Teacher sues GN, union for defamation

PATRICIA D’SOUZA

A former teacher in Chesterfield Inlet who was dismissed from his job amid false allegations that he sexually abused a 14-year-old girl is sueing the Government of Nunavut and the Federation of Nunavut Teachers for more than $2.6 million.

Francis Mazhero was a teacher at Victor Sammurtok School from August 2001 to May 2002. In December 2001, a Grade 9 student complained to the principal that Mazhero touched her backside on two occasions, and that one incident was witnessed by five other students.

The girl and her parents later dropped the allegations, and sent a letter of apology to Mazhero.

“We’d like to apologize for what we have said,” the letter says. “Sorry for what we have done. Please forgive us.”

However, Mazhero alleges in a statement of claim filed with the Nunavut Court of Justice that the principal at the time, Robert Genge, pursued the allegations with reports to the department of social services and the RCMP.

“The said reports were made maliciously and with the intention that they would provide the defendants … an opportunity to get rid of the plaintiff,” the statement of claim says.

The Government of Nunavut says it has never received a statement of claim from Mazhero.

In an affidavit filed in the Nunavut Court of Justice, Chris Purse, the former executive director of the Kivalliq School Operations (KSO), says he received “a document purporting to be a statement of claim,” but that it wasn’t stamped by the court.

Jim Kruger, the acting executive director for KSO, was not available for comment.

Lou Budgell, president of the Federation of Nunavut Teachers (FNT), would not confirm or deny whether Mazhero had served the teachers’ union with a statement of claim. He refused to comment further.

But Mazhero says the unresolved matter is preventing him from finding work elsewhere in Nunavut.

“In August 2002, I applied for a position at another school in Nunavut, which had been advertised on the Internet,” Mazhero says in an affidavit.

“I was short-listed, and on the eve of my interview, I was told that I was not going to be considered for the position because, ‘You were dismissed from your previous employment with the Government of Nunavut.'”

Furthermore, he says the allegations and his dismissal have had an emotional and physical affect on him, producing symptoms including fatigue, severe depression and agitation.

In his affidavit, he compares himself with an Iqaluit principal who killed himself in 2001 amid similar child sexual abuse allegations.

“Clearly, the employer is deliberately pushing me to the edge to commit suicide. It appears that is what they did in the Robert Hal Richards case.”

However, unlike the Richards case, Mazhero, who is originally from Zimbabwe, believes the heart of the matter is racism.

In an interview from his home in Chesterfield Inlet, where his wife still works, he says shortly after the allegation was made, a woman in the community went on local radio to warn residents about him.

He says his students returned from lunch one day to tell him about the radio rant. They translated the woman’s Inuktitut words to say, in essence, there was a “black child molester in the community who should be watched very carefully, especially when he’s around children.”

They said she asked mothers to talk to their children and come forward and “make him pay.”

Several members of the community eventually supported Mazhero and lobbied to develop a new broadcasting policy for local radio, which is still in place.

However, Mazhero continues in his affidavit, “I have no doubt that racism is a factor in my case and, sadly, it will go unchallenged because the FNT executive does not know how it feels to be discriminated against on the basis of one’s ethnicity or skin colour.”

He subsequently launched a lawsuit against the law firm hired by the FNT to represent him during the grievance process, saying the firm was in a conflict of interest because it also represented the FNT.