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The legal career of former Ontario Crown attorney Agnew Johnston is now over.

Disbarred after convictions for sexual offences and assault, Mr. Johnston, 49, of Thunder Bay, has abandoned his appeal to remain a lawyer.

Yesterday, after determining that Mr. Johnston had given up challenging his disbarment, the Law Society of Upper Canada reconfirmed that he has been removed as a member and prohibited from practising law.

After a Globe and Mail investigation in the early 1990s, Mr. Johnston was charged with paying to have sex with a 15-year-old prostitute and trying to obtain the sexual services of another juvenile. He was later charged with assault.

Mr. Johnston was fired as an assistant Crown attorney after his convictions. The son of a former moderator of the Presbyterian Church, Mr. Johnston had joined the regional Crown Attorney's office after a decade in private law practice in Thunder Bay.

At his trial, one former teen prostitute testified that Mr. Johnston asked her to be his "sex slave" and to marry him before paying her $700 in 1992.

Peter Ross, Mr. Johnston's lawyer, said a psychiatrist had diagnosed his client as suffering from a "recurring depressive disorder" that had led to alcoholism.

One colleague described Mr. Johnston as a Jekyll and Hyde character whose behaviour was radically altered by alcohol.

During his trial, Mr. Johnston denied having sex with girls, but he admitted that he had sex with another prostitute, Stephanie Edwards, who was slain in 1994.

Another man was convicted of murdering Ms. Edwards and police did not pursue the matter of other prostitutes until The Globe and Mail began looking into prostitutes' claims that a Crown official had been involved with juveniles.

The Law Society delayed Mr. Johnston's disciplinary hearing several times while awaiting the outcome of his criminal appeals.

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