OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada has shut the door on a psychiatrist’s request to appeal three convictions for sexually assaulting his court-appointed patients.
Dr. Aubrey Levin of Calgary was found guilty by a jury in January 2013 and was sentenced to five years in prison.
He had asked the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of his convictions, but that request has been denied.
As always, the top court did not give reasons for its decision.
Allegations against Levin came to light in 2010 after one of his patients came forward with secret videos he had recorded during sessions with the psychiatrist.
The patient was on probation at the time the videos were taken and had been ordered by a court to see Levin twice a month. The man said he had told authorities about previous assaults and no one believed him, so he bought a spy camera and brought it to his appointments.
The videos, played in court during the trial, showed Levin undoing the man’s belt and jeans and appearing to fondle him.
The patients had been assigned to Levin between 1999 and 2010 by the justice system.
Levin’s wife was convicted earlier this month of trying to bribe a juror during her husband’s trial.
Erica Levin was charged with obstruction after a juror came forward to say she had been approached by a relative of the accused.
The juror testified she was offered $1,000 if she found Levin not guilty. She was excused from the doctor’s trial after she came forward with her allegations.
She will be sentenced next month.
Aubrey Levin, who immigrated to Canada from South Africa, was frequently used by the courts to assess people and provide expert opinions at hearings.
He served briefly as director for the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon and was licensed in 1998 to practise psychiatry in Alberta.
Levin is no stranger to controversy over his work. He faced heated accusations about his time as a military psychiatrist during apartheid in South Africa, where he earned his degree in 1963.
In the 1970s, he was a psychiatrist at a military hospital where aversion therapy through electric shocks was allegedly used in an attempt to change the sexuality of gay soldiers. Levin is mentioned in a report that aimed to shed light on abuses of gays and lesbians in the military by health workers.