Following allegations of sexual misconduct within the Liberal caucus, Sheila Copps has come out to say that she herself was sexually assaulted by another member of the Ontario legislature.
In her regular column “Copps’ Corner”for The Hill Times, a newsweekly on federal politics, the former deputy prime minister says the incident happened when she was an MPP for Hamilton on a parliamentary tour on violence against women.
“I was sexually assaulted by another Member of the Provincial Parliament within a year of my arrival at Queen’s Park at the age of 28,” Copps writes.
She said her attacker tried to push her against a wall and kiss her outside a hotel elevator after a group dinner at the end of an all-day session. She pushed back and kicked “him where it hurts.”
Copps writes that she never reported the incident. She chalked it up to “personal misjudgement” and she and the perpetrator had no further interactions during the rest of the tour.
Copps also writes that she was raped more than 30 years ago, but when she went to the police, she was informed that a conviction would be impossible. “Police merely paid a visit to the culprit warning him to keep his distance,” she writes.
Copps appears to be coming forward with her history to shine a light on the lack of “due process” to deal with such allegations on Parliament Hill. She says that Parliament Hill is not subject to provincial labour laws and that police cannot investigate complaints launched from there.
“On Parliament Hill, there are sexual dalliances, affairs, and outright assaults that occur. The difference is that victims in that sanctified workplace do not have the right to go beyond the Hill for due process,” Copps said.
Last week, Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau kicked out two members of his caucus amid accusations that they behaved inappropriately toward two female New Democrats. He also called for an independent investigation into the actions of the two accused MPs who have denied the allegations against them.
"Look, folks, it's 2014,” Trudeau said shortly after the allegations surfaced. “It's time that this workplace, like other workplaces across the country, had a process whereby these issues can be aired and dealt with."
Trudeau’s decisive actions came amidst weeks of discussion in the media on sexual assault, particularly by authority figures, following the highly publicized Jian Ghomeshi scandal. When Ghomeshi was fired from his job as the popular host of CBC’s radio show Q, he said the firing resulted from a jilted lover’s vendetta to accuse him of violent and non-consensual sexual practices.
Copps initially jumped to support Ghomeshi on Twitter and faced a significant backlash because of it. She retracted her position however as more women – at least nine so far – have come forward to say Ghomeshi was physically violent with them, and that the acts were never consensual.
Ghomeshi is now the subject of a Toronto police investigation and Copps has retracted her position. In the Hill Times column, Copps writes that she should never have weighed in on such a sensitive issue without hearing the other side of the story first.
After the suspension of the Liberal MPs, media pundit and former NDP staffer said he was also sexually harassed by male MPs years ago on Parliament Hill. Copps said the revelation was “not unexected” and that it reflects the “experience of hundreds” before him, but investigations within Parliament do not go far enough.
“As long as the investigation occurs solely within the Parliamentary Precinct, neither the accuser nor the accused will have the same right to due process afforded Jian Ghomeshi,” Copps writes.
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