The Manitoba Justice Department didn’t take the necessary steps to prevent an employee of the Manitoba Youth Centre from enduring ongoing harassment from co-workers based on his sexuality.
In a report done by the Manitoba Human Rights Adjudication Panel, it said that the complainant, only known as T.M. in the ruling, has worked at the Youth Centre as a juvenile councillor from 2002- 2009. He had told a co-worker that he was gay a year into working there after being questioned.
The ruling said that after coming out to his co-worker, T.M was harassed with racial and homophobic slurs.
T.M. said that he was also the brunt of ongoing jokes about him being gay, including being paged as “Code Pink” when responding to emergency calls.
A paragraph in the decision said “Eventually, he said, that was all he was- the “gay guy” and while there was a core group who’s harassing was constant; a good 70 percent of the staff would from time to time make comments about his sexual orientation.”
The harassment continued and ramped up to the point where staff would make graphic comments related to sex with men, at which point, T.M. told begged his colleagues to stop.
He told the panel, that he believed a superintendent witnessed the harassment in its early stages and did nothing to stop it. T.M. added that he thought it was “futile to complain.”
The report went on to say that the ongoing harassment caused T.M. to suffer a panic attack at work, resulting in him being admitted to the hospital and taking 5 weeks off of work.
After another stress leave in 2010, T.M. was moved to another position in the Justice Department outside of the youth centre.
He was relocated to the Youth Centre again in 2012, when later that year, at a Christmas party where he says he was sexually assaulted and threatened by a co-worker.
It’s said that the only person aware of the incident at the time was T.M.’s husband.
T.M. brought forward a written complaint describing the harassment to management, but because he failed to provide names in the complaint, it was discarded without him knowing.
In 2014, he was told that his managers would attend sensitivity training, but the ruling said that there is no record as to who attended the training.
T.M. left his position with the Justice Department in 2017.
After a three-week hearing, the Human Rights Panel ordered that the Justice Department pay the complainant $75,000, and to undergo sensitivity training and hire a respectful workplace advisor.
The Human Rights Commission says that the Panel’s decision reinforces employers' responsibility to investigate complaints of harassment, and if an investigation is impossible, take steps to stop the harassment.
