‘This campus isn’t safe’: Following a string of sexual assaults inside a Toronto university, the school’s response is under fire

Ruth Panofsky, an English professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, had just restarted her class in Kerr Hall after a short break when a student pulled her into the hallway.

The student, distraught and panicked, said she had just been raped in the washroom.

It was March of last year, just weeks after campus had fully reopened following pandemic closures. Panofsky was so shocked by the incident she moved all of her courses online and didn’t step foot on campus for the remainder of that semester.

She returned to Kerr Hall in the fall and taught classes in-person until Oct. 27, when, while on her way to class, she stopped to read an email on her phone.

Another woman had been sexually assaulted in a Kerr Hall washroom.

Panofsky walked into her class and told the students the course would be taught virtually for the rest of the year.

“Please be aware that this campus isn’t safe,” she told her students. “Make sure you don’t go into washrooms alone. Do not travel this campus by yourself.”

Police have made arrests in connection to both assaults — the suspects are not students or staff and should not have been in the building — but the campus remains unsettled.

TMU officials say the university acted quickly and has done everything possible to address safety concerns,but students and faculty have been frustrated by the administration’s response, which they have described as self-interested and inadequate. They believe the school didn’t properly warn students and staff about dangers on campus, were slow to implement safety measures and didn’t properly communicate what steps had been taken.

Three unions representing workers on campus filed co-ordinated labour grievances accusing the university of not doing enough to ensure campus was safe. Thousands of people signed a petition calling for more security. A Star analysis shows the building where the attacks occurred has seen a sharp increase in reported security incidents since campus reopened.

Panofsky said she was “disgusted” by the response from senior leadership, and she worries the school, by not sharing more information about the attack with the broader community, was putting its reputation ahead of campus safety.

“The university took the approach that, ‘Well, [police] caught the guy so the case is closed,’” she said in a recent interview.

Jennifer Grass, TMU’s assistant vice-president of university relations, said the university “should have done more” to communicate the actions it took in response to the first sexual assault, but there should be no doubt it took the incident “very, very seriously” and acted immediately.

Last week, the university announced it had completed a safety audit of Kerr Hall, one of the oldest buildings on campus, known for its dimly lit, labyrinthian corridors.

The school says it has increased security patrols in the building and installed 16 new security cameras. It will also be implementing 187 new “duress buttons” throughout campus between now and August, among other security “enhancements.”

Grass said the audit actually began March 29, just days after the first sexual assault. The university did not share anything about the audit publicly until last week.

Some of what was highlighted in the announcement, such as the increased security patrols at Kerr Hall, had been previously announced in November, following the second sexual assault. Like the audit, Grass said the additional security was actually put in place in March. She did not explain why that information had not been shared until nearly two weeks after the second assault.

“We have heard loud and clear that there has been a communication gap, and we are determined to address that as best we can,” she said.

In all, the university, formerly known as Ryerson, says it has spent $400,000 on “safety enhancements” at Kerr Hall since the spring, not including the costs of additional security guards.

Grass said the administration recognizes it has to do a “better job” of informing staff and students of the actions it takes following a major incident. “Clearly, more communication is needed.”

Students, meanwhile, took it upon themselves to inform each other in recent months.

In November, before the university had issued any public statement about the attacks or the work it was doing to address safety concerns at Kerr Hall, a TMU student published a post on Reddit titled “Sexual Assaults on Campus. Stay Safe and TAKE ACTION” that included a list of safety strategies. Among them: a warning not to use washrooms in Kerr Hall or any campus building.

“Leave and find a Tims or a Starbucks with a public bathroom, preferably one stall. If a bathroom you use has stalls take extra precaution in case someone is hiding in one.”

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Located just east of Yonge St., between Dundas and Gerrard streets, TMU’s campus isn’t gated. Most school buildings are accessible from the street in an area of the city with a relatively high rate of assaults, thefts and robberies, according to Toronto police data.

Campus has felt less safe since it reopened, several people interviewed for this story said. They attributed the feeling to seeing fewer people on campus and fewer people downtown, generally, since the pandemic.

“All of us in the English department, at least, were really shocked at how empty the campus was,” Panofsky said. “It was really desolate.”

Most classes are now being attended in-person, but administrative staff are on a hybrid work-from-home schedule, and some classes are still occasionally virtual.

Among the buildings with less foot traffic is Kerr Hall, a square complex of four connected buildings that take up nearly a city block and surround the university’s quad.

Since last year’s attacks, the building’s design has come under increased scrutiny for being potentially hazardous. Staff and students interviewed for this story cited Kerr’s dark stairwells, long hallways, sharp corners and isolated washrooms as part of the reason why it feels less safe.

Kerr’s many entrances also allow those without an access card more opportunities to get into the building, as students stream in and out.

A TMU spokesperson said the university would not share or publicize the results of the safety audit, “given the nature of the information involved,” but that it led to recommendations for the placement of additional security guards, duress buttons, cameras and access card readers.

Last week’s announcement did not mention any changes to how the university would communicate about future security issues, which was among the most significant concerns raised by students and faculty.

The only public communication after the first sexual assault was a 52-word security incident report posted on the university’s website which gave no indication of the level of violence that had allegedly occurred. There was no mention that the victim had reported being threatened with a knife, for example, nor that she had been choked and suffered injuries, according to the criminal charges.

“They should have emailed everybody — staff, faculty and students — immediately, and they should have indicated the degree of severity of the crime,” Panofsky said.

Grass said the incident reports are “fact-based” and short on detail to protect the privacy of the victims, and campus-wide security emails are only sent when there is an “active or ongoing” public safety risk.

“We have heard from our community time and time again that a sense of safety is deeply personal and while some community members may find reviewing security incidents helpful, others find it increases levels of anxiety and concern in a manner that is unhelpful,” she said. “As such, incidents are posted online and community members are able to review them if they choose.”

Jesmen Mendoza, a clinical psychologist and president of TMU’s faculty association, said what the university thinks of as trauma-informed communication is misguided.

“Privacy isn’t about keeping something secret, right?”

The victim of the first assault, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, declined to speak to the Star. The woman received an undisclosed financial settlement from TMU, according to two people with connections to the university and knowledge of the circumstances. The settlement is subject to a nondisclosure agreement.

Grass declined to comment when asked about the existence of a settlement.

The Star was unable to reach the victim of the second assault.

The suspects in both cases are awaiting trial. Charles Waddling-Leeson, who was arrested shortly after the first alleged assault, remains in custody and is facing multiple charges, including sexual assault with a weapon, sexual assault causing bodily harm, sexual assault with choking, and robbery. His lawyer, Ari Goldkind, declined to comment.

A warrant was issued in December for Robert Roye Ruddock, the suspect in the second alleged assault, after he failed to show up for a court appearance while on bail. In addition to sexual assault, he is also charged with forcible confinement. Ruddock’s lawyer could not be reached.

None of the allegations has been proven.

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While the university remained largely silent about the attacks last year, students and faculty demanded action on multiple fronts.

After the first assault, three different unions representing TMU employees filed co-ordinated labour grievances, accusing the administration of not doing enough to ensure the health and safety of their members. (A fourth union, representing maintenance staff, did not file a grievance, but supported the other unions.)

In a joint letter to their members about the grievances, the union presidents pointed to the fact that the suspect in the first assault gained access to Kerr Hall without a security pass.

“Had the Employer taken more steps in securing the health and safety of the University community, this atrocious event could have been prevented,” the letter reads.

(Star reporters, one of whom is employed by TMU as a teaching assistant, were able to enter the building this month without a pass by walking through open doors as students streamed in and out.)

“This attack is a warning,” wrote Leah Mosier-Farquharson, then a third-year student, in an April email to her program’s department head, roughly a week after the first assault. “Without meaningful changes, women will continue to have to live in fear and to have to jump through hoops to feel that they are secure on your premises.”

After the second assault, second-year student Hannah Powell started an online petition calling for increased security on campus. The petition has now been signed by more than 13,000 people.

Following the university’s recent announcement, Powell said she was pleased TMU is spelling out the specific actions it’s taking to address safety concerns at Kerr Hall.

Although several students and faculty reported feeling less safe since campus reopened, TMU security data going back to 2018 shows that reported incidents on campus have decreased since the onset of the pandemic, with 202 in 2019, falling to 125 in 2021 and 131 in 2022.

At Kerr Hall, however, the number of incidents shot up last year. Thirteen security incidents were reported in Kerr Hall in 2022, compared to 14 in the four previous years combined. (The publicly available data only goes back to 2018. The Star requested security data from preceding years, but the university said it was unable to provide it before publication.)

Last year, security incidents at Kerr accounted for nearly two-thirds of all incidents in campus buildings.

In addition to the two sexual assaults, there were six reports of someone masturbating, two incidents of harassment, one report of a stranger spitting on them, one report of someone filming them in a bathroom stall, and an incident in which a stranger touched someone without their consent.

“It’s not a safe space and it’s never going to be a safe space,” said Jennifer Burwell, an associate English professor and a representative to the faculty association. She said the university should, as a long-term solution, consider replacing the building entirely.

Grass said TMU’s campus is safe and there is “no indication” of an increase in security incidents on campus. With regards to Kerr Hall specifically, the university has taken steps to address concerns, she said.

“We are deploying more technology, and more patrols to address these issues and will continue to determine other ways to enhance security over time.”

TMU president Mohamed Lachemi publicly acknowledged the issue for the first time in November, nearly two weeks after the second sexual assault, when he released a letter to students saying the administration was committed to creating a safe environment on campus.

“We take the events in Kerr Hall seriously,” the letter reads. An accompanying announcement detailed additional “security protocols” that were implemented before the fall semester.

In December, a few weeks after Lachemi posted his letter, a female university employee reported being followed while walking alone through Kerr Hall. The woman avoided the stranger by entering an unlocked office where other people were working, one of the woman’s colleagues told the Star.

A TMU spokesperson said the university is aware of the incident, but a security report was not issued because “the account did not meet the threshold for confirmed stalking or harassment.”

Additional security measures were still taken in response, the spokesperson said, including stationing a security guard near where the incident occurred. TMU also asked Toronto police to increase their presence on campus, particularly Kerr Hall.

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