Una Forsyth

This is the statement that Una Forsyth gave as part of the disciplinary investigation carried out by Graham Millar and Gail Miller. It is clear that she had colluded with Eileen MacDonald, Jackie O'Neil, Selina Gibb and Karen Eccleson in order to portray me as someone who has issues with women. Eileen MacDonald had even admitted to collusion in her statement, saying that Una had asked her what she should say at her interview. Eileen claims to have instructed Una to "just tell the truth". The question is; how is it that she tells so many lies, including lies that are very similar to lies told by Eileen in her own statement. The witnesses were instructed not to discuss the matter with other employees, but as usual Eileen does things her own way. Una was accompanied at her interview by Karen Eccleson who knows that Una was lying. Karen had been very supportive of my grievance with Kathy. She shared my opinion of Kathy, and particularly her dishonesty. She kept asking me how it was going, but I wasn't allowed to say anything once Eileen Schofield said there would be an investigation. However, immediately after Una was interviewed for the grievance, Karen's support shifted to Una. She probably thought I was trying to cause trouble for Una. The team needs a full time psychiatrist in my view. This is a direct result of being badly managed for so many years. They're all too frightened to tell the truth. Everybody in the team will know that Una was lying.

While reading this, it should be kept in mind that this comes after 13 years service in which no official complaint has been made about me, and that I worked for a manager who was desperate to find any fault with me whatsoever. So much so that she criticised me for incidents where she should have been thanking me. Yet once she realised she was wrong, she never apologised.



Section 4. In December 2006 at a work's night out, Una travelled about 12 feet to where I was dancing, and pushed me as hard as she could in the back with both hands. I could see that her face was contorted with anger. She was indeed perfectly sober. I was completely astonished by it because there had been no interaction between us at all that night. I had had a couple of drinks from the drinks kitty, but I was certainly not drunk. It was early in the evening, and I'd spent most of my time dancing with colleagues and other women that I'd known from dance classes. I had just sat down when a woman who had seen me dancing came over and asked me to dance. I could see that she had been drinking, but I didn't want to offend her by refusing to dance with her. It was while we were dancing that Una assaulted me. A few minutes later, I approached Una and asked her why she did it. She was with EB who told me to leave her alone.

The reason I had not danced with Una was because it was during a period in which she wasn't talking to me. I never knew the reason for her not talking to me either, because we had been fairly close friends up until then. There were a couple of possible reasons. There's a strong gossip culture in the team, and I knew that Eileen MacDonald had been very jealous of me. I also know that Una is very impressionable and could easily be taken in by any lies. The other possibility is that she had a soft spot for me, and that she was in some way doing it to attract attention, and the assault may have been due to her being jealous of me dancing with other women. I feel that this is the more likely reason having read Sections 16 to 18.

That same night, I approached a colleague who works very closely with Una to ask her if she knew the reason for Una's behaviour, but she said she didn't want to get involved. Back at work on the following Monday, I talked with two colleagues who were there (Paul and Stephen). They knew that Una had assaulted me, but they said they didn't know why she did it.

Just before my grievance hearing, Paul Scott had heard gossip that I had complained about Una assaulting me. Una regularly babysat for his children. He was fearful that Una could get into trouble for it, and that it was so long since it happened. I assured him that I had not, but that I had merely given it as an example of Kathy's inconsistent behaviour of how she had taken no action when she had found out about me being assaulted, yet she had written a letter to the university complaining about me having my arms folded during a team meeting, saying that she believes arm folding is aggressive. I also assured him that I had not named Una in my grievance. When I was talking with Paul, I also mentioned another occasion about two years earlier when I was abused by another colleague. He immediately said that he couldn't remember it. He certainly remembered it, because he had spoken to me about it only a few days before, and he remembered it so well that he was able to demonstrate the gesture I had made with my hands at the time of the incident. Knowing that I'd submitted a grievance, he denied having any knowledge of it. Cheers Paul!

In truth, I still don't know for sure the reason for Una's behaviour, but it's certainly not as she describes in her statement. If the roles had been reversed, and I had bizarrely assaulted a colleague and they didn't report me for it, I would have been extremely grateful. However, Una who assaulted me in front of about 100 witnesses, 10 of whom work for the university, and her manager knew about it, has succeeded in having me dismissed. It's a mad world! How does she and all of those witnesses sleep at night?

Sections 11, 21 and 23. Una talks of me gloating and looking smug because she has been spoken to about the assault. Yet I had no way of knowing who was interviewed or when they were interviewed. I had also objected to the interviews taking place. Also I hadn't named her in my grievance, and I didn't think she would be interviewed. So this is all either a lie, or it is all in her imagination.

Sections 16 to 18. This is completely false and impossible. I had been living with my girlfriend for over 6 years. Una's marriage broke up at the same time as mine, eight years ago. Not long afterwards, she had a long term relationship with a man called Ricky from Edinburgh. She moved home from Bannockburn to Bo'ness to be midway between him and her children. Why would she be "visibly upset" by this 4 or 5 years later? Karen Eccleson and Graham Millar who was interviewing her would have known this.

Section 8. At the lunch she refers to, which Graham Millar attended, it was impossible for her to sit close to me, because all of the seats at my end of the table were taken. At the previous lunch outing, Una sat across the table from me, when she had the choice to sit anywhere. At one lunch she was arranging, I said I didn't want to go in case Kathy was there. Una coaxed me into attending and said that she would sit close to me so that Kathy would be further away. At the previous two Christmas nights out, Una came over and sat beside me and on both occasions she complimented me on my dancing, and said that she thought my girlfriend was very pretty.

At another Christmas night out, during a period when she wasn't talking to me, she came over to me and held my arm and told me she was very upset and thinking of going home. I asked her what was wrong. She told me that a young male colleague had been looking at her breasts. She was wearing a revealing top, and I had no idea what I was supposed to say in response. There were at least two other occasions when she told me stories that involved her breasts. I felt she may have been doing it to embarrass me or to try to draw my attention to them. On another occasion during the period she wasn't talking to me, she came over to my desk which was at the opposite end of the room to hers. It was first thing in the morning and followed a quiz night that most of the team attended, but Una hadn't attended. I attended with my girlfriend Ruth, and Una knew this because there had been emails sent around the team beforehand saying who was going. Everyone else in the team was in the tea room at the time and would have been discussing the quiz night. Una was dressed sexually provocatively. She was displaying more cleavage than I had ever seen her doing at any other time before or since. It looked like she was wearing a push up bra. The conversation we had was completely social and it was out of context for our relationship at that time. As she was standing and I was sitting, she leaned over showing more cleavage. She had a pen in her hand for no apparent reason. She dropped the pen, and bent down to pick it up revealing more cleavage. I definitely felt sexually intimidated.

At nights out, Ruth often caught Una checking her out in a way that made her feel that Una saw her as the competition.

Una also showed me a photograph that her boyfriend had taken of her coming out of the shower with just a towel in front of her. She also sent me two animated files that showed cartoon characters Bart Simpson and Betty Boop having oral sex. Another email she sent me was of a story of a man who had his genitals stuck in a pipe. Other emails she sent me contained sexually explicit jokes.

Una and I used to play squash regularly for several years. Una would wear a very skimpy outfit. She'd often compare me with her husband and say how she wished he was more like me. When her marriage broke up, she told me that her husband thought that she was having an affair with me. After my marriage broke up, my lifestyle changed and I joined the university squash club and began taking squash more seriously. It meant that I didn't have time to play Una, so I suggested other people she could play that were closer to her level of play. She only played one of them once, and said she didn't like playing him. It seemed she only wanted to play with me.

Section 29. LM was a woman who worked in the team for a year or two. Due to the type of work she did, there was very little interaction between the two of us. She worked in a different part of the building, and we rarely saw each other. To claim that I ruined her life is absurd. The "investigators" didn't even ask how I ruined her life or if she reported me for ruining her life. Mark Toole said this was to be a "thorough and fair" investigation.

Section 31. Una claims that I get on with just one or two of the eleven female team members. This was to support her lie that I have a problem with women. The "investigators" didn't interview all of those women to find out if or why I don't get on with them, including the ones I went to lunch with once a week. They also don't ask Una why she cooked a meal for me if she didn't get on with me.


They also didn't ask her why she chose to confide in me that she didn't like being line managed by Eileen, and that she was upset by how Eileen treated her. They also didn't ask her why she invited me to become her friend on facebook, or why she collected the lottery subscriptions for me. The reason they didn't ask these obvious questions is because they knew she was lying, and that's what they wanted.

I'd be very happy for me and Una to take a polygraph test.

As at 22 June 2011, this is the second most frequently visited post on my blog.

To be continued...

Kevin Clarke

[Kevin Clarke, Kepphill, Arnprior, By Kippen, FK8 3EW]

Kevin Clarke chaired the hearing for my appeal against Eileen Schofield's decision not to uphold my grievance, but to uphold Kathy McCabe's grievance.

Kevin always seemed like an amiable bloke to me. Although he didn't know who I was, he would always say hello with a smile on passing. Unknown to himself, he referred to me once about ten years ago at a celebration just after the SAP system was implemented for Human Resources. In his speech he commended the project team for its efforts, and said that one employee had even worked until 4:30 in the morning. I was that employee.

However, at union meetings, several members had expressed their strong concerns about him. Many regarded him as the main source of the university's problems. I recall at one meeting that someone called for his head on a plate.

My union rep was fairly confident that Eileen Schofield's decision would have to be overturned. The procedure was so flawed in his view. My view was that it was far too flawed for there to have been any possibility that it had been an honest decision. Eileen Schofield was a fairly new employee having come from Aberdeen University, and the few people I knew who had any contact with her had all been impressed by her. Any intelligent person couldn't possibly have come to the decision that she did with the facts available to her.

I'd also attended meetings where Mark Toole had witnessed Kathy bullying me, and he simply refused to acknowledge it. I suspected that Kevin Clarke would also pretend that Kathy wasn't a bully, and uphold Eileen's decision. I just didn't know how he could do it while appearing professional.

Eileen Schofield's report was deliberately misleading. It falsely implies that all of the witnesses considered Kathy to be a wonderful manager. Eileen had not intended for me to have seen the witness statements. Nor had she intended for me to see the transcript for Kathy's hearing. Eileen had denied me any opportunity to respond to the statements. Therefore she wasn't interested in any evidence I may have that would have refuted any false statements. I had pointed to examples where Kathy had lied at her hearing and in her grievance letter on matters that Eileen could easily have checked out. Eileen's report said that Kathy had pointed to documentation to support her allegations and to refute mine. She couldn't have, and hadn't. Eileen hadn't even put my allegations to Kathy. Many of the questions she asked witnesses were irrelevant, and she failed to ask a witness, who had seen me being ill treated, anything about it. I had even given the name of a current employee who had witnessed me being abused, but she avoided interviewing that person. She also deliberately avoided interviewing another witness who would have confirmed Kathy's dishonesty. Documents I had submitted that showed irrefutable proof of Kathy's dishonesty were just ignored. The whole process was dishonest.

The university's Grievance Procedure states that I sbould be allowed an opportunity to state my case. Eileen Schofield only offered me an opportunity to state a brief summary of my case, but in her report she said that I was asked to present my case. The Grievance Procedure also states that the chair of the hearing will decide on the outcome based on the facts of the case made available to them. However, Eileen ignored all of the facts I submitted, and falsely claimed that Kathy had been able to point to documents that refuted my allegations and supported her own.

Kevin Clarke just ignored all of this and said I can find no evidence of procedural flaw as asserted as the grounds of your appeal.

Disgusting!

Legal Action Imminent?

Stirling Uni guilty of fraud.

Selina Gibb

Selina Gibb, Riverbank Lodge, Auchinlay Rd, Dunblane, FK15 9BF

This is the statement that Selina made to Investigators Graham Millar and Gail Miller. Later, when they interviewed me, they made no reference to anything she had said. Nor did they tell me that she had been interviewed.


Section 3. Selina, to her shame, has completely misrepresented a private conversation we had in the office.

He came over to my desk at the other end of the office, which I found very strange as we don't have a close working relationship, and asked if I'd heard about the KM situation. I was on my way to fetch drinking water from the tea room which means exiting through a door acrosss the room from where Selina sits. She asked me why I wasn't at the Developers' meeting. I said that I was working on my grievance against Kathy. Selina said she hadn't known about it and asked if it was because of the email that Kathy had sent the team about conference attendance. I said that was part of it. She asked if it was true that I had emails that I'd sent Kathy asking to attend. (Kathy had falsely claimed in her email that I'd never asked to attend a conference). I said yes. Selina said that was weird. I added that I also had some of her acknowledgements. Selina said that was really weird. I said that Kathy had been ill treating me for years, and then I left the room to get some water. When I returned, Selina asked how it all began. I said I wasn't sure but I suspected that Eileen was involved because I knew that she had misrepresented my performance in an email she sent Kathy. I also told Selina that I'd raised a grievance against Eileen because of this. I said that I thought Eileen was probably the root of the problem. I referred to a time about two weeks earlier when Selina and I were talking as we climbed the stairs together. Selina had noticed that when we reached the top that I was out of breath. She had joked that I was like "an old man". I explained that that was a symptom of the stress caused by bullying. I told her that I drink far too much alcohol and can no longer take exercise. By now Selina had stood up and crossed the room to where I was standing. She said two times, "You need to look after yourself, Allan". She was still standing there as I returned to my seat saying "That's probably the correct thing to say, but it's not that simple." I felt she was genuinely concerned for my health.

He started talking about EM and lost control. I hadn't lost control in any way. This is pure fiction.

His facial expression changed and became very red in the face and really angry and irate. His demeanour seemed quite wild. He was calling her names and said she was the ring leader behind the deterioration of his relationship with KM, was not to be trusted and was malicious and a trouble maker. Pure fiction again. Interestingly, I had never considered that Eileen was a ring leader, however since the orchestrated complaints emerged, I now believe that to be true.

He didn't mention her by name, he just kept pointing at her chair and saying 'her'. The first time I mentioned Eileen's name I pointed at her desk in order to clarify which Eileen I was referring to. There are two Eileens in the team.

I felt really uncomfortable and tried to indicate I wasn't interested by my body language. I would turn to my computer and continue with my work. False. Selina had instigated the conversation twice, and had stood up and crossed the room to get closer to me. As I walked away, she was still standing there. I was mainly responding to her questions.

I didn't want to say anything in case I made him even angrier. He was so angry that he was spitting on my desk. He seemed to be going around in circles in the actual content of what he was saying. Selina hadn't said anything to make me angry, and I wasn't angry. I had no reason to be angry with Selina. There was no going around in circles. The conversation was fairly brief, and I wanted to get back to what I was doing. I didn't spit on her desk. We were at the other side of the room, and I wasn't angry.

Section 12. Does this sound like someone who is nervous, frightened and anxious around me? Selina came to me one day soon after that conversation to ask me about skiing lessons, and we laughed as I described my own experience as a beginner and being the only adult in the class. The reason she is not anxious and nervous is because she misrepresented our conversation.

Even on the day of the grievance hearing (26 Feb), Selina and Una were both laughing and joking with me as I left the office to go home early. Selina was joking about me wearing what she refers to as my "dancing shoes".

Sections 6 and 7 are also false and are explained in the Disciplinary Investigation post. LINK.

Section 8. I do feel he enjoys upsetting people. He may have issues with females and tries to pull you down. False, and clear collusion with the other complainants. For 13 years there's no complaint about me having issues with females, then suddenly there's a batch of them immediately following three of them being spoken to about their ill treatment of me, and one of them being spoken to about having screamed at me a few days before. As described elsewhere, there's no way in the world I'd have upset Selina.

Section 10. This paragraph describes another symptom of poor management in IS Services at Stirling, and particularly my own team. It is also a perfect example of how I am seen as the scapegoat. Let me try to explain this. Selina's background is in clerical work. She worked in our team in a clerical role. Then Kathy McCabe created a new job as a System Assistant which requires a level of technical skills. The role evaluation form that Kathy signed states that five years Oracle experience is required for the job. Firstly, that in itself is nonsense because it is a fairly junior role which doesn't require anything like that. Secondly, when Selina took up the post, she had no Oracle experience. Selina is on friendly terms with Eileen MacDonald and Kathy McCabe, and I was told that she got the job for that reason, and that employees from other teams who were interested in the job were prevented from applying. Thirdly, at the time of the incident that Selina is referring to (albeit incorrectly), she still had no Oracle experience. Selina was in the job for five or six years when I recently set her up with some Oracle training materials. So although she is in a Grade 6 role which has potential full time earnings over £28,000, she is basically carrying out a clerical role. There are employees in other teams on Grade 6 with specialist skills and who can work on their own initiative. Try finding a clerical job in the real world that pays over £28,000.

I have 15 years Oracle experience. On the one hand my colleagues recognise that experience by constantly coming to me for help. However, I felt I was constantly under suspicion as someone who didn't know what I was talking about. At times I'd explain something to a Programmer, and they wouldn't accept what I was saying because they were thinking that I was in some way being devious or difficult. So I'd have to call over another senior member of staff to get them to confirm that what I said was correct. This example with Selina is even more stark. She has somehow learned through gossip, probably from Eileen MacDonald (who is also very weak technically and a saboteur), that I'm difficult and that I'm a nitpicker. So a very inexperienced, completely non technical, clerical worker makes a judgement that I, a Database Administrator with 15 years experience and responsibility for the security of the University's databases am just nitpicking.

Let me describe what happened. As I said, Selina had no technical experience at all, but somebody gave her a technical task to do. Since it was the first time she had attempted this, I would have expected her to have been supervised because the consequences of what she was doing were potentially very serious. She was requesting me to run programs in the live student records database which would delete some records. We have a procedure in place for this for efficient and secure completion of work.
1 Requester writes the programs using SQL. As I said, Selina had no knowledge of SQL.
2 Requester runs the programs in test database to ensure it works. I'll explain later how I know that Selina couldn't have done this.
3 Requester completes a form giving the DBAs instructions for running the programs.
4 Requester sends email to DBAs with a link to those instructions.
5 Requester places programs in specific folder for DBAs to run them.
6 DBA runs programs
7 DBA records in form that program has been run.
8 DBA moves programs to another folder

And here's what happened.

4 Selina created three forms when only one was required.
She sent me the email with three links. The links didn't work, I asked her to fix them, and copied to her more experienced colleague. Instead she sent the forms as attachments to the DBAs. This is a problem because it now means there are two copies of each form.
5a The programs were not where they should have been. So Selina had another go.
5b This time two of the programs were in place, but one was still missing.
6 I checked the programs, and only half of each program was there. For example, a program should say "DELETE FROM students WHERE student = 1". Selina's programs said "WHERE student = 1". If she had sent the other half "DELETE FROM students" instead, and I had run it, all of the records in the table would have been deleted. That would be very serious because the software suppliers don't like us deleting records unless we use the application they have supplied us, and they've told us they won't provide any support if we mess up. Obviously these programs couldn't have been run in the test database because they wouldn't have worked and would have produced an error. Eventually we got that sorted out, but then there were more problems because the other DBA began running and moving the programs too because he had separate forms.

I emailed Selina saying "Sorry Selina but the files don't seem to be there. Can you maybe ask Una or Eileen to help". She replied calling me "patronising". I reply "Not patronising at all. I was merely concerned that after three attempts, we were still having difficulties." Selina again says that I was patronising, to which I take offense.

We were in a complete mess, but she thinks I'm nitpicking and patronising! And again, her story has grown arms and legs.

Compare that with Kathy who criticised me in the presence of Mark Toole and others for not having replied to an email (that I hadn't seen) within 23 minutes. Her email invited me to a meeting which I attended when a colleague pointed it out to me on her way to the meeting. When we arrived, we had to hang around waiting for someone else who hadn't seen Kathy's email. THAT is nitpicking!





It's really sickening that someone I loved like a daughter could make up lies to take away my livelihood. She did it in collusion with others, not realising that there was evidence to show that they were lying. Selina had everything she could wish for; a husband and three beautiful daughters that she adored; a big house; a very good salary for easy work. Everybody loved her. If anybody was to carry out research into mobbing, then they should definitely interview Selina to find out why she did this after seeming to be genuinely concerned for my health.

I'd be happy for Selina and me to undertake polygraph tests to determine which of us is being honest. However, emails that I've published demonstrate Selina's dishonesty.

As at 22 June 2011, this is the most frequently visited post on my blog.

Please see my post that relates to the dangers of gossip which features Selina.

To be continued...

Grievance Procedure

[Eileen Schofield, 50 Fonthill Road, Aberdeen AB11 6UJ]

See Timeline and Personnel
I submitted my formal grievance against my manager, Kathy McCabe on 9 February 2010. Kathy also submitted a formal grievance against me. This was a tactic she had used before when I had submitted an informal grievance against her. Bully Online states that this is common among bullies, and is tantamount to an admission of guilt. It muddies the waters. I had set out a very large number of allegations of bullying, dishonesty and sex discrimination in my six page grievance document, and I submitted lots of documents to support my allegations and to refute Kathy’s allegations.

Eileen Schofield was to conduct the grievance hearing. She was working closely with Kathy on a project at the time. She arranged three meetings; each one was scheduled to last an hour. Eileen first had a meeting with Kathy, then a meeting with me, and then a meeting with both of us together. I had asked Karen Stark before the meetings what the format would be, but she just referred me to the Grievance Procedure, so I didn’t know what would be expected of me at the meetings. An hour seemed a very short time for the number of allegations and the amount of evidence submitted.

At my meeting, Eileen said she had read all of the documents, and then asked me to just give a brief summary of my case. That’s what I did. I didn’t go into great detail of each individual incident of bullying. Most of the time was spent with Eileen asking me questions, and I was happy to answer anything she asked because I had nothing to hide. I naturally assumed that Eileen knew what she was doing, and that she already understood the allegations and that she didn’t need to examine me in depth about them. I could have had no idea that Eileen would later claim in her report that she had asked me to present my case, and not just a brief summary.

I asked Eileen what the format would be of the joint meeting with Kathy arranged later that afternoon. She seemed either unable or unwilling to say. I explained that, during a meeting with Kathy and Mark Toole that was supposed to help resolve the dispute informally, Kathy had been allocated about 90% of the time and used it to bully me with outrageous and false criticism, and that I was fearful that the same may happen again. The afternoon meeting lasted only a few minutes, so I never got to hear Kathy’s response to my allegations of bullying. Just what was the original purpose of that meeting, I wonder.

A few days after the hearing, Eileen wrote to say she was going to interview people who were mentioned in the documents submitted by Kathy and me. I wrote to protest at this because it was bound to cause bad feelings within the team. My union rep wrote to ask that the process be transparent, and that I be given an opportunity to respond to the statements, particularly since there was evidence of scapegoating. However, Eileen wrote her report with her decision to dismiss my grievance and uphold Kathy’s grievance without giving me an opportunity to respond to the statements; without me seeing the statements; and without telling me who was interviewed. Even the report doesn’t say who was interviewed.

Afterwards, I wrote to HR to request copies of the statements from those who were interviewed. The first thing I noticed was that all of the statements were dated AFTER the date of the report. The report gives the impression that Kathy is a very good manager, and that it is me who is the cause of the problems between us. It states that a total of eleven witnesses (current and former employees) were interviewed and that they expressed the common view that Kathy is considered to be a determined, focused and supporting manager who leads the team well.

The report does not refer to the view of a former employee who said in his statement that Kathy had ill treated him, and that he had to attend Occupational Health due to it. Neither did it refer to another witness who had stated he had witnessed that ill treatment and was aware of Kathy’s ill treatment of other employees. Nor did it refer to the witnesses who had referred to Kathy’s partisan treatment of her employees, and in particular how she favours female members of the team. Neither did it mention that a witness had spoken of a group of team members who felt the need to confront her on that very topic. I believe the reason the report does not refer to any of this is because it supports the allegations I made in my grievance. It clearly demonstrates suppression of dissent. However, it does not negate my grievance to say that some employees are happy with Kathy. In fact it supports my claim that she treats employees inconsistently.

The report does not refer to a team member who returned to our office crying uncontrollably following a meeting with Kathy. This was an incident which had been reported to Karen Stark. Nor did it refer to another team member who needed to take two days sick leave with work related stress following what she described as "bullying" from Kathy.

After I read the report, I spoke with two former employees who were mentioned in the documents, because I knew that the report did not reflect their views of Kathy. They confirmed that they had not been interviewed, and both expressed their strong dislike of Kathy. One described her as "macho" and "overly agressive". The other strongly objected to Kathy's partisan behaviour towards her staff, and particularly the special treatment afforded to Eileen MacDonald. He, rightly in my view, said he was unfairly treated by Kathy. He also referred to the large number of extra hours work I carried out regularly over many years. He was in regular contact with two other people who he felt were dismissed unfairly from their jobs in Information Services, and expressed his concern that there was something seriously wrong with the university's management.

Another former employee who was mentioned in the documents was JH who was the Departmental Secretary. In my grievance, I referred to Kathy's dishonesty, and gave examples. One example was that Kathy had falsely claimed to have instructed JH, while I was on sick leave, to tell me that I was not to return to work without my doctor's consent. JH had already confirmed this to be untrue, but Kathy repeated the same lie in her grievance papers. JH was not invited to be interviewed. I wonder why!

Another person mentioned but not interviewed was my girlfriend, Ruth who attended the mediation meeting with me and Kathy in my support. However, Colin Sinclair who attended in support of Kathy was invited. In my grievance I said that during mediation, Kathy wouldn't follow the procedure for which the mediator had prepared us, by refusing to answer any of my questions. She added that if I tried to ask her a question, she would leave the mediation. In his interview, Colin falsely claimed that Kathy answered my questions. Eileen did not ask him for any examples of questions I asked that Kathy had answered.

Of course the report cannot refer to what some of the interviewees say about Kathy in private (often using colourful language!). It does not refer to feedback provided by four random team members for a training course she attended. The feedback to certain questions was said to be the worst by far that any manager attending that course had ever received. According to one team member, Kathy received scores of 2 and 3, while other course members received 7 and 8. On discovering her results, Kathy met with the four team members to tell them they hadn't understood the questions. Some said they felt intimidated by this. At the end of the course, they were to answer the questions again, and one admitted to having lied and given better scores than she deserved just for a quiet life.

One of the witnesses later told me that he wasn't asked anything about bullying or ill treatment from my colleagues. He said he definitely remembered when Jackie O'Neil burst into the room and phoned the software suppliers and angrily described me as "our useless DBA". When Jackie was asked about this, she denied it. She was also asked if she had ever shouted at me, and she said that she had never shouted at me or anyone else. She was interviewed on 16 March, just six days after she had shouted at me while slamming her hand on her desk because she thought I had made a mistake. This took place in a room with up to 14 team members. She also denied spreading false rumours about me. My girlfriend, Ruth confirmed in writing that Jackie had falsely claimed that I cheated by taking time in lieu that I hadn't earned.

Una Forsyth was asked if she had physically assaulted me. She gave a false account of this by claiming that she had merely nudged me after I had drunkenly bumped into her. She had in fact travelled about 12 feet to push me in the back as hard as she could with both hands. This was witnessed by about ten university employees.

The report says The specific allegations made by AG against named individuals were refuted strongly by them and were received with a mix of incredulity and anger. These were all incidents that Kathy had admitted in the presence of Mark Toole that she had known about. She had even signed a document confirming this. However, my grievance was not against my colleagues, but my manager's failure to act to protect me from such incidents. She was paid handsomely to do that, and the university has a duty of care for me which wasn't being carried out.

The report states At her hearing meeting, KM presented her case rationally and succinctly and referred to specific examples in the submitted documentary evidence to support her allegations and to refute those made by AG.

This is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, if Kathy was offered the opportunity to present her case, why wasn’t I? Secondly, Kathy’s allegations are nonsense, and she couldn’t possibly have pointed to documentary evidence to support it, and to refute my allegations. I’ve seen a transcript of Kathy’s hearing meeting, and she didn’t. To my disgust, Kathy was not even asked to respond to the allegations I had made. It is possible that Eileen and Kathy had prearranged what could be asked. I knew that Kathy was always very reluctant to discuss her bullying behaviour. While she loves doing it, she hates being asked about it.

The report also states At the hearing meeting AG was asked to present his case and intimated that he believed KM had ill treated him and it was causing him stress. This is false, because I was only asked to give a brief summary. The impression the report attempts to give is that I was asked to present my case, but that I didn’t really have one to present, and that I had just irrationally said that I believed I was being ill treated without any real reason for believing it, other than perhaps due to stress, my mental state isn’t what it could be.

This impression is supported by the following statement from the report: I do not believe that AG’s grievance claim is vexatious on the grounds that he and others think he genuinely believes the allegations made are true. However, by reasonable normal standards in light of the evidence submitted I do not believe the allegations can be substantiated.

In my view it would be reasonable for Eileen to go through each of my allegations giving her reasons why she does not believe it represents bullying (by reasonable normal standards) as described in the university's Anti Bullying policy. She should also explain clearly, with examples backed up by facts, how I have bullied my manager. If she is unable to do that, then I feel she should resign or be dismissed. I believe it is a dishonest decision.

Kathy's statement is littered with lies. She claimed that my grievance contained lots of inaccuracies. For example, I had said that she had never awarded me with a merit, but Kathy said that she had indeed awarded me with a merit. If I had been in Eileen's position, I would have asked Kathy some questions about the merit she alleges she awarded me. For example, why did she award me it, and when. However, no question was asked. At the appeal hearing I pointed out that this was something Eileen and Karen Stark could easily have checked out with HR. In fact I had done that very thing after the hearing, and it was confirmed that Kathy had never awarded me with a merit. Eileen said she did check out Kathy's evidence. Nonsense! She also claimed to have promoted me to Trainee DBA. Another lie which HR confirmed to be false.



To be continued…

I offered Eileen Schofield an opportunity to respond to this statement on 6th September 2010. I have not received a reply.