Cpl. Casey Brunelle/Facebook
By Scott Taylor
Almost lost in the swirling news storms surrounding the controversial firing of sportscaster Don Cherry, the naming of Justin Trudeau’s new cabinet and the daily revelations regarding U.S. President Donald Trump’s road to impeachment, there was a startling report about a Canadian soldier taking the military to Federal Court.
Corporal Casey Brunelle, an Ottawa based reservist in the Intelligence Branch, alleges that he faced reprisals and punishment from his chain of command. What is shocking about this case is that Brunelle claims his career took this bureaucratic nosedive after he had supported a fellow soldier with a sexual assault claim.
That assistance later resulted in Brunelle testifying at a court martial against the accused – which happened to also be a fellow soldier in 7 Intelligence Company.
The initial alleged assault took place during a training course at CFB Valcartier in 2013. The female soldier involved confided to Brunelle that the accused had among other things, removed her socks, sucked on her toes and then ejaculated on her feet.
Brunelle convinced her to report the incidents to the military police, and in late February 2014, charges were laid against the accused. Those charges included sexual assault, attempted sexual assault, two counts of behaving in a disgraceful manner and a single count of conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline.
While Brunelle was not an eyewitness to either incident, he was called as a prosecution witness for the January 2015 court martial.
According to the accused’s defence, the female soldier involved had in fact put her feet on his crotch while he sat on a couch. She had rubbed his penis with her feet for approximately five minutes before he unzipped his pants and proceeded to ejaculate on the sofa. He was adamant that no semen went on her feet.
As for a second allegation that the accused had appeared at the end of the female soldier’s bed in the middle of the night and exposed her feet, this was explained away as simply a middle of the night error in navigation. The accused had gotten up to relieve himself and returned to not only the wrong bed but the wrong end of that bunk.
In the end the accused’s version was the one the trial Judge believed and as a result he was found not guilty on all charges.
In my view the admission of ejaculating on government property – in this case a barracks room sofa – should have at least warranted a guilty verdict on the charges of behaving in a disgraceful manner – and I’m pretty sure the poor cleaner of that barracks would agree.
But I digress.
Once the verdict was delivered, Brunelle soon found himself to be a pariah within his unit, facing an immediate administrative backlash from 7 Intelligence Company superiors.
When the charges were first laid and leading up to the court martial, the accused had been suspended from duty. Brunelle had warned his superiors that in the event of a not-guilty verdict, him having testified against the accused would make it difficult to work alongside this individual again.
Makes sense.
However, once the accused was cleared, Brunelle’s superiors gave him three options; he could get out of the military, he could transfer to another unit, or he could drop his so-called ‘ultimatum’ about not wishing to serve alongside the former defendant.
To further press home their point Brunelle was accused of having misused public funds during his travel to appear at the court martial, his Personnel Evaluation Reports were revised to reflect his alleged unreliability and he was threatened with a security review.
Brunelle fought back with the saga winding it way up the chain of command until it reached the Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance and the Military External Review Committee (MERC) at about the same time.
Carolyn Maynard of the MERC concluded in her report by recommending “the [CDS] acknowledge that the unit should not have threatened [Brunelle] with a (security) review and express regret for the somewhat misguided actions of the unit at the time.”
On 15 May 2019, Vance issued his final verdict in which he ignored most of Maynard’s recommendations. There would be no apology to Brunelle, because according to Vance there were no reprisals.
This past June, Brunelle requested a federal court review on Vance’s decision. To date this corporal has incurred $45,000 in legal fees trying to defend himself from doing what he still believes was the right thing.
