In 2020, a Canadian university tore up its psychology department in search of a non-existent network of sexual predators. Documents obtained by Quillette reveal how administrators allowed it to happen.

Jonathan Kay

S.L.’s Tale

On May 6th, 2021, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario was hit with bombshell news. For more than a year, a 46-year-old psychology professor named Scott Watter had stood accused of sexually assaulting one of his department’s graduate students. But the full details were known only to police, senior university administrators, and the school’s external investigator. Now, the alleged victim was sharing her story with the public.

The 5,400-word exclusive report in Hamilton’s Spectator newspaper, written by reporter Katrina Clarke, was packed with details. According to “S.L.,” as the accuser would be referred to in court proceedings, Watter was a sexual predator who derived pleasure from watching his victims writhe in pain. S.L. told Clarke that the professor had brainwashed her, and plied her with alcohol, en route to imposing a months-long regime of sexual terror.

At times, S.L. claimed, Watter choked her till she blacked out, “put a pillow over my face and smothered me,” and twisted her nipples to the point of drawing blood.

This McMaster student alleges her former professor subjected her to physical, sexual and psychological abuse. Now, she’s speaking out

The complainant in a criminal case involving McMaster University professor Scott Watter is sharing her story publicly for the first time. Watter’s lawyer has said he ‘will be defending this matter fully and vigorously.’

 

In an especially macabre tale related by Clarke, Watter arrived at the home of S.L. and her girlfriend with a bottle of wine after being summoned on news that S.L. (who identifies as bisexual) had been cutting herself in the bathroom—whereupon, “he shut the [bathroom] door and allegedly assaulted [S.L.], touching her vagina and kissing her, [S.L.] says. Then he bandaged her cuts, she says. ‘I don’t know how much more f—ed up you can get, assaulting someone when they’re in a pool of their own blood,’ she said.”

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