Accusations, and a life in tatters

Mike Kydd is the poor man’s Steven Galloway — not a famous author; not a professor-cum-department head, but rather a lowly, un-tenured instructor; not particularly powerful.

Yet Kydd and Galloway both have been brought to ruin by adult female contemporaries and former students with whom the men had a consensual sexual relationship that then retrospectively morphed into various misconduct complaints.

While the investigation report commissioned by the University of British Columbia in the Galloway case hasn’t been made fully public — making it difficult to know with certainty precisely what the findings were — Postmedia has managed to confirm many significant details about Kydd’s case.

Now 42, Kydd was suspended in 2015 by Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax after the woman, Tarrah McPherson, now 40, filed a formal complaint against him with the school. She was a distance student in a marketing course he taught. They had two sexual encounters at a time when Kydd was separated from his wife.

Kydd resigned Jan. 8, more than a week before he was formally fired and, shortly after, a picture of his penis, which he’d sent McPherson, was posted on Twitter by Glen Canning, father of the late teen Rehtaeh Parsons, who was cyber-bullied after an explicit picture of her was circulated at her school. Some months later, she killed herself.

McPherson has always maintained the picture was thrust upon her by Kydd, unsolicited. In fact, as Postmedia has confirmed, she asked Kydd for the penis picture on numerous occasions, and admitted that to RCMP when, in the early summer of 2015, she filed a complaint of sexual assault against him.

The pages of text messages she gave the police didn’t include that request of hers, or any of the sexually explicit remarks she’d made to Kydd. And McPherson never made her phone available to police, despite requests, and her reasons were all over the map — the Kydd texts, she said, were lost, or she had a new phone, or some texts were missing.

After investigating the complaint, police declined to lay charges against Kydd. McPherson filed a complaint against the lead investigator.

Kydd always and quickly admitted he had breached the school’s code of conduct and that he’d made a huge error in judgment.

Meantime, at the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, McPherson’s complaint — initially against the “Mount,” as the university is known, later amended to add Kydd — was working its way through the process. It was investigated, but though McPherson told the investigator she felt unsupported and even dismissed by university officials, in fact she was accommodated.

She met first with the university president, Dr. Ramona Lumpkin, who ordered the internal investigation that saw Kydd first suspended, then fired; McPherson had fees for another course waived, and the university paid for counselling until the end of August, 2015.

McPherson was also assigned a dean to assist her in trying to complete her degree, but her previous, preKydd track record of not completing courses or failing to take exams continued.

Asked by the commission investigator what she wanted, McPherson replied with a list of demands, including general damages for $20,000, reimbursement for legal fees, another year of counselling, refunds for textbooks, lost wages, a public apology for MSVU’s alleged failure to help her — and, as a gesture of good faith, free parking on campus for a year.

When the university made an offer to settle, McPherson upped the ante and asked for an all-inclusive sum of $50,000 and two years’ grace to complete her degree.

In October last year, the investigator recommended the complaint be dismissed; the recommendation has yet to be approved.

McPherson is still occasionally appearing at “Silence the Violence” panels — a group co-founded by one of Toronto’s best-known sexual assault victims and advocates, Mandi Gray — and presenting herself as a victim of sexual misconduct and cruel university policies.

She was one of the “improbable five” featured in a Metro News article last fall — among the others were Gray, who settled her complaint with York University last year, and Glynnis Kirchmeier, a UBC alumna who has filed a third-party complaint on behalf of all women at UBC who were ever sexually assaulted or harassed.

As for Kydd, he works now as a casual labourer, and can see his children only once a week — he can’t afford to give them a proper breakfast more often than that.

He has filed a notice of action to sue McPherson, Twitter, Bell Media (CTV used the penis picture) and the university. His only hope of keeping the suit alive is through donations at www.gofundme.com/ michaellegalactionfund