What Jenny Kwan did, Carnegie management has undone.
Last November, Jenny Kwan, MLA for Vancouver East, got a call from a Carnegie member, also named Kwan, who had been unjustly barred from the Carnegie for four months. Jenny said she would help him. He believes she had one of her staff call Carnegie, as his barring was lifted and he wasn't required to go through the usual meeting with Security Coordinator Skip Everall. When Kwan attempted to talk to him, Everall said, "I don't want to talk to you."
Anyone who has ever reported Carnegie corruption to the outside world knows that Carnegie staff retaliate. Kwan said he noticed a young security guard glaring at him (he didn't know that the guard is reportedly the son of Everall.) Then Everall got the opening he needed. "I was feeling good it was New Year's day," says Kwan, who explains that he was joking with some old Chinese guys who sit in the Carnegie lobby and made a sex joke. He made the joke in Chinese and they were laughing, and then he translated it into English. Everall instantly gave orders to security guard Ted Chaing to bar Kwan for a month.
Chaing issued the barring. But Kwan has no hard feelings toward Chaing. "He had to do it; that's his boss; he would have been fired." The exact reason Kwan was given for the barring was that Everall considered him "loud" and "corrupt". Carnegie is an adult centre; you don't see kids around there much, so who is going to be corrupted by Kwan?
Kwan's plan to begin going to the Carnegie Learning Centre this month to improve his English literacy, a plan that he had already run by Learning Centre teacher Lucy Alderson, has now been nixed by Everall. One less student in a learning centre that is already clinically dead.
The barring of Kwan would have been rubber-stamped by Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty and Assistant Director Dan Tetrault. All barrings are rubber-stamped by them.
Funny, Everall, Whitty, and Tetrault didn't see the need for such an extreme response last year when a 50 year old male staffer was having sex with a teenage female client.
11 comments:
Aside from the fact that a sexual relationship with a client is considered a crossing of professional boundaries..how old was the minor...shame..
Why is this abuse allowed to continue?
I tell sex jokes in all languages at work, all the time.
They try to fire me, but I just laugh and report to work the next morning like nothing happened, weird I know.
Kwan actually should be allowed into The Learning Centre to improve his English. He could then tell his sex jokes more clearly.
As for the staffer having sex with a teenage female client, the POLICE should be called about that so it can be confirmed and then charged. If this staffer is charged, he would then probably, or most likely, be fired.....we would hope.
oh and, jerk!
anonymous,
"how old was the minor"
A woman at Carnegie said the girl was 15 years old when the 50 yr. old started having sex with her.
Some men at Carnegie (not staff) made it known to the 50 yr. old that they considered sex with this kid to be wrong. His response was, "I'm a man." He said she was 17 yrs. old (but he had been involved with her for some time, so she may not have been 17 when it began.)
Two middle-aged women who go to Carnegie saw the 50 yr. old taking the girl into a hotel on the Downtown Eastside. They complained to his Carnegie supervisor, Rika Uto. "Rika read him the riot act," said a guy who knows him. Nothing changed.
Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty and Asst. Director Dan Tetrault would have known about that 50 yr. old having sex with the teenager. All complaints get reported to them. And Uto was Tetrault's girlfriend (and may still be), so presumably she would have mentioned it to him.
The teenager was living in some government place; she couldn't bring the 50 yr old there. Eventually she got pregnant, left for a while to have the baby, and then came back. No word on who the father was.
"Why is this abuse allowed to continue?"
Ethel Whitty has a record of doing nothing about sex with clientele. We reported previously that a female staffer had sex with a series of clients and some were reportedly attempting or committing suicide after she moved on. (We were careful not to accuse her of directly causing them to commit or attempt suicide.) One kitchen volunteer she allegedly had sex with jumped off the bridge up by Ray Cam Community Centre, which put him in a wheelchair. Bill Simpson walked over that bridge shortly afterwards and saw the guy dangling there; he had gotten caught on something. The police came and cut him down.
Whitty told the female staffer to "disappear" -- that was the exact word the staffer used to describe what Whitty had told her to do, according to Carnegie members who were chatting about it -- for a while. A WCB claim to pay her bills was arranged under what we believe amounted to fraudulent pretenses.
That female staffer is of course innocent until proven guilty, and she may have been exonerated if there had been an investigation. BUT the City did not investigate. That's the problem.
Their default position seems to be, "Drill baby drill."
waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
You're right, she was told to disappear and she did on Worker's Comp. The reason was work stress and the feeling of intimidation from these clients.
If this 50 yr. old was having sex with a 17 yo, that is sexual abuse of a minor, good for a little time inland. But, as you say, nothing would be investigated due to their union and the good ole boy, slap on the back camaraderie that they have with each other. Even Ethel is guilty of this for allowing it to go on instead of having off duty police visit the clientele to question what they know or will tell.
I just cannot understand how and why the city allows this to go on as long as it has without repercussions.
Oh what a tangled web.......
I'm brought to tears by this story Reliable Sources...
May I ask how long ago was this, and how is the girl today. Is she well, or has her life spiraled..
How is it possible that nothing has been done..How could this go without investigation...How as a society can we accept this behavior..I'm so angry.
Has this complaint ever been taken further than the City? Everyone's life has value no matter what our financial circumstances.
"You're right, she was told to disappear and she did on Worker's Comp. The reason was work stress and the feeling of intimidation from these clients."
Rex,
She was not being intimidated by clients. No evidence of intimidation was ever brought forward. She was stressed about having been exposed by bloggers (although her name was not exposed).
Police determined that bloggers were not being threatening or libelous. It is believed that police were called by the City to intimidate bloggers and possibly to aid the City lawyers in creating the optics necessary to get a claim past WCB/Worksafe, and allow her to disappear for awhile. Ethel Whitty stated at a Community Relations meeting that the City lawyers had put their heads together and found a way to get her a Worksafe claim.
Grant Chancey, a Carnegie Board member at the time, stood up to Whitty and questioned the portrayal of bloggers as posing a threat to this woman. He told Whitty that he had read the blog and seen nothing threatening, nothing that would warrant a WCB/Worksafe claim. Having been a union member with expertise in WorkSafe, he asked Whitty to show him the section of the WorkSafe manual that applied to this case. He asked her repeatedly. She refused.
A terminally ill man who was suspected of being a witness in the case found himself barred from Carnegie. He arrived one Christmas eve to play his guitar at the open stage in the theatre and was told he was barred.
The latter case is old news now but it was an extreme example of an ongoing problem at Carnegie: not only are complaints of staff misconduct not investigated, but those who come forward with complaints are treated as the problem.
"May I ask how long ago was this...."
George,
It was going on last year, but it may have started prior to that.
SAVE THE CHILDREN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So Davor has a girlie calendar in the Seniors Coffee Lounge for months. Months. No problem. Staff sees it but does nothing. In fact, when I took it down, in my capacity as a Director of the Board acting on member complaints, I was warned by Everall, Head of Security, that it could be considered "Stealing".
But this guy tells a joke. And he's out for a month. I see. What is the difference here? One is an abusive and useful pet. The other has spoken up for his rights. You bet. Classic.
You might want to listen to this and extrapolate outward.
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/features/2011/01/07/its-a-girls-world/
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