Two former Parliament Hill journalists recount dealing with sexual misconduct during the 1980s
Kathryn Young had just graduated from journalism school. Judy Morrison was the host of CBC Radio's "The House". Both worked on Parliament Hill in the 1980s. And both have stories about a male-dominated culture where sexual harassment, and even assault, were a harrowing part of the Hill's distorted reality.
As host of CBC's The House in Ottawa during the mid-80s, Judy Morrison was an accomplished and tough journalist who had a reputation on Parliament Hill for not backing down from a fight.
Ms. Morrison's hard-nosed reputation was well-earned, but she also became a cautionary figure, a warning to new female reporters on the Hill about the dangers of taking on the male-dominated establishment.
With all the questions currently swirling around Ottawa about the alleged misconduct of politicians on the Hill, we thought it would be worthwhile to get some historical context. As we've all heard this month, Parliament has no official mechanism in place to deal with harassment complaints between MPs -- something both women find shocking. But that doesn't mean that harassment complaints are a new phenomenon. Judy Morrison knows that first hand. And so does Kathryn Young. Young was a young reporter in 1984, fresh out of journalism school, when she landed her dream job on the Hill with The Canadian Press.
At the time, political journalism was a male domain where roughly 90 per cent of the Parliamentary Bureau were men. Sexual harassment -- unwanted looks, comments, or advances -- were a part of doing business.
In the spring of 1985, Kathryn Young went to the Press Club for a drink after work. It was a popular spot with journalists and politicians alike. Michel Gratton, the press secretary to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, was a fixture there, and on this night, Young ran into him outside the bar on her way home.
"He came out and asked if he could share a cab with me, and I thought sure. I was young and naive, and I thought 'Oh, this means he is really accepting me as a colleague,' so I said yes."
Ms. Young was working as the night reporter for Canadian Press at the time, chasing down stories from earlier in the day. Because of that, Gratton was a crucial and constant contact for her at the Prime Minister's Office. She had always found him dismissive of her as a young, female reporter, a part of the "Ole Boys Network" that seemed to rule Ottawa's political and journalistic circles. So on that night, Ms. Young was excited that Gratton seemed to finally be treating her as an equal.
"But it quickly became apparent that that wasn't his intent at all. He started kissing me in the cab. I tried to tell him to stop. But he kept kissing me."
The cab arrived at her apartment complex. The driver was staring back at them. Young said she was worried about their working relationship, and she was worried Gratton may punish her later at work if she spurned him in front of the taxi driver. So she invited him up to her apartment. She said she still wasn't interested, but she wanted to save him the embarrassment.
But shortly after they got upstairs, Gratton attacked her.
"He just leapt on top of me, pushed me back in the chair. He was on top of me, pinning me down...and kissing me. He ripped my shirt open and had his hands down my shirt. I was stunned and I thought, 'This is it. This is my time. I'm going to be raped.'"
At first, Young was too stunned to react, but her mind quickly came back into focus.
"I was turning my head side-to-side so he would stop kissing me, trying to push him off me. I was yelling 'No! No!'. He finally did stop. He stood up. And I told him he'd better leave. And he did."
Judy Morrison had her own run-in with Gratton. She regularly asked him to help arrange an interview with the Prime Minister for her. Once, Gratton replied "Sure, but what about my date?"
When Morrison objected to his advances, he said he was only joking. But then he added that if she ever wanted to leave her husband, he was definitely interested.
Young never went to police to file a criminal complaint against Gratton, and only told a work colleague about the incident until 18 months later, when Morrison's experience ended up in the Toronto Sun.
When the story was raised in the House of Commons by an NDP MP - a woman - men on both sides of the aisle erupted in laughter. Journalists around in the Press Gallery laughed along as well. Young was infuriated, so she decided to tell her story as well.
The news coverage of both incidents led to a meeting in the PMO, and eventually a public apology from Gratton in 1986. But his attack on Young was diluted in media reports, and the full details of what he did - and tried to do - were never fully reported until now.
Gratton was forced to publicly apologize in 1986. But, his actions were only described as "incidents". At the time, some media commentators chalked it up to "macho conduct" by the PM's aide, saying a "shift in attitudes" had made such behaviour "distasteful and tacky." The full extent of the allegations against him were not made public until now. Gratton died on January 13, 2011.
Watching the current scandal unfolding on the Hill, both women fear that little has changed in the past 30 years. To learn more about their story, listen to the audio from our feature interview.