Canadian police office claims PTSD from working in sex crimes unit

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/surrey-mountie-ptsd-child-porn-1.3891306

An RCMP officer has filed a lawsuit alleging he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder after being exposed to a “significant volume” of child pornography while working in a specialized unit.

Const. Michael Wardrope says he was exposed to disturbing videos, photographs, interviews and interrogations as a member of the child abuse and sexual offence unit in Surrey, B.C.

“His mental health was impacted by unescapable images and memories from the files he had worked on,” says the lawsuit filed in B.C. Supreme Court.

Wardrope says in the court document he was “flattered” when he was recruited to the unit in 2009. But he says he told his bosses he had three young children, had to commute hours per day and didn’t think viewing child porn would be healthy.

He alleges his supervisor assured him that overtime was uncommon and that the amount of child pornography that needed to be viewed was “very minimal and almost non-existent,” as the work was, for the most part, interviewing children.