Theresa Savoie said she was deeply upset and thought about moving when posters started to appear around the Malvern co-op where she lives with her son, Zachary Kidman, targeting both of them using the most vulgar of insults.

The anonymous messages, put up over several months in 2012 at Rouge Valley Co-op, labelled Savoie an “inbred” and her then-9-year-old son who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, a “retarded monkey” who “should have been put down when he was born.”

“I thought about moving, but then I thought no, you know what, my son has a right to live here like anyone else, and I wasn’t going to allow them to run me out of here,” said Savoie, who has lived in the building for almost nine years. “If you’re going to pick on adults, that’s one thing, but to pick on an innocent and defenceless child, that just blew me away. It hurt really bad.”

Savoie, who was named in several of the posters, is among a group of nine applicants who are bringing the co-op before the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal on Monday for a full hearing, almost three years after the posters first started to appear. The group’s members say they were either directly targeted by the messages or are related to an alleged victim.

“These applications … allege discrimination in housing,” reads a summary from a March 27, 2013 interim tribunal decision granting a request to consolidate the applications. “Many of the allegations in the applications concern the posting of offensive messages at the organizational respondent’s premises. The applications also allege, in essence, that not enough has been done to identify the individual(s) responsible for posting the messages.”

The applicants’ lawyer, Karen J. Sanchez, told the Star the group is alleging that the co-op’s volunteer board of directors failed to quickly respond to their complaints about the posters. Aside from seeking damages, she said they also want the tribunal to establish clear guidelines on a board’s responsibilities in such circumstances.

“They really did not get a full response from the board of directors,” Sanchez said. “The board of directors took a very relaxed attitude toward the whole thing and really wasn’t taking it seriously.”

The co-op’s lawyer, Kiel Ardal, told the Star the “co-op condemns these horrible flyers and had nothing to do with them. The co-op did everything it could to stop them.”

In its official response to the allegations filed with the tribunal, the co-op wrote that it “acknowledges that these messages constitute harassment and discrimination under the Code and that the individual(s) responsible need to be identified and held accountable. Accordingly, the co-op, through the Board of Directors has taken significant and timely steps towards trying to identify the individual(s) responsible and/or to make it more difficult for these individual(s) to continue with this harassment, such as posting security cameras in strategic spots.”

The offensive material began appearing in the spring of 2012 as scribbles on elevator walls and offensive posters, Sanchez told the Star. Most of the 17 posters were placed on the door of one co-op member, she said. The posters, included in the tribunal applications, referred to several co-op members collectively as “the circus,” imploring them to move out or kill themselves. Some were named, while others were simply identified by an insult or their apartment number.

The person responsible has never been caught. Sanchez declined to disclose details about who the applicants believe is behind the posters, saying she preferred to present the information at the tribunal hearing.

However, it would appear from the complaints and the co-op’s response filed with the tribunal that the posters are linked to a dispute between current and former board members.

In one of the complaints, applicant Mimi Marilyn Gow wrote to the tribunal that “I served on the board and we were removed on May 23/2012. I have been harassed and so has all the other board members. Now it is extending to disabled, seniors and family members of the old board members.”

In its response, the co-op acknowledged that members chose to remove the former board and replace it with a new board “because of concerns about the board then in place.”

“Approximately one week after this meeting, on or around May 30, 2012, an individual or individuals started posting offensive and discriminatory messages at the residential units of the applicants (some of whom are former board members) or their friends or family members and vandalizing certain co-op property,” reads the response from the co-op.

“The board understands and acknowledges that there are various underlying disputes and issues between the current board and the former board members. These issues include, among other things, the central issue raised in the applications, namely the view held by some that the board has not take sufficient steps to address the offensive posters about the former board members and their families.”

Debora Crew, 59, was called a “c---” and a “he-she half-man-half-woman” in several posters naming her, while her 69-year-old husband Bill Bowerman, who uses a wheelchair, was described as her “crippeled (sic) old husband.” Crew said she is a former board member.

“At first, I was really embarrassed and humiliated,” Crew told the Star. “I was scared things were going to escalate, that it could lead to verbal or physical attacks.”

Bowerman, who said he has suffered two strokes and has aphasia, said: “I’ve never felt old or crippled, especially crippled. For somebody to mark that down . . . I mean, why pick on me?”

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Sanchez said the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation, a non-profit for people with disabilities, responded to the members’ pleas and stepped in to ask that the board install working cameras near the apartment door where most of the posters could be found, as well as in the mail room.

Both Sanchez and Ardal said that when the cameras were repositioned, the posters stopped appearing in the fall of 2012, and it has been relatively calm at the building ever since.

But the members say they remain angry and want answers. Crew said she spearheaded the campaign to file complaints with the Human Rights Tribunal. The members were self-represented until Sanchez got involved last year.

“It was the hardest thing to go through,” said Savoie, who said she is not a former board member and who said she tried to shelter her son from the posters as best she could. “I would like the tribunal to implement changes so this never happens again to anybody in any other co-op.”