'They didn't protect them'

A 40-year-old Vancouver Island University student is believed to have imposed his sexual fetishes on over 20 women, half of them students at the university.

Katrin Roth filed a complaint with B.C.’s Human Rights Tribunal claiming VIU did nothing to protect students and employees from the mans’ paraphilic infantilism or adult baby syndrome.

One of the first accounts of his behaviour dates back to 2013, according to Roth who was the former director of human rights at Vancouver Island University.

“In 2015, there have been notes made about him being sexually inappropriate towards women when he saw them for counselling services,” she said.

The man would ask women out repeatedly, he would follow staff on rooftops that were off limits to students and would ignore women’s rejections.

“When he was in class he would send emails to professor Janis Ledwell-Hunt of English women’s studies that use language like nursing and poop and references to infantilistic, baby terms,” she said.

In class, he would ask the professor to read him children’s books.

“He described to her being an adult baby and enjoyed wearing diapers, and had a soiled diaper and a baby bottle, and he likes to suck on nipples,” Roth said.

Ledwell-Hunt said his actions reached the breaking point when he was emailing her multiple times a day asking her on dates and submitted an essay that included a photo of him wearing only a diaper.

“He continued his behaviour with other faculty members, nothing happened to warn women or survivors and nothing was put in place to protect them,” said Roth.

Roth described how he went to a nurse practitioner and asked her to change him after he had a bowel movement and that he asked another worker to read him a story while leering at her chest area.

After media stories, Roth said they became aware of police reports dating back to 2007 for the man in connection to similar incidents.

Women suffered psychological, verbal and physical assault according to Roth.

“Some of the women have lived in fear for 10 years and he keeps finding them on Facebook, because he keeps changing his name and contacting them with different aliases or a false name,” she said.

“He gets fixated on certain women. He was unwilling to leave them be, I don’t know what it takes to make him stop.”

Roth believes the university severely failed to address the male students' behaviour towards women and failed to protected them.

The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal will investigate the complaint filed by Roth to determine if female employees and students were harassed by the male, but she is worried about the other woman.

“The Tribunal has now accepted some aspects of the complaint for filing,” states a release on VIU website on Feb. 23.

“Due to the high moral and legal obligations related to student and community member privacy, we have been unable to and cannot comment on or discuss any specific details,” states the release.

“They didn’t protect (the students), that is the problem,” she said. “The university did nothing... did nothing when they noticed there could be a problem back in 2013.”

Roth said RCMP have told the victims there may not be enough to charge him criminally and the Human Rights Tribunal will only protect students or employees at the university.

“What about the women in the community?” she said. “Who is supposed to help them.”