TORONTO -- A Toronto Crown attorney who was forced to submit to a police strip search is asking a Superior Court judge today to lay sexual assault charges against those officers, the Sun has learned.

In a court application he concedes is "novel and jarring," Roger Shallow is appealing a lower court decision refusing to charge two officers for the Oct. 6, 2007 incident.

The 37-year-old prosecutor was forced to bend over naked, hold his genitalia and spread his buttocks inside 52 Division after he was arrested for causing a disturbance in the Entertainment District where he was celebrating his birthday.

"Clearly, the threat of civil liability has not been enough to stop the police from engaging in this nonsense, which the courts have condemned for years," wrote Shallow in his private complaint last April.

"The officers had no legally valid basis to have violated my sexual integrity by subjecting me to a strip search. What the officers did wasn't just wrong, it was criminal."

Shallow, who is black, said he told the officers: "This is wrong, you know this is wrong. I've worked in this system all of my life. What am I supposed to teach my son? What do you teach your children?" He said the officers didn't respond.

The case caused a stir when the Toronto Police Association and Chief Bill Blair criticized the decision of an independent counsel to drop charges against Shallow. Assault charges laid against the two officers who arrested Shallow were dropped in March after an investigation by B.C. lawyer Richard Peck.

Unlike most criminal charges, Shallow proceeded to lay those charges privately, which required court approval. Shallow was successful in getting assault charges laid against the arresting officers.

Justice of the Peace David Hunt refused to lay the sexual assault charges against the two strip search officers in a decision last June.

Shallow and his lawyer Donald F. McLeod are asking Superior Court Justice Ian Nordheimer to order Hunt to reconsider his decision, saying he made several legal errors in his judgment.

Hunt mistakenly stated that sexual assault must "have evidence of an obvious motivating factor of sexual gratification by the strip officers" and "evidence of a dominant position of authority vis a vis the strip search officers and Shallow," wrote McLeod.

The Crown opposed McLeod's application, saying the court "is being asked to interpret the sexual assault provisions in a new and retrospective manner that would violate the rule of law."

SAM.PAZZANO@SUNMEDIA.CA