To begin I want to thank Ellie Donohue-Miller from the Brock Student Sexual Violence Support Centre. From the moment I contacted the Centre, Ellie has been an unwavering advocate for me, and has provided me with information I desperately needed, without ever making me feel like she was pushing me in a particular direction. I honestly urge anyone who has experienced any form of sexual violence to contact the Centre (they’re pretty awesome.) I’d also like to thank Lori Ward and Timothy Sawa from the CBC. I reached out to the CBC when I learned that I would not be informed of the disciplinary action Brock would be taking against the professor and told that I would have to keep the final report confidential. They took an interest in my story and put a great deal of work into presenting it in a way that accurately reflected the flaws in trying to report an incident of this nature at Brock University. To the people who organized the Demand Accountability demonstration at Schmon Tower on March 15th, thank you. I think it’s incredible that you are advocating for the entire student body and demanding changes.

There has been a big response to this incident from the students at Brock, and before I discuss my issues with the ‘system’ and its faults, I want stress one thing – don’t let one bad apple spoil the bunch. I’ve seen comments like “I’ve never been ashamed to be a Brock grad until now”, and while I appreciate the sentiment behind those statements, I want people to know that I don’t regret going to Brock. I was happy to get the opportunity to work with many of the wonderful professors employed at the university, so please don’t let this incident be reflective of Brock as a whole. This is a problem of administrative policy and lack of accountability, and shouldn’t reflect your opinion of the education you’ve received from the many excellent academics who value their students.

Now, there are two ongoing stories here. There is the incident itself, which occurred in October of 2014, and there is the investigation of that incident which began in September of 2015. The first question most people have is ‘why did she wait eleven months to report the incident?’ Luckily the answer to this one is easy. I was terrified, and embarrassed, and had very little proof. I was also in a one year programme at Brock, currently in the professor’s class, and had an office about five or six doors down from his; he walked by every day, and I saw him for three hours in class every Thursday night until the class ended in December 2014. I thought about reporting it right away, and the day after it happened I inquired anonymously about what would occur if I did report an incident of this nature. I was told that I would be removed from his class while an investigation took place. He wouldn’t be removed from teaching, I would be removed from the class. So right away, it seemed people were lining up behind the professor. With only ten people in the programme, there would surely be questions if one person all of a sudden disappeared from one class. I wasn’t prepared to answer those questions.

I don’t want to say much about the incident itself, other than to make one thing known – what occurred was a sexual assault, and not ‘harassment.’ When someone touches intimate parts of your body, and continues to do so after you tell them to stop, that is an assault. What was most disturbing to me, however, was that when the incident ended the professor told me it would be a nice arrangement if I were to come by his office once a week to ‘make love’, because we were both ‘consenting adults.’ When I again told him no, he asked me why I couldn’t just accept a ‘man who loves me?’ When I continued to decline his advances he then threatened to tell everyone (I suppose meaning my peers and professors in the department) that I came onto him all night. I walked out of that office asking myself – what the f&*k just happened?

When I had moved away from Ontario in the fall of 2015 to start a different programme, I was holding onto a lot of anger. I decided one day to just go for it and tell him what I thought of his actions in an email. I didn’t even expect a reply. Surprisingly, I did get a reply. Over the course of about sixteen emails back and forth, the professor first lied to me, and told me a different version of events that were easily unravelled. He then admitted his behavior to me, and then finally pleaded with me not to report the incident because it could damage his career and family. He swore nothing like this had ever happened before, and that he was so remorseful for having caused me pain. I was really struggling though, and I got to the point where I knew it was having a really negative impact on my own life, and so I decided to report it to Brock. It wasn’t an easy decision to report this incident. It’s hard to think of something that happened to you as being important enough to potentially ruin someone’s career or family life and it’s not a nice load to carry.

The day I reported the incident I also contacted Niagara police and asked them what a report to the police would involve. They were very supportive and told me that if I wanted to move forward with a report they were there to help me through that process. That process, however, is extremely public, and since I had only told a few close friends about the incident, I really didn’t want it to become public knowledge. I gave them details of the incident and told them that if I was unhappy with the outcome from the university I may consider speaking with them again.

When I had sent all of my correspondence with the professor to Brocks Campus Security, I mentioned that I had heard a rumor of another incident involving the same professor. I received an email response that said “Thanks, we already know about that incident.” Now, I don’t actually know what that incident was, but once I found out that his swearing up and down that he was mortified by his behavior and he had never done anything like this before was a lie…well I felt a lot less guilty for my decision.

I spoke with the Manager of Employee and Labour Relations, who was my main contact throughout the process. They advised that I should request a formal investigation through Brock’s RWLEP. I specifically asked if this was the right route to be taking. My concern was that the highest box you could ‘tick’ so to say on the RWELP was “sexual harassment”, so I wanted clarification on that. I received a response saying “The RWLEP is the forum on campus for dealing with all forms of harassment as well as sexual assault.” But that wasn’t correct. When I received the draft report and the investigator had called it ‘harassment’ instead of ‘assault’ I asked her why? She told me “sexual assault is an offence under the Criminal Code which has its own due process, standard of proof etc. In my view an investigator into a workplace incident should not opine on whether someone has committed a criminal offence.” That’s all fine, but the Manager of Employee and Labour Relation TOLD me the RWLEP covered sexual assault too. This was the first instance where Brock was wrong, and misled me, and caused me to go through four months of a process that downplayed the incident to ‘harassment.’

In the second, or was it the third statement released by Dr. Jack Lightstone, he urged people to come forward if they’ve experienced sexual harassment or violence on campus and said that if the university thinks a criminal offense has taken place they will contact the police. When their Manager of Employee and Labour Relations, used the term ‘sexual assault’ in her email to me, however, no red flags went off for Brock, saying maybe this is a police matter. I mean, honestly, I didn’t know what to do either, but I’m not the one running a university with thousands of students on campus.

No one told me in the beginning that I wouldn’t be made aware of the disciplinary action the school would take until I spoke to the third party investigator on October 27th, 2015. More than a month had passed, and I just learned that I wouldn’t be privy to that information. Then came all the emails saying that not only was I not allowed to know what discipline they might face, but I wouldn’t even be allowed to share the outcome of the investigation (which by the way, found my account credible, and his not.) I asked repeatedly why, why, why? The only responses I got at that point were very official responses quoting different parts of the RWLEP where confidentiality is stressed, so that things are not “improperly publicized.”

I got the final report and was fuming. I had gone through the worst, most stressful four months of my life and now I wasn’t supposed to talk about the outcome, and I wasn’t allowed to know if they ever did anything based on the investigator’s findings. That certainly seems like it was geared towards keeping this faculty member safe, and Brock’s reputation untarnished. From what we now know, it seems like they were not too eager to do much about the situation. It was confirmed that the professor was on campus and teaching classes up until Brock received a phone call from CBC asking for an interview. In an effort to get ahead of what was coming they decided to remove him from campus.

But Brock has had a change of heart. They sincerely regret the emotional trauma they have caused me, and they don’t understand why I felt like I wasn’t allowed to share the report, because I am totally free to do so – now. Frankly I’m insulted by the statements Dr. Lightstone has released. Don’t claim that the information CBC has released is ‘outdated’ because you removed the professor from campus five minutes after they left your office. Don’t claim that you ‘spoke to the complainant’ but not mention that I chewed you out on the phone for fifteen minutes while you played your best version of PC Principle. Most definitely don’t claim that this was handled quickly and efficiently. For one hundred and thirteen days I spent all of my time refreshing my email, hoping that I would have an update on what was happening. I nearly failed out of the programme I am currently in, and more importantly, I nearly lost my mind.

I wasn’t myself for the last year and a half, and I am lucky to have some good friends who put up with the new weird version of my former self. Now that this has come to light a friend told me to “take back your happiness”, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. I was under a very dark cloud for more than a year, and that is a dangerous place to hang out.

I hope that this inspires change at Brock, and that the next person (it is inevitable that there will be others) feels that they are truly supported.

Thank you for all your support,
-Me.