STORY 36
I was asked to sign an NDA so that I would not tell anyone my experience of sexual harassment to protect the university and the person accused of sexual harassment.
I was working in a university beneath a person of considerable power who would only enable me to get my job done if I gave him emotional support (i.e., long hugs daily because his life was ‘so hard’, letting him vent about his ‘abusive wife’, and constantly massaging his ego). As a professional woman, I felt so demeaned but this was how he treated all women and many of them seemed to enjoy it.
His staff supported him throughout this ordeal and made me feel like I was a troublemaker for questioning his behaviour which had been normalized. Me and the only other colleague who stood up against this behaviour received considerable retaliation for whistleblowing. I was only a contract employee; I had no rights. I was told that the solution for me was to leave the university and find another job and that my contract would not be renewed because of this situation (they even acknowledged via a hidden voice recording that my situation was horrible and I was asked why “as a woman, would (I) put up with it for so long?” The colleague who stood up for me is still there and two years later continues to be bullied and blackballed by the people who support my previous boss.
After months of being blackballed by my boss and the rest of his team, I filed a human rights complaint and was in mediation through the provincial human rights tribunal. I was appalled that he defended himself with the claim that I ‘was asking for it’ as the reason he treated me in the way he did (even though from the thousands of individual text messages we exchanged it was he who initiated 122 personal after-hour conversations with me in a year while I had only initiated 7, and those were only out of a sense of obligation and guilt). I was naive and ignorant about NDAs and the university wanted to settle quickly. I don’t recall having a time limit to decide what to do but I do remember wanting it to be over with quickly. I said I’d sign if he signed one too and if I was allowed to tell my story to another person, in the rare case that that person also experienced the same treatment and reached out to me.
I was told that’s not how NDAs work. There was no negotiation. I was given an ultimatum and from a position of zero power I felt like I had no choice. It’s not negotiable and it’s one-sided.
He and the university would be free to say anything they wanted about me and I was completely silenced. I was burning with indignation and wanted to take the case to tribunal. It was the only way that the public could hear both sides and then everything would be out in the open. All I wanted was acknowledgement and a public apology. Nothing would change otherwise. But because the settlement offer was so high my lawyer let me know that he wouldn’t make any money if he took this to court so I have to be willing to go into financial ruin to pay him to seek justice or simply settle. So, I had no true choice.
Having to sign an NDA was the first time I felt helpless, hopeless, and powerless. It was a feeling worse for me than the year and a half of sexual harassment I endured from my employer. I lost my job, I lost my voice, I became jaded and distrustful of all people in positions of power. I became jaded with the idea that anyone cared about justice or even kindness. It was all about money.
What I learned was that justice was for the rich, that universities that use NDAs to silence victims of sexual harassment care only about protecting their reputation and assets (he was the Dean at the time and he remains a tenured professor) and most importantly I learned that I don’t matter.
