CBSA officer sues over interrogation after sexual harassment complaint
Credit to Author: Keith Fraser| Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2019 23:34:20 +0000
A former Canada Border Services Agency officer who claims she and other women were sexually harassed by a male colleague has launched a lawsuit over allegations that she was improperly interrogated and detained after filing a formal complaint.
Jannelle Buchanan was employed as a CBSA firearms instructor at the agency’s range in Chilliwack when she says she and others witnessed their colleague acting inappropriately around and toward female employees.
Examples of the alleged conduct of the employee, who is not identified in court documents, include him offering to put a rag under the noses of the women employees and asking “Does this rag smell like chloroform?”, touching women while in close quarters, and targeting young women students on their arrival at the range and ensuring he would be their instructor for the day.
The man would also allegedly get on top of female students when they were in the prone position at the range, simulate masturbation around female employees, and invite female candidates to his home on the weekends to practice the prone position naked on his couch.
At various times between 2011 and 2016, employees of the CBSA asked management to intervene and stop the conduct of their male colleague, but management dissuaded them from making formal complaints, says the lawsuit filed in B.C. Supreme Court.
“The implication was that the problem would not be solved by making a formal complaint,” says the suit. “Management also disbelieved the complaints, treating the matter not as an issue of sexual harassment but rather as interpersonal disputes. The employee’s behaviour, combined with management’s inaction, led to an unpleasant, intolerant and toxic work environment.”
Buchanan says that on one occasion in the spring of 2015 when she was cooking a barbecue for CBSA staff, the male colleague came up behind her, grabbed her hips, thrusting into her buttocks area, and whispered a “sexualized” reference to her cooking and him being a single man.
She says she filed a formal complaint of sexual harassment and bullying in October 2016, one of several employees to make formal complaints, and CBSA opened an investigation which upheld the majority of the complaints and found Buchanan in particular had been sexually harassed and assaulted.
The male colleague was fired in November 2017 but has grieved the dismissal and is seeking reinstatement with his union supporting him, says Buchanan’s lawsuit.
After their formal complaints were lodged against the colleague, he retaliated by initiating complaints against Buchanan and the other employees and rather than see the complaints as retaliation, the CBSA decided to investigate, it says.
Buchanan says she was summoned to an interview in November 2017 and was falsely accused of having made a threat against the CBSA before being ordered to turn over her wallet, keys and phone.
She says she was told to face the wall, place her hands on the wall and spread her feet. Despite the fact she was not armed, a male employee conducted a body search of her by touching her all over her body, including the chest and groin area.
“The detention of the plaintiff constituted a wrongful arrest, the seizure of the plaintiff’s personal items was a wrongful seizure, and the subsequent search of the plaintiff constituted an assault,” says the lawsuit. “The plaintiff suffered shock and could barely breathe. She felt degraded and humiliated.”
Buchanan says she left the interrogation, which did not make clear what the allegations against her were, traumatized and depressed. She went on leave, and in March 2019 resigned from the CBSA.
She is claiming general, special, aggravated and punitive damages. No response has been filed to the lawsuit, which contains allegations that have not been tested in court. A spokeswoman for the CBSA said the agency typically doesn’t comment on matters before the courts.