The  RCMP:  Canada’s  Rogue  Police  Force   (Part 2)

 

There is very little that can match the malignancy in a work place than men sexually and maliciously harassing women on the job. Unfortunately, women working in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been subjected to this kind of abuse by fellow officers and until very recently, the hierarchy of the RCMP did very little to stop it and protect the women under their care.  What follows are incidents of such abuses in the RCMP that should never have happened but unfortunately for the victims, such incidents did occur. Aboriginal women have also been abused by male members of the RCMP. Here are some of the stories of the RCMP victims.

 

 Staff Sergeant Caroline O’Farrell, age 52

This member of the RCMP recently filed an eight million dollar lawsuit against 13 former colleagues in the force's travelling equestrian show, the Musical Ride, claiming that she was both sexually and physically assaulted and harassed by her fellow officers while working as a constable. Her ex-husband and their two children are also listed as plaintiffs, claiming $300,000 in damages under the Ontario Family Law Act for a loss of care and guidance from O'Farrell due to the alleged abuse.

The defendants are listed as Kevin Baillie, Gary Beam, Sylvain Berthiaume, Luc Boivin, Greg Chiarot, Francois Duguay, Marc Godue, Mike Herchuk, Cory Hoehn, David Kopp, Christine Mackie Windover, Gerry Ogilvie and Michael Roblee, as well as the Attorney General of Canada of which the RCMP reports to.

In her claim, she alleges that she as one of the few women working in the Musical Ride was subjected to an outdated hazing ritual in which she was doused with water and then dragged by her arms and legs through stall shavings mixed with manure and urine. I’ve said in the past and I will say it again. Hazing as part of a ritual is disgusting and many universities forbid it.

When she began to complain and even defend herself, she was harassed by her attackers for doing so. The creeps made fun of her for complaining and members of the Ride took bets on when she might attempt suicide.

 

She also claimed that when she fell asleep on a bus with her fellow officers also in the bus while in Alberta, one of those creeps filmed a finger simulating a penis through the fly of his pants next to her ear.  She claims that the video was shown to her and others and for this reason; it left her feeling degraded as though she had been sexually assaulted.

 

She was eventually transferred from the Musical Ride unit against her will because her supervisors couldn't guarantee that there would be an end of the abuse committed against her by her fellow officers.

 

Later an RCMP harassment investigation upheld her complaints. The final investigation concluded that there were over 100 incidents of harassment against her that had been substantiated. She was informed by the investigators that her complaint resulted in the largest internal investigation ever conducted in Ottawa. (Canada’s capital)

 

The RCMP meanwhile took no real or substantial action against the harassers as a result of its investigation. Some of the harassers received informal discipline (counseling and warnings); others received no form of censure at all. Most of her harassers continue to work in the RCMP today, some as high-ranking officers and others as senior non-commissioned officers in positions of significant influence and authority. I am glad that they have not been fired because when she gets her judgment against these twerps, she can then garnishee them and they will lose 30% of their pay every payday until they retire or quit. Of course, if the RCMP settles with her directly, she won’t be able to garnishee the creeps whom she gets judgment against.  

 

O'Farrell called upon a provincial Crown attorney's office (prosecutor’s office) about possible criminal charges, however the assistant Crown attorney refused to lay any charges against her abusers because the statute of limitations for those offences had passed to proceed on a summary conviction basis, (6 months for misdemeanors) and that the criminal charges could not proceed by way of indictment. (felony) as the crimes weren’t that serious enough to justify those kinds of charges.

 

Former Constable Krista Carle

 

Carle started working in the Alberta RCMP in 1991. She says that she was constantly sexually harassed by her male colleagues while she was on the force.

 

Pornography was placed inside her desk and she endured sexual jokes and inappropriate touching from male colleagues throughout her career. Carle and four other female officers claimed they were sexually assaulted by a sergeant in the 1990s. They sued the RCMP, and the case was settled out of court.

 

She also said she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in 2004 after being sexually harassed by colleagues for 19 years. She eventually applied for a medical discharge in 2009 due to stress.

 

Corporal Catherine Galliford, age 44

 

Cpl. Catherine Galliford was the face of the B.C. RCMP for years. During her tenure as the RCMP's spokesperson, Galliford announced the arrest of serial killer, Robert William Pickton and revealed charges had been laid in the Air India bombing.

 

Galliford made serious allegations about misconduct inside the RCMP. She said, “Everything that came out of his [a supervisor's] mouth was sexual.” She also said. “If I had a dime for every time one of my bosses asked me to sit on his knee, I'd be on a yacht in the Bahamas right now.

 

She claims that serial sexual harassment by police superiors in the RCMP has left her a broken woman. “The men became pigs.  It got to the point that I told them that I was a lesbian just to get the men to go away.”

 

She said that she encountered harassment ever since she graduated in 1991, but some specific incidents stick out in her memory. She alleges that one police boss exposed himself to her. Another, she alleges, arranged unnecessary travel across Canada in hopes of bedding her in a hotel room.

 

Cpl. Galliford  plans to file a lawsuit against the RCMP, and has laid out the crux of her complaints in an internal document—a 115-page transcript of a recorded interview she had with RCMP officials.

In August, an RCMP staff sergeant in Burnaby was sued for “forcibly inflicted harmful” sex by a female subordinate. Many RCMP sexual harassment suits have been quietly settled out of court in recent years. In a landmark case from five years ago, a female constable was awarded $1-million in damages after a judge found she was harassed into quitting by a verbally abusive male supervisor.

A lawyer representing 300 women who worked for the RCMP alleging harassment and gender-based discrimination in a lawsuit said in May of this year that the RCMP had declined an offer to mediate. The RCMP indicated they had no interest in discussing any settlement.

 

That doesn’t surprise me a bit. Most complaints filed against the male police officers in the RCMP were dismissed out of hand or dismissed with no remedy offered to the complainant, other than, “We talked to him about it.” These offenders were treated by the hierarchy of the RCMP like sex abuse priests were treated by the Catholic Church. The offenders would be spoken to and sometime transferred and that didn’t solve the problem either.

 

RCMP abuses against aboriginal women and girls

 

The RCMP says it wants to get to the bottom of abuse allegations against its officers in British Columbia involving aboriginal women and girls. Two researchers — one from Canada and one from the U.S. spent five weeks last summer in the province’s north, visiting 10 communities between Prince George to Prince Rupert and hearing accounts from aboriginal women of alleged mistreatment at the hands of police. The researchers interviewed 50 aboriginal women and girls, plus family members and service providers in northern B.C. They heard stories of police pepper-spraying and using Tasers on young aboriginal girls, and of women being unnecessarily strip-searched by male officers. Human Rights Watch documented eight incidents of police physically assaulting or using ‘questionable’ force against girls under 18.

Their report also contains troubling and graphic allegations of physical and sexual abuse, including one from a woman, identified as homeless, who describes how members of the RCMP took her outside of town and raped her. The woman told the Human Rights Watch interviewer that the officers then threatened her by telling her that if she told anybody what they had done to her, they would take her out to the mountains and kill her and make it look like an accident.

And finally

 

I know that the great majority of members of the RCMP serve honourably, devoting their lives to the protection of their communities but alas, like many large organizations, there are scumbags in them and these scumbags should never have been hired as police officers. Further if it is established that they harassed even one of their fellow officers, be they female or male, these scumbags should be fired immediately after their hearings are completed. If it is established that they have committed criminal crimes, against anyone, they should be arrested, charged and tried for their crimes and if found guilty, sent to prison for a very long period of time.

 

Further, those superior officers who did nothing or do nothing to elevate the problems of sexual abuse and harassment against other men and women serving in the RCMP—they should be sacked.