The Intractability of Gender Relations in Society

"The RCMP will accommodate me back to work. Unfortunately, however, the RCMP broke my brain. And so I have PTSD. In order for me to go back to work, I have to be healthy and the RCMP have done nothing to help me with that.
"They want to get rid of me because I complained."
RCMP Cpl. Catherine Galliford

RCMP harassment allegations

Catherine Galliford made accusations of systematic harassment, that she suffered over years of bullying while an employee of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. She also complained of sexual assault. Harassment complaints may be symptomatic of an emotionally sensitive personality, but sexual assault is a fact, a violation, a physical and psychological attack assuming brutality and the ultimate invasion of personal privacy.

Her original complaints appear to have unleashed a veritable flood of complaints of similar issue from many others whose experience within the employ of the RCMP was less than a stellar one. It stands to reason that the ensuing embarrassment and highlighting of a culture of male empowerment over the presence of females in a stereotypical former male occupation, would result in no little amount of resentment against Ms. Galliford.

And while that resentment and the begrudging need to investigate the veracity of her complaints and hold those responsible to account may not have been entirely satisfactory, it became a larger issue more latterly, one that society demanded a powerful response to. Obviously enough a situation prevailed that required attention and rectification. And this two successive heads of that highly respected security agency which has fallen on sad times, promised would occur.

Institutions become hidebound in their long-established routines provoking them through those who make the rules, reluctant to change what they feel has worked very well in the past. In all societies where security, police work, rough-and-tumble responses to crime and masculinity is barely screened by a veneer of respectable law-enforcement, oppression of women, at the very least advantage-taking, occurs.

How to wholesale and swiftly expunge those attitudes displayed by some segments of the male character from public offices and to do it successfully is another story. Invoking attitudes of respect, decency and professionalism work for many but never for all who feel themselves above such mundane issues of respecting equality. To them equality represents unrestrained boorishness displayed before both genders alike. Which men may not complain of, but women may.

It seems obvious enough that Catherine Galliford was a victim of the kind of male atmosphere that holds it is perfectly normal to take advantage of the presence of women by regarding them as prey in the game of sexual conquest. It could happen anywhere, and it does. That it occurs within a professional community which is expected to respect the law is doubly damning but it does express human nature; the unfortunate side of human nature.

Ms. Galliford now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. She has been on fully paid sick leave since 2006 as a result of her experiences, which no doubt stemmed from the abuse she suffered, and was added to by her dissatisfaction with the manner in which her officially lodged complaints were handled. When she recently received a letter which was a "notice of intent to discharge", she was not the least bit pleased.

The RCMP was out to sunder its official relationship with her "for reason of physical and/or mental disability. This discharge is based on the grounds that your disability has impaired your ability to perform your duties ... and the limitations and occupational restrictions resulting from your condition are such that accommodation elsewhere in the force has not been possible", the letter explained reasonably enough.

The conclusion was reached by a health services officer that she was deemed unfit for either operational or administrative duties. Her inability to fit either of these two categories to resume active work was considered to a permanent state of affairs. She herself hadn't responded to a previous letter giving her 30 days to discuss "workplace accommodations"; requested to come forward and help address the situation she failed to respond.

She is not the only individual to be singled out for discharge for similar reasons. An additional thirty employees also on long-term sick leave received similar letters of intent to sever employment through administrative job dismissal. The argument being, logically enough, that the federal police force could not possibly continue to pay full salaries ad infinitum to employees with health issues severe enough to keep them disengaged while on the payroll.

Commissioner Bob Paulson is very well aware of prevailing opinion that the policing agency was deliberately targeting those employees who had filed harassment complaints. Which is just what Ms. Galliford contends. On the other hand, even while she complains the RCMP is attempting to rid itself of her presence because of her complaints, she says too she could never again work for the force considering the environment "too toxic".

"The RCMP will accommodate me back to work. Unfortunately, however, the RCMP broke my brain. And so I have PTSD. In order for me to go back to work, I have to be healthy and the RCMP have done nothing to help me with that", she explains. And then adds that having received the notice of intent to discharge is likely "more of a blessing than anything else so I can move forward".

Which is it, then? Will the final intention of Catherine Galliford in view of the foregoing, please step forward? Should anyone who refuses to return to a workplace they deem beyond redemption, expect that taxpayers will forever fund full salaries, while those involved nurse their grievances and refuse to return to the scene of the crime, however amended?

Mixed messages, confusion, indecision.

As a result of a flood of complaints resulting in lawsuits and a proposed class-action lawsuit filed against the force, it has claimed to have implemented a number of measures urged upon it by the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP. Which has resulted, it claims, in its having revised its internal harassment policy to develop new "respectful workplace" training.