Rosie DiManno

Ex-hooker dismayed cop who extorted sex still on police force

Jane Doe was forced to have sex with a police sergeant, against her will under threat of arrest if she refused.

Gord Junger advertised to have sex and went to a hotel room where he took $200 from a woman who was an undercover police officer while the whole transaction was captured on film.

The police force signed away its soul with a secret deal to get rid of Junger. But the sergeant who was caught by investigators in Jane Doe's apartment when he came back for more is still in uniform, still on the force, still on the public payroll.

In the fallout over the Gord Junger affair, the case of Brian Whitehead has been relegated to footnote status - but not by the authors of the damning report that was published last week following an exhaustive provincial inquiry into the administration of the Metro police internal affairs unit.

Frank D'Andrea, chairperson of the three-member panel that produced the report, put it this way in a recent interview:"Is it more repugnant to have on the force a guy who was turning tricks, or to still have on the force a guy who was using his badge to extort sexual favors?

"Why wasn't the force as anxious to get rid of Brian Whitehead? You know, in this, Junger was correct. The only victim in what he did was the public which he had sworn to protect. But here we had a genuine victim in Miss Jane Doe.

Miss Jane Doe. We will never know her real name, never understand the circumstances that led her to become a prostitute on the street of Toronto, never fully comprehend the pain and humiliation that she suffered at the hands of Whitehead.

And yet, here is a woman who can still say of the Toronto police :"I still have a tremendous amount of faith in the force in general. I feel so uncomfortable about pointing fingers even at the investigators involved. They were working in a system that was wrong. And it offends me that they would have to take the blame for that system.

"Jane Doe does not hate cops." Jane Doe is the woman who fingered then-Sergeant Brian Whitehead in late 1989 as a cop who wanted sex and got sex, despite her protestations. She is the woman who went to internal affairs with her complaint and who then helped investigators catch the rogue cop at her apartment.

"I was frightend" Jane Doe -- who is no longer a prostitute -- told the Star this week, after reluctantly agreeing to an interview. "But I didn't want what happened to me to ever happen to another woman on the streets. I assumed that he would be apprehended and arrested and taken off the force. It never even occured to me that anything else could happen.

But Whitehead was never removed from the force. He was never even charged with a criminal offence. Instead, he ended up pleading guilty to Police Act charges of corruption and deceit, then demoted to first-class constable.

From the beginning Jane Doe had insisted on anonymity. That was the main reason she acquiesced to the investigatiors' suggestion that Whitehead be subjected to a Police Act hearing in stead of a criminal charge in open court. But within weeks she had changed her mind. She wanted criminal charges brought against Whitehead. The investgators refused.

"They said I would make a dreadful witness, that I would never be able to stand a cross-examination".

It was all so different from her earlier dealings with the investigators, she says. "It had been a thoroughly professional investigation. But that changed when I asked them to lay charges. They tried to make it sound like it was all a labor relations problem. They didn't view me as the victim, they viewed me as the antagonist."

In the month that ensued, internal affairs investigators refused to give her Whitehead's name, never notified her of the Police Act hearing date. Her sworn testimony was changed without her knowledge and no application was made to restrict publication of her name.

Whitehead would later launch an appeal and then withdraw it.

At that point , Jane Doe says she gave up. "I had become aware of how the police department works. There was nothing I could do to change the matter. I had to resign myself."

But when the Junger inquiry was launched, Jane Doe realized there was more amiss with the internal investigations unit than the panel was beeing told. This was not about just one bad cop and one lousy deal. "There was something systemically wrong. I don't want to sound sanctimonious but I don't think I could live with myself, ethically, if I stayed silent. It was haunting me."

Jane Doe asked for standing at the inquiry and received it. Her story added weight to the proceedings because it showed that Junger's odious conduct was not an isolated case, and that the expediency with which investigators sought to handle the matter extended to other examples of police malfeasance.

In the interim, the Whitehead story hit the papers. Police Chief William McCormack announced he would have a news conference on the matter in which the transcript from the Police Act hearing would be made public -- the transcript that included her real name. Jane Doe had 24 hours to get an injunction preventing that. It was at that news conference that McCormack said he was unable to comment on Whitehead's lenient sentence because he had not reviewed the case.

"I don't want to say the chief lied at that press conference, but he had indeed known about it. I think that was a pre-emptive strike by the chief. I honestly believe that by giving out my name and address, he was trying to discredit me or to shut me up.

The Junger report itself states categorically:"Both the police services board and the chief had already reviewed and confirmed the sentence imposed on Whitehead."

On Whitehead's continuing employment as an officer, Jane Doe says:"I don't want to be melodramatic, but it is heartbreaking.

Jane Doe is heartened, however by D'Andrea's report, especially with the recomendations that demanded more sensitivity in dealing with sexual assault complaints, particularly those levelled at police officers.

"It's a shame, because there are so many good cops out there. But when something like this happens, it ends up smearing the whole force and that's unfair to the good officer who is just doing his job. I want to stress that I don't blame any induvidual officers, including the internal affairs investigators. But the one individual that I do hold accountable is the chief."

She cannot , in all good conscience advise others to do what she did -- to complain to police about police.

"I had good contacts and wonderful resources to help me fight back. I knew lawyers that I could call. But what happens to other people out there who are vulnerable to police, whether because they're prostitutes or just street people? "I would not encourage or advocate that other women do what I did. It was dreadfully difficult. Before you leap, think.