When Heli Kijanen felt like her future had been ripped out of her hands, she almost took her own life.
“I’m sitting here today because of my daughters,” said the former RCMP officer and Thunder Bay resident.
Kijanen spent time in the Canadian military when she was younger, so the country’s national police force seemed a natural fit for her. She never thought her career as an officer would last just two years and that she would later become part of a class action lawsuit, which alleges harassment and bullying of female officers, against the RCMP.
“I knew that if I could challenge myself physically and mentally and at the same time at the end of the day know that I have helped people and made a difference in their lives, saving lives, I could thoroughly enjoy my life and feel like I’d accomplished something great,” she said to Dougall Media reporters Thursday.
She graduated the training program in Regina in 2008 and was stationed in a small town in western Canada. Her first year on the job went smoothly.
“I gave it my all and when I finally got my children down there … I felt fulfilled,” Kijanen said. “I would go out there every day and do the best that I could.”
And while things were going well for her at first, she did hear things about other members being harassed and bullied, things that would make her shake her head in disbelief.
“In my situation it came down to blatant lies about my performance or things that I was doing,” she said, noting she was bullied in a tag-team manner, where colleagues would take turns tearing a strip off of her.
She said colleagues would accuse her of using the fact that she was a single mother as an excuse to leave before her work was finished.
“I would sit in my chair shockingly thinking ‘I have sat here until midnight time and time again … I do not leave a job undone.’”
Kijanen said she was accused of showing up late for training courses, using her computer for personal use and told she wasn’t allowed to speak to certain members of the detachment because they were alleging she was causing harassment issues.
She said that perhaps she was too sensitive for what she believes is the boys club at that detachment.
“It’s almost like a control issue where if they want you out, if they don’t want somebody because they don’t belong in their club, they will bully you out the door,” she said. “It came to a point where it was too much.”
The impact on her life has been grave; it has strained her physically and mentally and she has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“My life is not the same,” she said, fighting back tears. “I always get emotional because I’m angry.”
“I feel like I’ve just been swept aside and everything that I ever worked for, so hard and taught my daughters to learn from their mother to never give up and never quit has crushed me. It’s crushed me as a human being. I don’t know how strong one can be to go forth and battle something so huge,” she said.
But she knows she will survive.
“I will be fine. I’m not weak. I’m not a quitter,” Kijanen said.
Thunder Bay lawyer Alexander Zaitzeff said there are dozens of people who could be part of the lawsuit and at the present time they are collecting clients and stories from across the country.
They have a team of seven lawyers from Thunder Bay and British Columbia and are expecting to file the class action suit in early January.
“We’re the voice of the class group,” he said. “The first thing is that the women themselves are now unified. They are coming out with their stories.”
While the suit does include allegations of sexual harassment, there are no sexual issues in Kijanen’s case. And while the lawsuit is focusing on the harassment of women, Kijanen said it’s also happening to men in the police force.
Sgt. Greg Cox told the Toronto Star the allegations of harassment are being taken seriously.
“In recent weeks, the commissioner has outlined several new measures to support his top priority of addressing harassment issues,” Cox, with RCMP headquarters, said in a statement.
“The RCMP is aware of media reports with respect to a class-action lawsuit, but has not received any formal notification of such a suit being filed.”
