Note - May 17, 2018: This article is subject to legal complaint by Christine Moore.

The term “survivor” has become co-opted and cheapened.

Glen Kirkland is a true survivor.

Badly injured brain. Pancreas smashed. Vision in his right eye lost. Hearing impaired. Bits of shrapnel that still work their way through the skin on his scarred face. Organ damage requires him to take insulin injections up to 14 times a day.

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Almost a decade ago, on Sept. 8, 2008, Kirkland — a corporal with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry — was driving a LAV on what’s known as Taliban Road in Kandahar. The vehicle was hit by a rocket. The three other soldiers in the LAV were killed. Had Kirkland been in his usual position as designated marksman and machine-gunner riding standup in the rear hatch, he too would have died.

He had been scheduled to complete his deployment only a day and a half later.

Son of a military vet and 30-year cop.

Grandson of a decorated soldier.

Broken.

It was this traumatic experience which took Kirkland to Ottawa in 2013, where he spoke to the House of Commons standing committee on defence, there to testify about his treatment by the military as a wounded combat soldier and, more specifically, to urge the federal government to restore lifetime disability pensions, which had been replaced by lump sum payments and capped. He did this despite pressure from within the Canadian Forces to stay away and the threat, he says, of a dishonourable discharge.

“I’ve been wounded 10 years. I’ve been five years without a pension,” Kirkland told the Star on Wednesday in a phone interview from Brandon, Man., where he now runs a successful real estate business.

Christine Moore was on that aforementioned parliamentary committee.

She approached him and a few other individuals afterwards, inviting them back to her office. “I went because I thought she wanted to talk about my case.”

As well, as a “grunt’’ confronted by an elected MP — Moore the NDP member for the Quebec riding of Abitibi-Temiscamingue — it was bred in the bone to defer to authority. “I was a corporal and she was an MP.”

She served him gin drinks although Kirkland had been reluctant because of the medications he was taking, anti-depressants and painkillers. “But she’s a registered nurse. I figured she would know if it was all right.’’

Moore, he says, told the other guests that she had business to attend to, ushering them out. But Kirkland she kept behind.

There were more drinks.

“That’s when I finally realized what was happening.”

Even in a alcohol and drugs fuzz, it became evident to Kirkland, he says, that Moore had an interest in him of a more particular and personal variety. “I wouldn’t have been in that position if I hadn’t been (inebriated).’’

When Moore did finally leave, he was disoriented.

“My memory is a bit disordered. I don’t know how it happened. I think she followed me. I definitely did not invite her. But we got to my hotel at the same time.”

Moore went to his room. She spent the night. Kirkland won’t discuss the details but he doesn’t dissuade anybody from drawing the obvious conclusions.

“I’m not claiming rape or anything,” Kirkland said.

“Christine Moore used her position inappropriately, to get what she wanted from me.”

Following morning, Moore left. Kirkland assumed, to his relief, they’d never cross paths again.

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But Moore continued to contact him by email, some of them explicit in content, although he tried to make his disinterest clear. “Constant communication. I didn’t want to be outright rude.’’

A few weeks later, Moore turned up at a golf course where Kirkland was playing with friends. “She just showed up.” Startled, he attempted to convince her that their brief thing was not really a thing. Yet some weeks later, she appeared unannounced at his home.

In a romcom movie, this all might be portrayed as love-dazed pursuit, played for entertainment. The handsome young soldier and the ardent politician. Mr. Kirkland Goes To Ottawa, Miss Moore Goes To Brandon.

But I’ll call it for what I think it was: Stalking.

The body language, the overt cues, none had apparently registered with Moore. Or she didn’t care.

In that last face-to-face, at his home, Kirkland made it abundantly clear that the “thing” between them was actually not a “thing” and to leave him be. Moore must have got the message at last because there was no further contact.

Years pass. And then Kirkland discovers, via media reports, that Moore is a central character in a scandal unfolding in the capital. It was Moore, as was subsequently learned, who had called out fellow NDP MP Erin Weir who, in January, had sent out an email asking for support in his bid to become the party caucus chair.

An email from Moore to Weir — which somehow got into the hands of just about everybody on the Hill, stated: “There is too many women (mostly employee) complaint to me that you are harassing to them and as a woman I would not feel comfortable to meet with you alone.’’ Further, Weir was “the last person in caucus I would like to see get that position.”

It was Moore who brought to caucus claims of alleged sexually harassment by Weir against females who hadn’t come forward — allegations that he stood too close at functions, sought out their company, hovered too long, all of it a far cry from sexual harassment as most of us understand it.

Weir, MP for Regina-Lewvan, was suspended from caucus while an exceedingly non-transparent investigation was launched. Last week, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, said that the independent investigator concluded “the evidence” sustained one claim of harassment and three claims of sexual harassment. Weir was expelled from caucus.

Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says the party is launching an independent investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct levelled by an Afghan war veteran against New Democrat MP Christine Moore. (The Canadian Press)

From more than 2,000 kilometres away, Kirkland found that all too rich and malicious.

To be clear: Kirkland did not seek out the media. It was Neil Macdonald of the CBC who reached out to him and made the story of his relations with Moore public earlier this week, confirming gossip that had been long swirling around Ottawa.

“I never wanted to go forward about this,” says Kirkland, now 34. “It was old news. But when I realized that so many people were talking about it, I thought I should set the record straight because some of the rumors were just outlandish. Like, she’d assaulted me with a lamp. And she’d got me to do all these weird sexual things. None of that is true.”

But she certainly did stalk and harass and exploit her position — the imbalance between a grunt and an MP on a powerful parliamentary committee — to allegedly maneuver Kirkland into a one-night stand. And wanted more from him.

“I don’t like what she did to the other member of Parliament. When she was definitely way more aggressive with me, after I had given her way more than non-verbal cues.’’

Kirkland sucked up the incident for years because it was not in his nature to make a federal fuss about it. Until he saw his predator making prey out of someone else and a career ruined, Moore playing the third-party complainant card when she had been the dogged first-person aggressor against him. Her hands aren’t clean.

Moore did not respond to an emailed interview request from the Star.

Singh has now temporarily suspended Moore from her caucus duties and appointed yet another investigator to “conduct a fair and full examination” of whether the MP engaged in appropriate behaviour with Kirkland. But the expulsion of Weir stands.

“Just because of an allegation that’s now risen, which we take seriously, in no way should cast any question of credibility about other allegations,” Singh told reporters outside the House of Commons on Wednesday. “This notion has happened far too often for women and is not an acceptable line of argument.”

Such delicate flowers in the NDP caucus. And this is what we’ve come to in the atomic mushroom of sexual harassment doctrine: Don’t stand/Don’t stand/Don’t stand so close to me.

While Moore has, it seems, been hoisted by her own lustful and persistent petard.

Rosie DiManno is a columnist based in Toronto covering sports and current affairs. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno

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