Isn't it odd, that Judges are never identified when it comes to scandals ?
Normally, we never hear anything at all about Judges getting involved in drug taking, bribes, fiddling cases - we don't even hear what they were up to in their past as a lawyer and how they treated their clients ... but surely they must be plenty Judges who are up to no good .... after all, there are many Judges ... and they can't all be clean ..
Here we have an interesting story, were a senior immigration judge was caught snorting cocaine in a sex video involving another Judge ... what else have this pair been up to then ?
We are all told that drugs involvement is usually linked to a whole list of other criminal behaviour .. so what other things are yet to be revealed ?
Link to the story , from This is London, at :
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23367850-details/
'Judge caught taking cocaine in sex video'
22.09.06
A senior immigration judge snorted cocaine in a video that showed her having sex with a male judge, a court heard yesterday.
It was filmed on a Thailand holiday that the two lovers enjoyed during their complex and long-running affair.
The tape was one of two discovered by a Brazilian cleaner at the centre of what became a tangled love triangle featuring lies, racist insults - and a furious confrontation that exploded when the female judge caught the male judge in his flat with the woman she described as 'a f***ing Brazilian bitch'.
Later, 37-year-old Roselane Driza - employed as a housekeeper by both judges while staying illegally in Britain - used the tapes to blackmail the male judge and demanded £20,000 from the female judge, it was claimed.
The conflict of loyalties among the trio led at one stage to the female judge threatening to kill herself; the male judge hiding 'pale and trembling' in his flat when she caught him with the cleaner; and to the cleaner being treated 'like an animal' when the female judge brought home yet another immigration judge who became her lover.
Quite how the judges found time to make important decisions about other people's lives in Britain's asylum and immigration courts was never explained at the Old Bailey yesterday.
Instead, the jury sat silently listening to six hours of detailed testimony on the sex-ridden saga of the cleaner, her lover and his 'volcanic' ex-bed partner.
The evidence was given entirely by Miss Driza during her first day in the witness box on the fourth day of the trial. The Brazilian-born former teacher, PA and bank worker - sporting her fourth dramatic outfit in as many days - kept her designer sunglasses on her head as she spoke. First it was in broken English, delivered in a calm voice with a heavy accent and deeply confusing tenses. Then, more confidently, through an interpreter in her native Portuguese.
In answer to a series of questions from her counsel Mrs Frances Oldham QC, she told the jury how she first came to Britain in February 1998 on a tourist visa - and never went home.
The arrival:
Miss Driza, who calls herself Rosa, arrived at Heathrow as a 28-year-old singleton seeking to improve her English, she said. She came on a tourist visa that expired six months later. Then she fixed herself up with a Spanish and English language course, which extended her stay to August 1999 on a student visa. Shortly afterwards she married a refugee - but the partnership lasted just three months before he disappeared to Italy.
In October 1999 she answered an advert in a local newsagents for a cleaner/housekeeper at £5 an hour. That ad had been placed by the female judge, identified yesterday only as Mrs J. She interviewed her, negotiated six hours work a week, and, according to Miss Driza, a month's notice and a month's paid holiday. By that time her student visa had expired - and she was in Britain illegally while she tried to apply for an extension. Asked if she told the female judge her immigration status she replied: 'Yes. I told her I was married to a refugee and he had to leave the country.'
Her testimony gave a fascinating glimpse into Britain's shambolic asylum and immigration system - she told how at one stage her passport went missing she sent it an immigration lawyer. It was supposed to be forwarded to the Home Office - but turned up months later in a solicitor's drawer. She was paid a total of £700 compensation - yet her immigration status remained unresolved. She told the court she had a brother, a sister, two nephews and some cousins in England.
The judges:
Mrs J had been having an intimate and long term relationship with another asylum and immigration judge, referred to in court as Mr I. Legal restrictions forbid disclosing the identities of the pair, both middle-aged, and each an unlikely figure to feature in such a salacious chain of events.
They enjoyed foreign holidays and lived together in her flat before the relationship ended and he got his own flat. It was then that he took Rosa on as his own cleaner, and to do his ironing and housework. But his interest in her went far beyond clean shirts.
He would later reveal in an e-mail that he wanted to 'go with her' from the start. He also called her 'real hot chilli stuff', suggested in a text message she might like to 'clean shave her P hair' - and offered to teach her how to cook a curry.
Despite the intensity of their intimate relationship, Mr I remained close friends with Mrs J. They even continued to holiday together. But with three people in the relationship, it seemed, trouble was not far away.
Sex at Xmas
Around Christmas 2004, Miss Driza invited the male judge to a party to meet her family and friends. She had relatives here already, and her mother had travelled from Brazil to see her. 'He asked me to make an excuse - for me to tell my family that his auntie had died and he couldn't go. But to me he told the truth.
Asked where the male judge actually spent Christmas day, she replied: 'With Mrs J. In reality, I didn't know he had slept with her.
'He said he had spend Christmas day with Mrs J because she was very depressive and she said she was going to kill herself.' If she committed suicide, he said, 'I would have a heavy conscience.'
She added: 'I didn't know he was going to sleep with her. He asked me what I was doing on Boxing Day, and I said nothing. He invited me to go shopping with him outside London - he wanted to buy my Christmas present.'
Boxing Day showdown: The pair did meet on Boxing Day, and went to his flat. All the time she was with him that day, she said, Judge J had been calling him on the phone and sending text messages. Some time between 10pm and midnight, there was a noise at the door. It was Judge J. 'She put her finger on the bell and kept it there,' said Miss Driza. 'She made a lot of noise. I was worried about the neighbours. I was surprised, because a person just doesn't do that. I was frightened. She was knocking at the window. She called his name. She went around and started calling from the kitchen, and started knocking at the kitchen door, which was made of glass. She seemed like a volcano because she knocked so hard.
She went to the kitchen window to see who was in the flat with him - but I think she already knew.
I was sitting with him in the corridor, hiding from her so she couldn't see us. Mr I was pale and trembling. He didn't know what to do. She was still texting him, saying: ''Are you going to open the door? Are you going to answer me?''
'She tried to put the key in the lock but she couldn't open it because there was another key inside.' Miss Driza said Judge J was 'very furious'.
Eventually, Judge I decided to let Judge J in. 'I said that was OK - but I wasn't going to hide from her.' While they were discussing it, however, Judge J appeared to have used a piece of wood to lift a curtain on a small skylight above the kitchen door, giving her a view inside. The only thing she could see was a woman's T-shirt, said Miss Driza. 'So I think she knew I was with him. Then she said she was going away.'
The insults:
Miss Driza claims she was subjected to a series of insults from the female judge after she dismissed her from her cleaning job.
In one phone call shortly afterwards, she told the court, Mrs J called her a 'f***ing Brazilian, f***ing cleaner, f***ing dirty woman'.
'I said to Mrs J, ''let's talk'' - and she said she didn't have anything to talk to me about. I said that I didn't understand what was happening. She started shouting. It seemed that she had lost control.'
Later, Miss Driza sat on the male judge's lap to listen in on phone calls when the female judge rang him to talk about what happened.
Asked what they spoke about, she told the court: 'Whether I was going to remain with him, if he was planning to have a serious relationship with me... that I was just a Brazilian cleaner... that I was interested in his position, in money.'
She said she reacted 'very bad' to the name-calling. It upset her 'even today'. Miss Driza added she would have spoken back to Mrs J if it had been a conversation between the two of them, but explained: 'But I didn't want to put myself on the same foot she was using,' she said.
'It was difficult for me, sitting on his lap or sitting at his side the whole time.' Asked if the female judge said anything else that upset her, she bowed her head slightly before responding. 'Yes,' she said. 'That I was a dirty woman from head to foot, and I didn't even wash my hair. That the way I was I seemed a bit crazy, that I might perhaps consume drugs. That I used to sleep with two men at the same time.
'So she said to Mr I that I was worthless, that I was always drunk. But I drink only Coca Cola juice.'
Talking about the occasion when the female judge returned to the flat with Judge N, her new lover, Miss Driza said: 'It was when I was working in the afternoon, when Judge J arrived earlier with him.
'He went straight to the bedroom and she was furious because I was there. I don't think she expected me to be there. I was ironing and the weather was bad, I think it was raining, it was cold and she was asked me to leave quickly. I felt strange. Her attitude - it was like I was an animal.
'I said I hadn't finished the ironing, I said that there was a pile of clothing on top of the couch which I had to put away and she told me to "Go, go, go!". She almost threw me out the window.
'I was disappointed with her behaviour, and I was also worried about my health, because I had a very hot body.'
Sex, drugs, videotapes and blackmail:
The court has heard that the male judge filmed himself having sex with two different women, one an unnamed, younger blonde lover. According to Miss Driza, he had an affair with her for ten to 15 years. The other featured the female judge - coyly described by Mrs Oldham QC as a recording of their 'intimate relationship'. The male judge said he had always intended to erase the tapes but never got round to it.
Yesterday Miss Driza said she took one video cassette from his luggage when he returned from a trip to Canada, thinking it might be a holiday film. But she said she was 'shocked and betrayed' to discover it was actually an old tape of him in bed with the blonde lover. 'I was furious and angry,' she said.
The second tape was one that she found on a shelf in his flat a couple of weeks later. When she played it in the video machine, however, it turned out to be a tape of the two judges on holiday in Thailand. 'What I saw in the video made me angry and frightened. It seemed to me that she was using cocaine and he was close to her. So I paused it, and put the cassette away, and I didn't watch any more.'
Soon afterwards, she said, 'I asked him if what I saw was what I thought I saw. He said that the cassette wasn't made here, it was made in Thailand, so there wasn't any problem with that.' She refused to give the video back, and he said she could keep it. He didn't want the children to come across it. 'But there was a condition,' she said.
'I could keep it provided that I didn't talk to anyone about it and also wouldn't let anyone else see it.' She said he asked 'more than a thousand times' not to show it to anyone else, and she promised not to.
The Crown claims that Miss Driza threatened to show the videos to his senior colleagues if the female judge refused to pay her £20,000. She allegedly demanded the money after threatening to expose the female judge to the Press and her boss, Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor.
Yesterday the jury was told it was the male judge who suggested £20,000 was 'more than fair'. Miss Driza told the court if it had been up to her, 'I don't think it would have been less than £100,000 - because there is no price for what she has done to me.'
Miss Driza denies two counts of blackmail and stealing two video tapes.
The trial continues.
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