Regina charity executive director resigns over sexual harassment allegations

A Regina organization aimed at supporting and keeping youth safe is investigating after sexual harassment allegations surfaced against its former executive director.

The allegations were posted this week to the Instagram account “victimsvoicesRegina” which posts descriptions of sexual assault and harassment anonymously, sometimes naming the abusers.

This post called the organization they worked for “toxic”, and talked about near-daily sexual harassment like explicit text messages, comments in the office about the poster’s sex life, and unwanted touching and groping at work.

The post didn’t name Street Culture or former executive director Dustin Browne, but they were named in the comments. Others agreed with the post and offered similar stories of their own experiences with Browne and the organization.

Street Culture got wind of the post and announced on Facebook that it was undertaking an investigation and Browne had been suspended.

“It has come to our attention that serious allegations have been made against one of our team members. We thank those who have come forward. Please know we take these allegations extremely seriously as they do not reflect the values of Street Culture Project,” read the note.

Browne commented on that Facebook post as well as the post on Instagram. He said he’s become aware that his actions have had a negative impact and apologized for it.

Browne said in the post that he’s going to counselling.

“I have always worked towards building a better community and that includes being accountable myself. I will do better. I am sorry for my impact on anyone and everyone.”

Browne quickly resigned from his position with the group.

Street Culture Project

Kim Sutherland is the founder and CEO of Street Culture Project. He said this situation is beyond serious and they’re moving quickly to address it.

“We’re with the victims, we stand with the victims, we stand by the victims, we want to make this right,” Sutherland said on Friday.

The organization hired a third party to investigate the allegations, Sutherland said a phone line has been set up for staff to call and get support and next week a website will go up for people to contact the investigator.

“That’s the process at present, to provide a very easy, confidential, and completely out of Street Culture’s hands, method for people who have those concerns to access the investigator and share their story,” Sutherland said.

When asked about some of the specific allegations, Sutherland said he couldn’t comment as processes around them are ongoing. He did say it’s always concerning when there’s an issue of safety brought to their attention.

When Sutherland was asked whether this had been a problem in the past he just said that their policies to deal with disciplinary issues worked very well.

This situation is different than what they’ve dealt with before, said Sutherland, because the accusation is anonymous and the process is confusing to navigate through.

“It doesn’t diminish our belief in the victims and the need to support them; it’s just much more difficult when we don’t know who we’re dealing with – either the staff member, or the incident, or when it occurred, that sort of thing,” explained Sutherland.

Sutherland did admit over the 23 years the organization has been running, they’ve had deficits in their policies. He said the policy manual is very straightforward and clear on harassment complaints, but it doesn’t have anything to deal with anonymous complaints.

“Those are the sorts of things that, you know, we need to update that. We need to get that lens and get that fix so we’re able to be more efficient and speedy, we don’t want people to have to wait that’s why we’ve moved so quickly, bringing in the third-party investigator.”

As for what this attention might do to the organization, Sutherland said he hopes people will understand the group is dedicated to the health and well-being of young people in Regina.