Kathryn Wallace’s first encounter with Ryerson field placement coordinator, Heather Bain, came at the end of January of this year.

That’s when the 24-year-old social work student stopped by Bain’s office to tell her she’d like to do her third-year placement with the Canadian Centre for Men and Families (CCMF), an offshoot of the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE).

The Centre, which opened in 2014, offers counseling and group support to men about such issues as fathering, trauma, family law and suicide prevention. CCMF executive director Justin Trottier says they have one of Toronto’s only groups for victims of domestic assault.

You would have thought she’d asked Bain to send her to Russia.

“Next thing I know she’s telling me it’s problematic because it exists ...that the place is an act of violence,” said Wallace last week.

Forced to defend her choice, Wallace said she broke down and revealed to Bain she’s a survivor of sexual assault and domestic violence.

She told Bain had her father been helped with his own issues that would have likely “saved” her.

“I was crying for 45 minutes straight,” she said. “If there were more support for guys and we really broke down that stigma, there’d be less hurt guys and there there’d be less hurt women.”

Instead of offering her the placement of her choice, Bain offered her a sexual assault colouring book.

That colouring book, entitled “We Believe You,” was produced by Ryerson’s Office of Sexual Violence Support, headed up by Farrah Kahn, Toronto City Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam’s fiancée.

Wallace said she let it go — even though it affected the rest of her semester in a very negative way — until she saw the Toronto Sun story of what Rebecca Katzman went through with Bain and her bosses in the same school of social work.

As revealed in the Toronto Sun, Bain told Katzman in an Aug. 25, 2015, e-mail that she was not prepared to permit her third-year placement request at either the Prosserman Jewish Community Centre or the United Jewish Appeal because both agencies have a “strong anti-Palestinian lean.”

It was only after Katzman told Bain she’d booked a meeting with then Ryerson president Sheldon Levy that Bain apologized in a Sept. 9, 2015, e-mail for providing “misinformed information” to her.

Katzman insists no one — not Bain or any of her bosses — ever offered to place her at either agency.

Numerous efforts to obtain comment on what occurred with Wallace — including e-mails and calls to President Mohamed Lachemi’s office and to Ryerson spokesperson Johanna Vandermaas — were ignored.

In a June 2 statement posted online about the Katzman issue, however, Ryerson officials stated that “social work students can and should continue to request preferred settings and populations as part of their field education.”

Yet Wallace is not the only one being denied her preferred placement at CCMF.

When Sarah Hafizi, 21, told Bain in late February she wanted to be placed there this September, the field coordinator said she’d have to get it approved by her boss. Hafizi says she still hasn’t received an answer.

“They’re kind of cowardly,” says Trottier, also CEO of CAFE, who would love to have Hafizi to help facilitate a support group and work on case management with some of their clients.

“I’m not surprised that instead of giving her (Hafizi) an actual response and defending their decision to reject her application, they’ll just kind of ignore her, hope she goes away.”

As for Wallace, her experience with Bain has started her thinking perhaps there’s a “business in keeping women down” by painting men as the perpetrators.

She said she feels she needs to be a social worker even more now.

“If I don’t go into this field all these people are going to bring these toxic ideas,” she said. “There are guys out there who feel they don’t deserve help because they’re told they’re not worthy and that’s disgusting.”

slevy@postmedia.com

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Man-hating appears to be alive and well at Ryerson University, at least among the radical feminist contingent.

A push to have a group dedicated to men’s health issues on campus has been formally rejected — not once but twice — by the Ryerson Students Union (RSU), says Justin Trottier, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Men and Families (CCMF) and CEO of the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE).

Trottier said two young women put in a proposal together in 2014 to have a club similar to CCMF that would focus on the health and social service needs of male students on campus. (It would have been one of 80 clubs that already enjoy official status.)

That was rejected, as was a second attempt by Ryerson student Kevin Arriola, who founded a Men’s Issues Awareness Society in 2015. The RSU not only turned down his application for official club status but his appeal as well, claiming the group would “harass women and make them feel unsafe” and could become “a breeding ground for misogyny and anti-feminism.”

(The above-noted comments are from a lawsuit Arriola has filed against the RSU with the Ontario Superior Court. The lawsuit claims the RSU’s concerns are unfounded and display bad faith and bias against the Society.)

Efforts to obtain comment from the RSU were unsuccessful.

Third-year social work student Sarah Hafizi is aiming to try a third time — recognition which would make it far easier to book spaces on campus for meetings.

The fact they’ve had to fight so hard for status just confirms the university is very “pro-one direction,” she says.

“It seems to be very pro one side...Pro-women and anti-men,” Hafizi says.

Trottier heard the same excuses when CAFE was kicked out of Pride just days before the 2014 parade and banned forever from marching in 2015.

“Basically our presence is a threat to women,” he said. “They have their minds made up about men’s issues...we are just terribly misogynistic and they want nothing to do with us.”