An Ontario judge ruled on Tuesday that the two teenage girls charged in the “swarming” death of Kenneth Lee in Toronto in 2022 had their charter rights violated and called the provincial government’s strip-search policy “troubling.” The judge opted to give the accused girls a reduced sentence.

Justice David Stewart Rose found that routine searches violated the right to privacy under Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees everyone the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure. The judge also stressed that the Youth Criminal Justice Act requires enhanced privacy protections for youth compared to those granted to adults in detention.

The searches were part of routine procedures for the facilities every time the girls arrived or returned from a family visit or court appearance. One of the girls had been strip-searched six times at two different facilities while in custody while the other was strip-searched three times. Both girls were 13 and 16 years old respectively at the time of the incident.

This comes after the court hearing in August as part of an agreed statement of facts that a teenage girl in custody had been strip-searched six times at two different facilities while in custody, with the trip searches part of routine procedures for the facility and in violation of a provincial policy. This comes as part of the ongoing legal proceedings related to the death of Kenneth Lee, who was living in Toronto’s shelter system and was swarmed by eight teenage girls in December 2022. Additionally, a report from September 2024 found a surge in pre-trial detentions at Nova Scotia jails, while human rights groups drew attention the prison conditions in provincial prisons, calling for Canada to end its practice of incarcerating immigration detainees in provincial jails.