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...
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