Gender-Based Violence in the Canadian Armed Forces, 1990s

Yesterday, we talked about how the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) did not reach the “full integration” of women that the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal had ordered in 1989. 

So, what happened? For the CAF, nothing really. The Canadian Human Rights Commissioner wrote to the Chief of the Defence Staff stating her disappointment in the outcome of the decade of gender integration. But, despite the 1989 order having the force of law, the institution did not face any legal or political consequences. No incentives to change their ways. 

For servicemembers though, the consequences of gender integration’s shortcomings were consequential. Because leaders would not facilitate women’s integration in their new units and the military never provided them with the necessary equipment and training to match their physiological characteristics, the CAF set women to failure. The philosophy of gender integration was “let women integrate themselves.” But the military was not adapted to women’s differences, making it harder for them to succeed. 

Resentment grew in the ranks – servicemen saw women as a dead weight that were impairing operational effectiveness. Servicewomen were painted with the same brush; the failures of one woman became evidence that no women could be successful in the military – the servicewomen who were struggling became the target of violence. The way the CAF was implementing gender integration had become so toxic that it created an environment normalizing gender-based violence.

Gender-based violence in the military had become so prevalent that it made the covers of Maclean’s in the spring and summer of 1998. The first cover had a shocking headline “Rape in the Military,” along with the face of a young servicewoman, Dawn Thompson. Thompson was a young recruit in Fleet School who had been raped in the male barracks by a friend after a party. She came forward, but she was punished for being in the male barracks after curfew. Every day for weeks, she had to work with her assailant and had to state why she had been punished in front of her peers. She was the posted to a new unit after graduating, but the rumours had preceded her, and her new comrades bullied her. In the last months of her time in the military, she admitted at an hospital for mental health issues, and released from the CAF. All of it happened to her within a year, from 1992 and 1993. 

Dee Brasseur, the first woman pilot, also came forward, exposing a culture of harassment and assault in the Air Force. Sandra Perron, the first woman artillery officer, is also well-known for the leaked picture of herself beaten up, tied to a tree and bare feet in the snow. The Maclean’s reporters, most notably Jane O’Hara, also uncovered a story of cover-up surrounding sexual assault allegations against Colonel Labbé (best known as the last Commanding Officer of the Canadian Airborne Regiment in Somalia), which involved two of the highest ranking leaders, Chief of the Army Staff William Leach and Chief of the Defence Staff Maurice Baril.  

The CAF’s zero-tolerance policy on harassment and sexual assault meant that leaders with instances of such misconduct would have their career progression jeopardized. As such, when victims came forward and was credible, a Commanding Officer would give two choices to alleged assailants: either face punishment at the discretion of the superior, with no administrative impact, or let the assailant go to court martial. Evidently, the accused had an incentive in taking the first option, as it was the least impactful on one’s career. Otherwise, complaints were mainly dismissed. 

Some leaders were actively promoting assault of servicewomen, by openly berating them in front of their peers, or punishing the whole group for the shortcomings of one servicemember (note that women, having just a few of the necessary tools to succeed in the military, became the most common targets of such “rectification” violence). Due to these dynamics, women would also become part of the gender-based violence at play in the Canadian military: this happened to Joan Harper, one of the first women to get into infantry school at Wainwright, in Alberta. After a few weeks, two of her co-servicewomen severely assaulted her, and she was admitted to a hospital. Her Commanding Officer came in to visit her and told her that she was no longer vulnerable to assaults, because he had control over her assailants. Upon her return to her quarters, she found a noose on her bed. She left the military soon after. 

Those are only selected examples from one of the largest coverages on sexual assault on the military. Despite the overwhelming testimonies and stories, the leadership’s response was mainly focused on the way Maclean’s made the revelations. The Chief of Defence Staff and the Minister of National Defence both lamented how the articles painted an unfair picture of the military and tarnished the uniform. The Chief of Defence Staff established a hotline, and the Minister of National Defence reinstated a Minister’s Advisory Board (very similar in structure to the one responsible for the monitoring of gender integration and that had been dismantled in 1994). 

These measures may have given the impression of a leadership that stepped forward and try to address the issue, but there is little knowledge on what the CAF and the Department of National Defence implemented to combat gender-based violence in the ranks.

We will see tomorrow that, in fact, these actions had a very little impact.