Chris Cavanaugh was in a work-study job when “someone came up behind me at a copy machine, reached around and grabbed my breasts. I turned around and looked at the person and burst into tears and left. Left the job entirely.”
Cavanaugh never reported the alleged assault to the university’s HR department and kept it secret from even her husband and children until she spoke with the Inlander. The reality is that for those in the HR profession, such stories are not unusual.
“There’s a reason a lot of us end up in human resources,” she says. “Wanting to make sure what happened to us doesn’t happen to someone else.” Cavanaugh became HR director amid a harassment allegation from 2015 against Spokane’s former police chief and had been instrumental in changing how that department works.