A transgender woman from St. Catharines who filmed police demanding her “deadname” has filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO), seeking better training for police and compensation.
Sabrina Hill was filming a web video at the St. Catharines bus terminal on Dec. 17, 2023, when officers with Niagara regional police approached her, prompting a back-and-forth between Hill and one of the officers.
“What’s your deadname?” asks an officer later identified in the documents as Const. Ashley Del Duca.
“I’m sorry — what is my what?” Hill responded.
“Your deadname,” the officer said.
In the video, Hill asks what a “deadname” is. Del Duca responds, “I’m just trying to be respectful to you,” before asking for Hill’s pronouns.
Hill said the officers had demanded she stop filming and give her name, which she refused. She later told CBC it was because she didn’t feel she needed to identify herself and doesn’t trust the police.
While the term “deadname” is used by some people to refer to a person’s former name, often their birth name, it’s not embraced by all transgender people.
Video shows officer ask trans person “what’s your deadname?”
Hill believes the officer asked for her “deadname” to call her out as a transgender person and demean her.
“A deadname isn’t just an old name — it’s tied to misgendering intentionally, discrimination and really an erasure of who I am,” Hill said. “She wasn’t concerned with who I am. She wanted to embarrass me and know who I was despite having no legal, ethical or moral right to do so.”
The Niagara Regional Police Service (NRPS) and Del Duca have both filed a response with the tribunal. CBC Hamilton has obtained a copy of the police response, which defends the officer’s interaction with Hill.
The tribunal adjudicates claims under Ontario’s Human Rights Code, which protects people from discrimination and harassment based on gender expression and gender identity.
Although Hill filed her human rights complaint on Jan. 15, 2024, she feels the tribunal system is “fundamentally rigged” against complainants.
Hill is a licensed paralegal, but said she’s worried about going up against lawyers with many years of experience in police misconduct.
“While the police officer who harmed me has secured [an] attorney billing over $500 an hour, I have had to represent myself,” Hill told CBC Hamilton in a recent interview. “This isn’t a David and Goliath situation. I am a piece of gravel in David’s shoe.”
Hill said she has tried to find a lawyer to represent her, but after contacting nearly 30 organizations that offer legal help, she has only succeeded in obtaining a phone consultation for advice, through The 519, a 2SLGBTQ+ community centre in Toronto that connects queer and transgender people with legal help.
Another group, the Human Rights Legal Support Centre, a provincial organization that helps people with tribunal cases, has recently booked a consultation call with her for five days before the case goes to mediation later this month.
Johanna Macdonald, director of legal initiatives at The 519, said unrepresented complainants like Hill have an uphill battle when faced with legal arguments from an experienced lawyer and that more government support to access legal help is needed.
The term “deadname” can be “extremely triggering” for transgender people, Colleen Elizabeth McTeague, a transgender woman and facilitator for the peer support group Transgender Niagara, told CBC Hamilton in a previous interview. “I would feel attacked if somebody asked me that and I would definitely refuse to provide that.”
CBC Hamilton reached out to Del Duca and the NRPS for comment.
Del Duca did not respond. NRPS spokesperson Stephanie Sabourin said that “as this matter remains before the tribunal, it would not be appropriate for us to provide a comment.”
Hill said that after the tribunal received a formal response from Del Duca and Niagara police, she filed her own response to that document. The case will go to mediation on Oct. 15, the mandatory next step, she said.
In the police response, Del Duca said she believed she was using the term “deadname” appropriately because she had “prior dealings” with transgender youth who appeared to use it to refer to their legal names.
“She considered that term to be common and relatable terminology within the transgendered community,” says the response document, which asks for the tribunal to dismiss the case. “Const. Del Duca had no intention of calling the applicant by her deadname. She needed it to conduct the necessary inquiries in the course of her investigation.”
According to the police response, Hill told police she gets hostile when dealing with “‘idiot police officers'” and made other similar comments during the interaction.
Police argue that Hill couldn’t have have been humiliated or victimized because she has posted about the incident online numerous times. They also said Hill referred to Del Duca as a “Hobbit,” a “Smarmy Barbie” and a “Transphobic Karen Cop” in some of her posts.
The police response document asserts that Niagara police have adequate training on dealing with the transgender community, and “nothing in the interaction, objectively viewed, demonstrated hostility, chauvinism or an attempt to humiliate or insult the applicant.”
In her claim, Hill said she wants to see the police force update its training so members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community aren’t treated the way she was. She’s also seeking $30,546: $30,000 for “humiliation and the experience of victimization” and $546 for lost wages.
Sabourin, NRPS’s manager of corporate communications, told CBC that the police board’s solicitor is representing both the board and Del Duca. Sabourin said she wasn’t able to provide an estimate of how much the board might spend on legal representation for this case.
Veronica Spada, spokesperson for Tribunals Ontario, said the human rights process is intended to be “user friendly” and to facilitate applicants who don’t have a lawyer.
When asked about the fairness of the system for complainants, Spada said Ontario’s tribunals are more accessible and user friendly than traditional courts for people without legal representation.
“Adjudicators are trained to manage hearings in a way that ensures procedural fairness for all parties,” she said in an email to CBC Hamilton.
“The HRTO provides plain language resources, guides and forms to support applicants throughout the tribunal process.
“The HRTO publishes data pertaining to applicant representation on its Open Data webpage,” Spada’s email said. “Please note that the HRTO does not track data or monitor trends regarding the relationship between self-representation and complaint success.”
Figures from April to June this year show more than 80 per cent of human rights tribunal applicants were self-represented.
Macdonald said it can be “emotionally overwhelming” for victimized people to represent themselves in human rights cases, particularly when they are up against a powerful institution such as police.
A lawyer can help human rights tribunal applicants sort through complicated or copious legal arguments made by the other side, she said.
“You’ve been violated, therefore taking any sort of legal action is very challenging,” she told CBC Hamilton last week. “You’re having to be proactive and engaging in a system which historically is challenging to navigate, and may face further barriers and retraumatization.”
She said “queer and trans people… have lower income on average than other community members and may face a variety of other barriers accessing a paid lawyer.”
Legal aid in Ontario has seen funding cuts in recent years, while reports of “unfair treatment, violence and hate” are increasing, she added.
“Those services…. require further investment to support the safety of our community. Having some sort of ability to process a claim is really important for our society, and we do need to invest in supporting our community to have that access to justice.”
