Judicial Discipline: Commission right to expose judge’s sordid secret

Thanks to the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, the reason for Onondaga County Family Court Judge Bryan R. Hedges’ abrupt retirement April 5 is no longer a mystery.

Hedges walked off the job when confronted with allegations that he had a sexual encounter with his niece 40 years ago, when she was just 5.

By quitting, Hedges may have thought he could keep his sordid secret forever, escape public humiliation and remain an upstanding member of the judicial fraternity. The commission, to its credit, decided it had an obligation to the public to remove Hedges from office so that he could never serve again.

There is little disagreement about the facts of the case. Hedges admits that in 1972, when he was 25 years old and staying at his mother-in-law’s house in Albany, his 5-year-old niece — who is deaf and, at the time, could not communicate — walked into the bedroom while he was masturbating. The commission says he motioned her into the room and put her hand on his penis as he masturbated. Hedges disputes some of the details, but admits the encounter happened.

Hedges appears to have brushed off the incident.

He went on to become a lawyer and an assistant district attorney in Onondaga County and then, in 1985, a Family Court judge. Among his responsibilities was overseeing cases involving the sexual abuse of children. The public rightly wonders whether his own history colored his decision-making on the bench.

The victim, Ellen Cantwell Warner, has had a harder road.

As a hearing-impaired child who hadn’t yet learned American Sign Language, she could not tell her parents what had happened. When she finally told, as a teenager beginning to understand sexuality, nothing happened to Hedges. Painful memories resurfaced when the Penn State and Syracuse University sexual abuse cases blew up earlier this year. Warner courageously decided to go public to empower other victims of sexual abuse, especially deaf victims, to come forward.

Hedges continues to be in denial about the seriousness of his actions. He issued a statement saying the allegation against him was untrue and that he was not given a fair hearing. Neither claim is supported by the exhaustive record of the case. What the record does show is Hedges basely attacking the victim and her motives.

The former judge had two allies on the commission. Joel Cohen, in a dissent (pdf) joined by Paul Harding, said it was enough that Hedges resigned. (Shades of the Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal, where reassigning priests was thought to be punishment enough.) Cohen further complained the commission’s catalog of Hedges’ misconduct will “publicly and permanently stigmatize him.”

What about the victim, who has been permanently harmed and stigmatized by Hedges’ actions?


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Judicial Discipline: Commission right to expose judge’s sordid secret