Manitoba man ordered to pay after sexual harassment of employee

WINNIPEG – A Manitoba businessman has been ordered to pay a former employee $36,000 in compensation for sexual harassment.

The Manitoba Human Rights commission says it’s the largest compensation award in the province’s history.

Douglas Homick, the owner-operator of a UPS store in Winkler “repeatedly abused his power to degrade and humiliate the complainant,” government-appointed human rights adjudicator Peter Simm said in the decision released Friday by the human rights commission.

Traci Emslie filed the sexual harassment complaint in 2011 after working at the store for two years. The commission requested an independent adjudicator decide on the case. The adjudicator’s report says she was “subjected to a constant stream of sexual innuendo as well as more egregious physical contact.”

In an interview with Global News Friday, Emslie recalled one instance where her former boss “said he went to his doctor and he said it was okay to have sex with a 33 year old,” her age at the time.

Global News contacted Homick by telephone at another business he owns in Steinbach. He claimed to be unaware of the decision, and when asked if he would pay the amount awarded to Emslie he responded “I don’t know” and refused to discuss the matter further. When a Global News reporter went to interview him personally, Homick demanded the reporter leave the premises and refused to comment.

The adjudicator awarded Emslie $15,000 in compensation for the injury to her dignity and self respect; rarely-awarded “exemplary” damages of $5000 for “ample evidence of malice and recklessness”; and $16,000 in lost wages because “she was forced to leave the workplace due to harassment.”

The Human Rights Commission says the large award brings Manitoba in line with other provinces.

“The Commission has been arguing in front of adjudicators for over ten years in favour of awards that recognize the severity of the harassment and the impact on the particular complainant in the circumstances. Up until now Manitoba has not always been in line with amount awarded elsewhere in the country,” says commission executive director Azim Jiwa.

Homick did not participate in the adjudication process although “he was given every opportunity to do so”, the commission said in its release Friday.

“Adjudicator Sim also addressed two important points of public interest.  First he acknowledged that a complainant does not have to express an objection to the acts of harassment at the time they occur and second; the aim of a human rights award is to put the complainant in the position she would have been in, had she not been harassed,” the commission said.