The former director of human rights at a university on Vancouver Island has filed a harassment complaint against the school, alleging it failed to take action about a student with a strange sexual fetish.
Katrin Roth, the former director of human rights at Vancouver Island University, filed the complaint with B.C.'s Human Rights Tribunal this week. She claims VIU did nothing to protect students and employees from a student who she alleges has “paraphilic infantilism” – a sexual interest in role-playing as a baby.
Those with the fetish, which is recognized by psychiatrists, become sexually aroused by such activities as wearing diapers, eating baby food, and having their diapers changed.
Janis Ledwell-Hunt, a professor of English women's studies at VIU, says she noticed the student’s odd behaviour when she was his professor at the Cowichan campus in 2015.
"He started to bring children's books into class and asked that I read them aloud," she said.
The student, a man in his 40s, also emailed her multiple times a day and asked her on dates, she says. His behaviour became more and more peculiar until it culminated, she says, in an uncomfortable submission for a class assignment: the student submitted an essay that included a photo of himself wearing nothing but a diaper.
"My heart went to my throat because it was then that I recognized that in his interactions with me all along, he had been manipulating me into this form of role play," she said.
Documents filed as part of the human rights complaint contain allegations that, in May 2015, the student had a VIU nurse practitioner change his dirty diaper.
The 105-page complaint alleges it was only after that nurse connected with other VIU colleagues that she learned about his inappropriate manner with other employees.
Ledwell-Hunt alleges that when she alerted VIU administration that the student was sexually harassing her, the university failed to take action. Instead, they asked her instead to continue teaching the student. She refused.
Roth says she learned that the student harassed several women, complimenting them on their clothing while leering at their chests, repeatedly asking staff members to go on dates, and following female staff members.
She says more should have been done to protect university employees.
"There were a number of opportunities where the university could have prevented more women being sexually exploited in this manner,” she said.
Her complaint alleges VIU failed to address the student's behaviour toward women, failed to warn other employees and failed to grant a risk assessment.
VIU did follow its own policy and procedures, says the university's CFO and vice-president of administration, Shelley Legin.
"VIU is confident that we took appropriate steps, and any complaint that comes forward we will defend VIU's position in any court of law," she told CTV Vancouver Island.
In the event of any more complaints, the university says it will review its policies and procedures and make any necessary changes.
Roth says she was fired from working at the university in January, for what she believes is retaliation for her investigative work into the harassment complaints.
The Human Rights Tribunal is currently reviewing the complaint.
With a report from CTV Vancouver Island's Jessica Lepp
