Gary Mason (Globe and Mail) – RCMP Constable Janet Merlo says she felt compelled to respond when a supervising officer made a sexist remark to her in the company of a high-ranking official from the force.
“You know, if I were to make a complaint, I could probably retire on just what you say to me alone,” she said.
“What was that?” her boss replied. “Did you say you want to retire on me? Does that mean you like it on top?”
It was at this point that the senior RCMP officer in the room interjected.
“If you’re going to talk to her like that, do it somewhere else,” he said to the male officer. “I don’t want to be a witness to stuff like that.”
It was at that moment that Janet Merlo realized just how little hope there was for women in the force who, like her, were dealing with harassment of various forms on a near daily basis. In Ms. Merlo’s case, she says that would include everything from sex toys left in her desk drawer to a scolding for getting pregnant that came with the advice to “keep your … legs closed” the next time she considered the idea.
Today, after years of suffering in silence, the former RCMP constable is lending her voice to a growing chorus of current and former Mounties speaking out about what they say is a systemic problem that senior officials in the organization have ignored for decades.
Allegations of harassment are quickly developing into one of the biggest scandals to rock the force in its 91-year history and the No. 1 issue facing its new commissioner, Bob Paulson. The commissioner has inherited a badly demoralized institution whose reputation has been hammered in recent years by a string of controversies, the most recent touched off when former RCMP spokeswoman Catherine Galliford went public last month with sexual harassment allegations.
Mr. Paulson has promised a thorough investigation of all harassment charges now being levelled against the Mounties.
Next week, a group of former RCMP officers being represented by Thunder Bay lawyer Alexander Zaitzeff is expected to announce that it will launch a class action lawsuit against the RCMP related to harassment in the force. The group will also include male officers.
One of those spearheading the initiative is former RCMP member Heli Kijanen, also of Thunder Bay, who says she quit the force earlier this year because she had been forced to deal with incessant harassment problems. The group has a Facebook site and is expecting many more current and former members of the Mounties to join the suit.
Originally from Newfoundland, Ms. Merlo, now 43, joined the force in 1991 and was immediately dispatched to B.C., where she worked for almost 20 years. She quit in 2010, taking a medical discharge as a result of physical and emotional problems she says are associated with years of enduring harassment on the job. Today, she speaks haltingly about a matter that she says led to the demise of her 18-year marriage and left her in dismal financial shape.
She became overwhelmed with emotion several times discussing her ordeal in an almost three-hour interview. She says she sees a counsellor once a week for medical conditions that include depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“It got so bad when I was working there that I would get physically sick at the thought of going into work,” Ms. Merlo said. “I sometimes would get my husband to call in sick for me. I couldn’t bear the idea of going into that place.”
In 2007, she hired Calgary lawyer Angela Byrne to commence legal action against the force. Eventually she had to abandon the idea because she did not have the money to continue her fight. The Mounties initiated an internal review into her allegations, which were dismissed.
“The problem with these things is it’s often our word against someone else’s,” Ms. Merlo explained. “There are no recordings of banter in the office or video of things that go on. And other men who may witness this stuff don’t want to say anything for fear of being labelled rats.
“How do you fight this stuff? You’re fighting an old boys club and culture that has existed for years. It’s brutal for women. Absolutely brutal.”
Over the course of her career serving in British Columbia, here are some of the incidents Ms. Merlo says happened to her:
- a supervisor left a vacuum cleaner part on her desk and later asked her if she’d seen it. At that point she hadn’t and asked what it was: “It’s long and black and something you can take home and have fun with on your days off.”
- When she told a commanding officer she was pregnant, he responded furiously: “What am I supposed to do with you now?” Ms. Merlo went home and broke down.
- While male officers were regularly allowed take three hours off a night shift to play recreational hockey, she and another female officer were denied a request to attend a one-hour aerobics class.
- She was often accused of “PMSing” or “being on the rag.”
- On one occasion, as she was getting ready to attend a call about a man sexually assaulting his daughter, she had a message to phone a superior with whom she was supposed to take the call. “Tony’s pizza,” he answered. “What kind of pizza do you want?” “Pepperoni,” Constable Merlo replied. “I don’t have pepperoni,” her supervisor said, “but I do have a big Italian sausage I’d like to give you.”
- When officers received a memo about upcoming training courses for members, a sheet of paper was attached to the communication given to female officers in the detachment. It was titled Training Courses Now Available for Women. It included 34 course suggestions with titles such as: Silence, the Final Frontier, Where No Woman has Gone Before; PMS: Your Problem … Not His; Communication Skills 1: Tears – The Last Resort Not the First.
Sick and bereft of the will to work any longer in an environment often hostile to women, Ms. Merlo turned in her badge last year. She left with a medical pension that pays far less than she would have received had she retired as she had expected to do, 15 years from now.
She recently opened a daycare in her home to help pay bills. She is afraid to leave her house in case she runs into male officers with whom she has worked.
“I guess I’m afraid of retribution because they know I’ve complained about their behaviour,” she says. “A lot of us women who are going public or considering it are scared to death about what might happen to us.
“But we have to speak up, if not for us then for the women who come after us. Maybe by saying something, we can make life better for them.”
[Source]
Scarlet, I did some time in the Canadian Forces and there too, the weak were called to task, but there was also team work to help those who had the desire, but not the aptitude for certain tasks. In a garrison setting it was similar to the RCMP in that there wasn’t a lot of supervision from NCO’s. But, in the military you go into the woods and live there for a week with the NCO, and Officers. The pukes who got away with their crap, were soon found out. In a garrison setting, as long as the wagons are circled properly and everyone has their story straight, the lazy slugs can get away with quite a bit.
What I can say was different about things in the RCMP is that here, the peer pressure has turned into dysfunction. In the CF I have not seen the kind of character assassinations, lies, malicious rumors, innuendo and setting people up to fail that now permeates the RCMP from top to bottom. The difference in my opinion is that years ago the intention was to make someone’s life a little difficult for non performance, not completely destroy the persons reputation, health and life and for reasons that fall outside competence or work ethic.
Part of the wider problem as I see it is, that if you get too far ahead of everyone you get shot in the back. If you are in a detachment full of lazy, self entitled slugs, and you want to actually go out and earn what the tax payers are paying for, one can end up between the cross hairs. But, because of the long standing tradition of “peer pressure for non hackers”, the victim is always blamed. Also, if one gets into a disagreement with these kinds of people, they can find themselves having these types of problems/harassment, and the force habitually writes it off as a “personality conflict”. They sit on their hands, don’t deal with it and pretend it doesn’t exist. When this is uncovered, it is too often swept under the rug as not to cause any NCO embarrassment for being duped. These are some reasons I believe why the aggressors keep getting away with it, and eventually climb the ladder when they shove everyone else aside….
All I can say is you get one really bad apple in a group setting, they can infect the workplace like a bad virus. Before long, this sickness sweeps across divisions and the entire outfit and becomes so prevalent, it is seen as normal.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Years ago, when there was some semblance of Esprit de Corps in the force, it was good to have jokes played on you. It meant you were liked. But, this has been turned into a weapon of dysfunctional workplaces that have harassment based cultures.
I am also going to say what has exasperated the problem is the way business has been conducted at Depot. On one hand there are a ton of people who end up in Depot that don’t belong there because they were never hired on merit. On to of that, Dr. Gary Bell’s adult based learning that tries to prevent the strong pulling the weak through the program (as occurred during the more teamwork based regimental model), and his emphasis on peer pressure. Well, as far as harassment goes, this is a recipe for disaster. The Animals become in charge of the zoo and the culture becomes I/ME. The peer pressure goes overboard, and mobbing can be found in every corner of that place. Or it can become a game of making the person who shows you up, look bad. When presented with this, facilitators and brass alike sweep it under the rug and pretend it doesn’t exist.
A lot of these elements have existed in the regular force, but I think how Depot has been structured, hasn’t helped the problem and only further indoctrinated new members to it. .
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Good point about Depot. I don’t know how recent Gary Bell is but I can say that even when I went through – 30 years ago now – it was made clear to us all that if anyone fell behind or out of step or struggled with something the rest of us were to take them to task. The idea was that the troop was only as good as its “weakest” member. The emphasis in such cases should have been on helping the “weakest” but more often than not there was harassment instead of helping.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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“If you’re going to talk to her like that, do it somewhere else,” he said to the male officer. “I don’t want to be a witness to stuff like that.”
Right there – that’s the RCMP’s biggest problem – lack of leadership. Every organization has assholes. The trick is to deal with them. This would have been an opportunity for a real leader to deal with an asshole and prevent future problems. But no – he was all about what might affect him.
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