It’s everywhere.
A Mountie whose harassment complaints against the RCMP prompted legislation to modernize so-called bad apples within the force says her employer is moving to dismiss her.
Cpl. Catherine Galliford says she received a letter saying the RCMP is seeking to discharge her because she’s unable to do her job.
Galliford, who has filed a civil lawsuit against the RCMP alleging years of bullying and sexual abuse, has been on sick leave since 2006.
Let’s follow the details. The CBC reports in November 2011.
CBC News has learned that one of B.C.’s highest profile Mounties says she’s suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after years of sexual harassment.
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 Robert William Pickton and revealed charges had been laid in the Air India bombing.
But in an internal RCMP complaint, Galliford makes serious allegations about misconduct inside the RCMP. She shared the complaint with CBC News and spoke with reporter Natalie Clancy about her claims.
“Everything that came out of his [a supervisor’s] mouth was sexual,” Galliford 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.”
Galliford says she faced constant sexual advances from several senior officers from the moment she graduated from the RCMP Academy in 1991.
But surely she just reported them and it was all taken care of, right? Because that’s what always happens, right?
Galliford says the command and control structure at the RCMP means Mounties are instructed to do as they’re told, or risk getting reprimanded.
“If they can’t screw you, they are going to screw you over. And that’s what it became like and so I started to normalize the harassment because I didn’t know what else to do,” she said.
“It just got to the point that after I had about 16 years of service, I broke. I completely broke.”
In 2007, Galliford joined the ranks of 225 B.C. Mounties who are currently off duty on sick leave.
“I’ve been off work for four years now and I have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, agoraphobia and chemical dependency on occasion,” Galliford said.
Oh. Well…uh…it’s too late now! Yeah, that’s it. She waited too long.
Mike Webster, a consulting police psychologist in private practice, believes Galliford’s deteriorating health has little to do with the murder files she worked on, and is directly linked to the harassment she faced from colleagues on the job.
“I don’t think there’s a female in the outfit who hasn’t been approached sexually,” Webster said.
“The way her employer handled it afterwards is likely to have had a greater effect on her present mental state than what she went through initially.”
Oh. Uh…she shouldn’t have gone into police work in the first place?
Webster says Galliford’s allegations come as no surprise.
“Senior executives for decades have been accountable to no one and they’ve created a toxic work environment, high levels of employee stress and a culture of fear,” Webster said.
“It’s causing a tremendous effect on the morale of the RCMP, so the grievance process doesn’t help them at all. What are they going to do? They turn to ODS, off duty sick … the RCMP membership calls it ‘off duty mad.'”
Oh. Uh…I’m all out of excuses.
Here’s some more (damning) context:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2013/05/06/bc-rcmp-ptsd-travel-beaulieau.html
But that’s the beauty of it. The mansplainers will come up with one for you! Then the women folk can go back to not worrying their pretty little heads about all this stuff. /spits
Fuck my country. Fuck the leaders of the RCMP. Fuck the ignorant pieces of shit who enable this.
Jacob Schmidt (#2) –
Sad to say, such harassment isn’t a surprise. I’m sure you’re quite familiar with other criminal acts of the RCMP, such as the false prosecutions and imprisonment of Milgaard, Marshall and Morin, or “starlight tours” in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
“Starlight tours”, for those who don’t know, involve the RCMP forcibly taking people (usually First Nations people) and driving them 40 or 50 kilometres out of town, then making them walk home. Without a jacket. In -30C temperatures. And sometimes, after being brutally beaten.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlight_tours
Needless to say, numerous people have been murdered by “starlight tours”. Those who survive don’t complain because the RCMP (who committed the crimes) would not investigate or prosecute their own members. Yet there’s no one else to complain to.
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I got nothing. I’m trying to be empathetic, but that’s just too fucked up to imagine.
isn’t it funny that everyone can respond with ” it’s not especially worse in my field/ area”
And we call this civilization? The Mounties motto is “Uphold the Right”. What could possibly be right about this?
Hell, just being involved with the Pickton investigation has to have been hugely traumatic for any woman on the case. For those outside of Canada who may not have heard, one of our most spectacular failures in making pleasant polite Canadians is Robert William Pickton, whom we know to have murdered and dismembered at least 50 women, and suspect he may have done much, much more. They spent two years digging up his pig farm trying to locate bone fragments and any DNA they could get to try and identify his victims, many of whom were First Nations women.
So if she could get through that, then let there be no assertion that she’s not tough as fucking nails.
Some days I hate our country too, Jacob. And knowing that smug asshole sitting in the PMO will do nothing, nothing, to support this police officer in her duties, after all his robotic smiling and blather about supporting our people in uniform…urge to hate rising…rising…
It used to be a point of pride. We’re Canada! We let gay people get married! We’re tolerant! /spits
I’m gonna need a constructive channel for this anger.
I know. I’m so ashamed of our country when we do things like this, or those assholes in the Legion trying to stop Sikh veterans from joining because of their turbans, or the turbans in the Mounties thing, for that matter. Or our nationwide complete indifference and self-delusion about how much awesomely better we treat the First Nations here than in the US, dontchaknow.
There are some things going for us, but we’re a long, long way from paradise. :/
I realized after the fact that I could have worded that comment better. I wasn’t trying to derail this thread and make it about men when the topic was harassment of women. I mentioned the names because those were high profile cases of corruption by the RCMP.
Another way that “starlight tours” compare to the abuse of women is that some left stranded in the middle of nowhere were intoxicated or got into bar fights. Some in the public take the attitude that the victims “deserved it” or “brought it on themselves”. As with rape, judging the victim’s life or actions is obscene.
Going by this item (linked to on the wikipedia page), racists in the RCMP are targeting transgendered women just for being so, as much as they target First Nations people generally.
http://www.ammsa.com/publications/windspeaker/conference-confronts-police-‘culture-oppression’
I can’t believe that I live in one of the best countries in the world and this is the level we’re at.