College student wore diapers and leered at women, complaint says. I'm only 3, he says

Is it sexual harassment or a simple misunderstanding of a man’s disability?

That’s the issue currently confronting the Vancouver Island University in British Columbia, Canada, after its former director of human rights and workplace safety filed a complaint alleging that the school didn’t do enough to protect women from a student in his 40s with a possible diaper fetish.

But the man, who remains unnamed, told CBC that “I am special needs and 3, so I am not in my 40s.”

In the 105-page complaint, Katrin Roth says she first learned of the alleged sexual harassment last November, and that it started two years before that, according to the Ashcroft Cache Creek Journal.

Roth wrote in her complaint that the student engaged in “fetishistic behaviour in and out of the classroom” that included: talking and acting like an infant in classes, following women to isolated areas and leering at them before asking them out on dates, the Journal reported.

Roth originally submitted the complaint in July, also alleging that the student included an image of himself wearing nothing but a diaper in a 2015 English essay and asked a nurse practitioner at the university to change his soiled diapers twice, the Times Colonist wrote.

The complaint also says that he told an English teacher in an email that he especially enjoyed “the pee pee part!” of the day.

But the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal ruled that her complaint was too broad and “does not allege sufficient facts,” the Globe and Mail wrote, also saying that she must submit a new version of it by the end of this month.

And Shelley Legin, the university’s chief financial officer and vice-president of administration, told the Times-Colonist that VIU worked hard to make sure students on campus would be safe — adding that the school hired a legal expert to analyze the situation.

“We will follow our procedures and policies, our risk-mitigation protocols and risk assessment protocols,” she said, “to make sure we continue to make [VIU] a great place to learn.”

But Roth says she views the man and his alleged fetish as a potential threat to women on the university's campus.

"He will not stop unless we make him," Roth said to CBC. “I truly believe that he needs to be medically assessed as to whether he's a risk to the community.”

In the complaint, Roth wrote she was fired in January "in retaliation for seeking evidence and endeavouring to support the female survivors by advising them of their right to file a human-rights complaint,” according to the Mail. She’s also submitted another complaint about her firing.

This story was originally published November 15, 2017 at 11:08 AM with the headline "College student wore diapers and leered at women, complaint says. I'm only 3, he says."