By Kris Sims
OTTAWA – A group Military Veterans and active duty Armed Forces members is launching a class action lawsuit against the Feds after they say they endured years of sexual assault and sexual harassment while on the job.
“It went from harassment to groping and touching and everything that goes with it,” Marie-Claude Gagnon, Retired Leading Seaman in the Royal Canadian Navy told CTV Question Period Host Evan Solomon Tuesday. Gagnon served from 1998 to 2005. She says she was repeatedly sexually propositioned by her supervisor. “In order to get different things I was asked to perform oral sex.”
Gagnon says she reported the incidents to her chain-of-command at the time and her supervisor was then “talked to.” The supervisor then allegedly confronted Gagnon directly, insisting that the incidents should be worked out between the two of them.
“It was a lot of unwanted touching, a lot of groping, rude comments, if I did well on a course I had to have been sleeping with somebody because there was no possible way that I was that smart,” Nadine Schultz-Nielson, also a retired Leading Seaman with The Royal Canadian Navy, told Solomon. “I tried multiple times to report. I found that it always got worse if you report it. The last time I reported to my chain of command was when I was notified that I would be medically released and I was told that being sexually assaulted and sexually harassed in the military was an administrative issue not a medical issue.”
Gagnon and Schultz-Nielson say their activist group called “Just 700” includes Veterans who have left the military and Canadian Armed Forces members who are still on active duty.
Both women and men are part of the “Just 700” group which has until now kept itself secret for fear of retaliation.
The group has retained a law firm and they say they have filed a Notice of Action against the Federal Government this week.
On Monday Statistics Canada released a report that showed 960 full-time members reported being sexually assaulted in the past year within the Canadian Armed Forces.
General Jonathan Vance, Chief of the Defence Staff told reporters on Monday that he was “extremely disappointed” that only approximately half of the military members responded to the Stats Can survey and he pledged to fight sexual assault and sexual harassment within the ranks.
"Harmful sexual behaviour is a real problem in our institution," Vance said. "We know it and we're trying to tackle it head-on."
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