connected personally or professionally to two other lawyers, one of whom had been brought in four days before the call to provide independent legal advice to one of Sparks’s alleged victims, who was signing a waiver that would help police conduct their investigation.
The names of the lawyers are redacted in the affidavit, most of which was made public following a court challenge by CBC. CBC subsequently applied to Nova Scotia Supreme Court for the names to be disclosed, but in a ruling issued Monday, Justice Timothy Gabriel sided with the lawyers, who had sought to keep their identities from being made public.
Douche fuckers, the lot of them, the judge and the three lawyers, as well as lawyer Sparks
‘Unsubstantiated innuendo’
In Canada, there’s a strong presumption that courts are open, and a lawyer for CBC argued the three lawyers had not met the legal test to keep their names concealed.
Legal counsel for the lawyers, who were only identified in public court records as D, E and F, argued the officer’s assertions amounted to “unsubstantiated innuendo,” according to the ruling, although the trio did not detail how the lawyer who called Sparks learned about the investigation.
“In this case, the thrust of some of the impugned details is that lawyers D, E and F not only violated fundamental legal ethics (were involved in a breach of solicitor-client privilege) but were complicit in tipping off Mr. Sparks that his premises were about to be searched by the police,” Gabriel said in his decision.
“The implication is that they are (at the very least) unethical and that they were complicit in an attempt to do an ‘end run’ around the pending warrant by tipping Mr. Sparks off. This strikes at their dignity and professional standing. It could destroy their reputations and their abilities to earn a living.“And so it needs to, FFS! Such persons must have their licences revoked, and be investigated pronto, not 6 years down the road by their self regulators, dribbling and dragging out their process slowly to protect dirty lawyers and help them continue to harm others. My ex lead lawyer, Murray Klippenstein also violated my client solicitor privilege – to the fucking defendants in my case; the judge sealed the evidence so I am unable to send it to the LSO. Fucking legal-judicial industry circle jerk. Protecting the public interest is much more important than protecting dirty lawyers! Protecting raping and or rape enabling lawyers ensures more and more rape victims. Dirty lawyers can get jobs at burger joints, or cleaning toilets at the mall to earn a living like many other Canadians do. Working as a lawyer is a privilege! Same as driving, it’s not a right. Why the hell do bad lawyers get kid glove protections by our judges? Raping lawyers and rape enabling lawyers need to go to prison and at the very least, no longer be allowed to practice law, not be protected by their peers and judges.
Gabriel said according to counsel for the three lawyers, there is no ongoing investigation by the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society.Of course not, the law societies are rape enablers and protectors of criminals operating as lawyers ripping off and or raping their clients. It’s a sleazy creepy douche fucker racket.
A lawyer’s “stock in trade,” Gabriel said, is being able to give confidential advice. The “untested information” suggesting the three lawyers do not respect solicitor-client privilege, or use it to their advantage, would be “devastating.”Well, too many Canadian lawyers are harming their clients and the public interest, all nicely enabled by their agents of abuse, their self regulators and self-regulated judges. Secrets protecting rape enablers are as inappropriate in court rooms as in boardrooms of illegal aquifer-frac’ers and their self regulator, AER.
Under the Legal Profession Act, the barristers’ society can only publicly reveal when a lawyer is under investigation if the case reaches a certain point, such as an interim suspension or a referral to a hearing.
Asked Monday if the barristers’ society knows the identities of the lawyers in the Sparks case, spokesperson Sandra Goodwin said in an email that it has the same affidavit as CBC where the names are redacted.
The society would not confirm whether there is an investigation. It said there must be evidence to initiate an investigation and one cannot be launched “based on speculation alone,” the email said.
“For example, to demonstrate an alleged breach of solicitor-client privilege, there would be a requirement of evidence such as testimony by the client to whom the privilege belongs.”ya ya ya, and you fuckers would deny it. You are liars, untrustworthy and have no credibility; legal and judicial self regulation is a gross failure, it violates the public interest, harms ordinary people and kids, and protects dirty lawyers and judges.
Sparks told the lawyer who called him he wasn’t aware of the sexual assault investigation, according to the police affidavit. He then spoke by phone with a Halifax Regional Police officer with whom he was friends, asking the officer if he knew anything about the case. That officer then alerted investigators.
Sullivan, the police detective, tried to piece together how the lawyer who contacted Sparks had learned about the case.
He concluded the call was “more than a coincidence” after connecting her with the two other lawyers, one of whom had met with the alleged victim. The officer, however, could not say for certain if the three had talked about the case.
Prosecutor Peter Dostal said it was important for police to include the information about the lawyers in their application for a search warrant because the judge who signed it would be aware of the possibility Sparks could have moved some of the evidence sought by officers.I would not be surprised if the judge tipped of the lawyers, who then tipped off the alleged lawyer rapist
Police seized multiple items during the March 14, 2024, search, including two cellphones, computers and several dozen USB drives, external hard drives and SD cards.
Just another Canadian legal-judicial industry shit show. Surely, lawyers can practice law and judges can serve justice without abusing others?
Billy Sparks Wasn’t The Only Shady Legalist In Town, Extortion… breach of solicitor-client privilege… dick pics! by Frank Nova Scotia, November 5, 2024
The fall-out from Billy Sparks’ suicide has now oozed into the offices of one of Halifax’s most prestigious law firms(more)…
Halifax lawyer who died was accused of extorting explicit photos from troubled clients, Warning: this story contains details of a sexual nature by Richard Cuthbertson, CBC News, Oct 10, 2024
The young man put it this way to the police officer: Halifax lawyer Billy Sparks had done more for him than even his own mother. He’d taken him golfing and to the casino, paid for food and beer, and let him sleep on the couch when he needed a place to stay.
But in August 2023, the young man shared a secret with the constable, whom he had come to trust. For about three years, he said, Sparks had also been extorting him, requesting explicit photos and videos in exchange for representing him in criminal cases.
Sparks, 52, killed himself earlier this year in the south-end Halifax duplex where he lived, just days after police searched the home, which doubled as a law office, as they investigated allegations he had groomed, extorted and sexually assaulted vulnerable clients with little money.
The details of the allegations and the police investigation are outlined in court records related to a search warrant that were recently unsealed, with some redactions, by a Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge at CBC’s request.
Despite the death of their chief suspect, who was never charged, Halifax police continue to pursue the case. It will involve a secretive and likely lengthy judicial process to determine what records seized during the search can be turned over to investigators, and which fall under solicitor-client privilege.
Prosecutor Peter Dostal, who is helping police gain access to the non-privileged records, said even though Sparks is dead, there’s a public interest in seeing closure in an “extraordinary case,” and for officers to determine if there were more victims or if the lawyer had accomplices.
“Having a lawyer prey upon their clients, especially when they’re youthful clients, is a very troubling allegationand one which seems terribly common among Canadian lawyers, e.g. James Bowie, Ottawa lawyer, in this case, I think it’s important to find all the lawyer accomplices, name them, all of them – no more secrets enabled by judges, and let’s see if their self regulator takes responsible action (I’m sure they won’t)and one that I think deserves to be looked at carefully, regardless of whether it ends up in a prosecution or not,” Dostal said in an interview.
The implications of the investigation could run wider. Dostal acknowledged “certain parties” could be interested in re-examining or reopening cases where Sparks acted as defence counsel, but said he can’t comment on that as it’s outside the scope of his work.
Began practising law in 2017
Sparks grew up in British Columbia, later making his way to Halifax where he worked for years at the downtown casino. He eventually attended Dalhousie University law school, became a lawyer in 2017 and ran a busy criminal defence practice.
That included occasionally taking on cases on contract from Nova Scotia Legal Aid when its staff lawyers could not, or acting as duty counsel at court, a spokesperson for legal aid said in an email to CBC News. Sparks was never employed by Nova Scotia Legal Aid.
Sparks would also allow troubled young men, and sometimes teens, to stay at his home, according to court records and two people who spoke with CBC News, and would sometimes refer to them as his “foster children.”Sounds like creepy lack of boundaries
A police officer who was a friend from the days when Sparks worked as a pit boss at the casino told an investigator that Sparks “had been involved in fostering children in the past,” I wonder whyaccording to the search records.
A spokesperson for the Department of Community Services said due to privacy rulesCanadian agencies, including law clubs and courts, and churches/community services nearly always protect the fucking rapists! it could not confirm whether Sparks had ever been a foster parent.
Allegations involve 4 clients
The allegations outlined in court records involve four different young men who were clients of Sparks, although at the time of the search, police had only interviewed two of them.
In a 101-page affidavit submitted to the judge who issued the search warrant, Det. Const. Michael Sullivan wrote: “Investigators believe Billy Sparks has identified his targets, who are persons in vulnerable positions in their lives, in need of legal representation, have limited means of income to pay for legal services, have drug and/or alcohol addictions, and have little in the way of family support.”
The allegations remain unproven.
The cases aren’t straightforward, however. In one, Sparks claimed it was a consensual relationship, and in another, an alleged victim who told police Sparks had extorted sexual photos from him later asked the lawyer to represent him again when he faced fresh charges.
One alleged victim, known as Person A in court records, told police that Sparks had been his lawyer since 2019. Sparks would ask for pictures of Person A’s penis in return for representing him in his criminal cases.
Starting last year, there were “many times” when Sparks would fondle his genitals in an unsuccessful attempt to arouse him, according to his statements to police outlined in the search records, and he once woke up at Sparks’s home to find Sparks trying to perform oral sex on him.
He told police Sparks was so persistent in touching him he “basically just gave up” trying to dissuade him, asking himself, “What do I do, run away?” One day, he said, Sparks was scrolling through his phone and said, “Look, everybody sends me pics.”
Sparks boasted, according to the alleged victim, of his purported connections to prosecutors that could be used to leverage certain sentences, and would point to people on the street and say they “owed him” because he’d got them off on serious charges. The search warrant also notes that Sparks regularly golfed with a number of Halifax Regional Police officers.Sounds like a nasty rape club. Horrific abuses of power.
Dostal said while prosecutors and defence lawyers have collegial relationships, it’s “flatly wrong” that Sparks had inside connections that led to special deals. In his view, Sparks was “simply bolstering his own reputation in the eyes of the victim for the purposes of, in a sense, extorting them further, and nothing more than.”Impossible to believe any authorities in this case, or most abuse cases that authorities enable
Lawyer made threats, says alleged victim
Person A claimed Sparks warned he would report him to police for breaching his release conditions, which would land him back in custody, and repeatedly threatened him “by saying he knows people in jail who have f–ked up people in the past for him,” according to the records.
When his legal aid lawyer, Anna Mancini, visited him in January at the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility where he was being held following a December 2023 arrest, he had a black eye and stitches and said he’d been “jumped,” she told the lead investigator in the case, Det. Const. John Beer.
Another alleged victim, Person B, broke down crying after he confided to a Halifax police officer that he had “been basically getting extorted by my lawyer since I was 18,” according to the search records. He said it was the first time he had told anyone.Fuck, this is awful. Law societies need to be disbanded across Canada, all their investigation files made public, and lawyers and judges must no longer be self regulated, only way to clean up this filthy creepy-as-fuck dangerous industry.
He told police that if he didn’t send Sparks photos of his penis, the lawyer would not show up in court. But he also said Sparks had spent thousands of dollars on him, including more than a dozen golf outings, a trip to the casino in Moncton, N.B., and for food and alcohol.Bribery for sex is nothing to boast or be grateful about. It’s abuse of vulnerable young people.
The search warrant records note that as police closed in on Sparks they decided against interviewing Person B about the case again, as he had subsequently sought out Sparks as his lawyer on fresh charges and investigators worried he would tip him off.
Indeed, the prospect of Sparks catching wind of the investigation was a growing concern to police.
On March 3, more than a week before police searched Sparks’s home, he contacted a Halifax constable he golfed with and told him another lawyer had called asking if he needed representation as she’d heard he’d been arrested for sexual assault.
Sparks told the officer his relationship with Person A had been consensual, and that Person A had called him in December after his arrest and told Sparks, “You are going to give a statement for me, or I am going to say you did things to me.”
Solicitor-client privilege concerns
The officer knew nothing about the case, but made inquiries and later relayed what Sparks had told him to the lead investigator.
A police detective subsequently tried to piece together connections to figure out how the lawyer who called Sparks had found out about the investigation, concluding her contact with him was “more than a coincidence.”
The name of the lawyer and two others, all of them working in private practice, are redacted in court records.of course they are. Seems in our legal-judicial industry and rape religions, protecting rapists, dirty lawyers and judges is the number one priority, fuck the public interest, fuck protecting youth, kids and women In a letter filed in court, the Crown said the police information suggests that “one or more lawyers may have breached their ethical obligation to protect solicitor-client privilege.”
Other allegations involve potential victims police had not interviewed by the time they searched Sparks’s home.
In one case, a woman went to police in Kentville, N.S., after she had discovered on the phone of her boyfriend, who had been arrested, that Sparks was paying him for sexually explicit photos and for oral sex. She told an officer she felt her boyfriend was doing the sexual favours to keep Sparks as a lawyer.
A further case involved the mother of a young man who’d recently been released from prison and told her Sparks was his new lawyer. She later saw messages on his phone that showed Sparks making a sexually explicit remark about him, and said the lawyer had been providing her son with booze and marijuana, in contravention of his court-ordered release conditions.
In mid-January, she filed a complaint against Sparks with the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society. Mancini, the legal aid lawyer for Person A, also filed a complaint on her client’s behalf in February.
A barristers’ society spokesperson said in an email to CBC News those were the only two complaints filed against Sparks, and it was only through the first complaint that the society became aware of allegations against him. Sparks was not made aware of the complaints and the file is now closed because he is dead.
Obit paints picture of dedicated advocate
The portrayal of Sparks in court records is at odds with those who mourned his death and offered condolences below his online obituary.
Some noted his volunteer work, his sense of humour, his thoughtful gestures, his care for others and his advocacy for rental tenants in disputes with landlords. One credited Sparks with saving his life when he hit “rock bottom” by helping him stay sober.
“Billy dedicated his life to helping people,” his obituary said. “He was involved in various volunteer organizations and activities, and as a lawyer he focused on serving members of the community that were marginalized, at risk or had few other options. He felt everyone deserved to be heard and have someone to advocate for them.”
Police approached the barristers’ society in February about their intention to search his home and office, and two outside lawyers were appointed as “referees.”
They seized all items that could contain information subject to solicitor-client privilege, including two cellphones, computers and several dozen USB drives, external hard drives and SD cards, and brought them to a secure storage area at the Law Courts building in downtown Halifax.
It’s part of the special protocols police must follow when investigating lawyers, Dostal said, to make certain no privileged material is released to them. A judge appoints an outside lawyer to review material seized and determine what can be shown to police, a process Dostal said can take months or more than a year.Horrific enabling of lawyers harming others.
Refer also to:
2025 05 07 tweet by callum on the ongoing alleged gang rape hockey trial:
“This psycho needs to be disbarred immediately”
regarding one of the alleged rapist’s lawyer suggest the victim was ‘acting like a porn star’
Of course the lawyer won’t be disbarred. The legal-judicial industry was intentionally set up by rape religions and the abusive misogynistic patriarchy to protect and serve the rich, notably rich rapists.