Canadian Security Intelligence Service staff allege rape, bullying in ‘toxic’ B.C. office

globalnews.ca:

Canadian Security Intelligence Service vehicle.The man, who was supposed to be her mentor and coach, treated his “own needs as more important than doing the job,” she said in an interview.She said she was raped by her colleague nine times while at work in CSIS surveillance vehicles between July 2019 and February 2020.A second officer said she too was sexually assaulted as a rookie by the same officer in surveillance vehicles during covert missions, despite warnings from the first to their bosses that he should not be partnered with young women.They say supervisors told them other women had complained about not feeling safe around the man in the past.“Nothing was done, and I started hearing these stories that there was this history of all these women (who) used to be working at our region. They used to be there, and they all had the same thing to say, and they all just ended up leaving,” the second officer said.The women are among four officers with the B.C.

CSIS physical surveillance unit who say it was a toxic workplace where bullying, harassment and worse went unchecked, and where young female officers were victimized.Their accounts, provided in documents and interviews with The Canadian Press over several months, offer a rare unauthorized glimpse inside Canada’s spy agency and its operations.The pair from B.C. who said they were assaulted by the same senior officer also describe their treatment in separate anonymized lawsuits against the federal government filed in B.C.They said they felt unable to go to police, in part because of an obligation to secrecy, including a law against identifying themselves or others as CSIS officers, and a belief the organization would cover things up.A flawed internal complaint process