Corruption at Stirling University

I have been contacted by a number of employees and former employees with supportive messages. Thank you. I appreciate it.

I have also been contacted by people who are, or have been, in similar situations to my own, and it appears that the Human Resources department at Stirling is seen to be very unhelpful when approached by employees with genuine concerns. One described HR as "completely crooked".

Just as I did, I think most people would naively think that HR exists to protect and support employees. What I've discovered is that HR's primary role is to protect management; no matter how badly management behaves. Although HR produce documents stating that bullying will be taken extremely seriously, you should be aware that that is not the case, and that if you report a member of management of any wrong doing, you run the real risk of quickly being the subject of disciplinary procedings, and no matter how innocent you may be, if management wants rid of you, they will get rid of you. You may think they would need evidence, but you would be wrong. Unfortunately the unions have no power to stop them from doing that either.

So what should someone do if they are being ill treated by their manager? My only advice is be careful. Keep notes and written communications of all incidents of ill treatment. You might even want to consider making audio recordings when you think you might be about to be ill treated. I wouldn't rely too much on witnesses because they may be unwilling to testify against their manager, no matter how well you think you get on with them.

A word of caution to those who wish to contact me. I know that any communication between me and the university is being intercepted by management. I strongly suggest you do not use your university account when writing to me. If you wish to write to me, you can post a comment here. Please indicate if it's not for publication. Alternatively you can email me from a non university email account.

Inequality

As part of the University's blurb that they serve to the public, they claim to be committed to equality and opposed to discrimination.

That commitment falls far short of my own.

Several years ago, I received a very good offer to join another company. Former Director, Tony Osbourne heard about it and offered me a raise of roughly 50% in order to retain my services. Although I loved my job, I turned down his offer because he was unwilling to offer the same raise to my colleague, Jaana who did the same job as me, and whose performance I felt was much better than mine. I couldn't work alongside her knowing that I was earning 50% more than she did while she was worth more than me.

It was only when I was about to hand in my notice that Tony agreed to offer Jaana the same raise.

Since then I witnessed extraordinary inequality, and especially by Kathy McCabe. Unfortunately, my colleagues (including Jaana) could see that I was being deliberately disadvantaged by Kathy, but they were unwilling to speak out about it.

One of the first things that Kathy wrote in her grievance was "I treat the team fairly and consistently". It's an unbelievable claim that would be very funny, if it wasn't so serious. The only thing consistent about Kathy was her unfairness and how she would give special treatment to her friends.

She also made this claim to me during a meeting I had with her after she had turned down my request to attend a conference for the sixth year running. That was the second lie she made on the subject. Her first lie was made publicly to the entire team in an email. She unbelievably claimed that I had never in any year asked to attend a conference, and that she would have to be a mind reader to know that I wanted to attend a conference. She had to ditch that lie when I informed her that I had written proof of my requests as well as her acknowledgements. I had also raised the same topic as part of my informal grievance. Faced with her second lie, I suggested she provide the team with a breakdown of how she had allocated her Staff Development budget, because I know that I'd received very little of it during the 12 years that she had managed the team. She said that it would prove embarrassing to those team members who don't ask to attend training or conferences. In reality, it would have been embarrassing how much of that budget went to her friends. She didn't see it as a Staff Development budget, but money she could use to buy popularity from those she favoured.

She introduced a third lie during the grievance hearing by saying that the conference I wished to attend was no longer important to the university because it didn't deal with the software we use. It was an Oracle conference, and I was an Oracle Database Administrator. Just about every system in the university uses Oracle databases, and Mark Toole had announced to everyone in IS Services that the university was committed to using Oracle for future systems, even if there was a non Oracle system available that was considered advantageous.

Still at the grievance hearing, Kathy then reverted to her original lie by claiming that I hadn't asked to attend the Oracle conference. Mark Toole, Karen Stark and Lynn McDonald had witnessed Kathy's behaviour at informal grievance meetings. It was extremely embarrassing. Following those meetings, I suggested to Mark that Kathy would struggle to answer questions at any grievance hearing, because she either avoids the questions or she lies in obvious ways and then ties herself in knots with her lies. I expect it was due to this that Kathy wasn't asked to respond to the allegations in my grievance, and why I wasn't invited to attend her grievance hearing, or given an opportunity to respond to her statement.

In 2008, Kathy turned down my request to attend the Oracle conference and instead sent Karen Eccleson who had already attended since the last time I attended. She also sent Lynn McDonald, a Project Manager. Karen came to me and asked if I had put in a request to attend, because she didn't understand why Kathy would not have selected me ahead of the two she did select. Karen then went to see Kathy and asked her why she hadn't selected me. Karen told me that Kathy more or less told her to keep quiet about it. As I predicted, Lynn returned saying that she gained nothing from the conference. It's a very technical conference, and Lynn is non technical. When I first became the DBA, Kathy said I would attend that conference each year. It's predominately attended by DBAs. I used Oracle every day. To send a Project Manager when I hadn't attended for five years was just pure bullying. It was as if she received some evil pleasure by forcing me, a senior member of staff, to have to ask to attend the conference which covered my area of expertise, and then turn down my requests in favour of my colleagues.

Kathy wasn't slow to spend money on herself either. I'd heard from team members that while attending a conference in Dunblane (just a few miles from her home in Stirling), she stayed overnight in a hotel. She also continues to put herself through Project Management training, even though there are two full time Project Managers in the team.

It was also about ten years since I received any Oracle training.

Recruitment and promotion was another area where Kathy would abuse procedures to help her friends. Everyone in the team is aware of it, and a few have confronted her about it. I witnessed this directly when Kathy and I formed part of an interview panel. Following this, I asked Kathy not to include me in any future interview panels. Although I personally hadn't done anything wrong, I felt a certain guilt by association. On another occasion, she had asked me and other senior members of the team to give our approval for a plan she had to give a friend a job in the team at a senior level.

There was another act of deviousness by Kathy in relation to the matter of conference attendance. In answer to the email she sent the team suggesting that I was stupid to expect her to read my mind in order for her to know I wanted to attend a conference, I replied to her and the team confirming that I still had copies of some of my written requests and her acknowledgements. No doubt this would have been a blow to her, as she would have been hoping that I had deleted all of them and not been able to demonstrate that she is a liar. A couple of days later I received an email from her inviting me to meet with her to discuss "the appropriate procedure for requesting to attend a conference". At first her email had me completely baffled as I couldn't understand what she meant by "appropriate procedure". Then some time later, it suddenly hit me what she was doing. Although her email was addressed to me alone, it was a meeting request, and she had chosen to make it publicly visible on her Outlook Calendar with a title of "Conference Attendance". The team frequently had to refer to her calendar, and an item with that title would have drawn their attention. I wrote to Kathy and asked her to remove the email from her calendar, pointing out that it was publicly visible and that it could easily be construed that she was criticising me for using an inappropriate procedure for requesting to attend conference. She was dishonestly and publicly attempting to justify her earlier dishonest email to the team. I also included an excerpt from the university's Anti Bullying policy which showed that her behaviour was an example of bullying. She reset her email to "private", then a few minutes later she made it "public" again. I went to her office to see her about it. When I opened her door, she was on the telephone so I returned to my office. She had seen me and would have known that I was going to speak to her about her email. A few minutes later she removed her email and replaced it with a private email requesting a meeting with me. Her new email said that the purpose of the meeting was to consider how we could improve the procedure. However, when I attended the meeting with her, she used it to try to justify her bizarre behaviour.

Some time later, in the presence of my union representative, Mark Toole said that it was he who instructed Kathy to withdraw her email and to replace it with an invitation to a meeting with a more positive purpose.

I had written to Kathy and listed all of the occasions when I had generously offered her an opportunity to amend her behaviour towards me. I offered her an opportunity to apologise. She didn't take that opportunity. Instead, she sent an email to Karen Stark and Mark Toole in which she was concerned that it was now obvious that she was guilty of bullying behaviour, and that she could tell from the tone of my email that I had had enough of it and would be taking my grievance to the formal stage.

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.

Disciplinary Hearing

Mark Toole

See Timeline and Personnel

I received notification from Mark Toole that he was arranging a Disciplinary Hearing. For the first time, I was now able to see what the allegations were. I received copies of the statements from the complainants, and I received a copy of the Investigators' report.

The investigators' report is intended to establish the facts, and not to make any judgements. However, the report produced by Gail Miller and Graham Millar was precisely the opposite. Facts had been deliberately avoided and ignored. The report contained conclusions, and the "findings" were highly judgemental too. It was obvious that it wasn't intended to be an honest report. Ignoring facts was the tactic that the university had used for the grievance hearing as well as the appeal against the grievance decision, and they saw no reason to deviate from a winning formula.

Depite his previous involvement in my grievance and with his informal investigation, Mark had decided that he was going to chair the hearing himself. Far too risky to have an independent chair, obviously. He was also aware that I had made a Disclosure to the University Principal stating that I did not feel that he and HR were complying with the University Anti Bullying policy, by failing to take my grievance against Kathy's bullying seriously.

I could see that everything I'd said was ignored, and that I was the only person being honest. I could also see that the Investigators had deliberately avoided interviewing an obvious witness to an incident that was crucial to the investigation. It was an incident I'd already written and spoken to Mark about several times, but he was determined not to tell me the outcome of a discussion he had with Jackie O'Neil about this very incident. Now for the first time, I could see that Jackie had lied about that incident too. It was an incident where Jackie had screamed at me at the top of her voice while slamming her hand on her desk. She did this in an office occupied by up to 14 team colleagues. David Black was right next to me when it happened. I had already described it to Kathy in David's presence. The only possible reason that I can think of for both Mark and the investigators not to have interviewed David was because they knew very well that I had given the correct account of the incident. Jackie screamed at me because she thought I had made a mistake, when in fact it was she who had made the mistake. This was fairly common for Jackie. who despite frequently having to come to me for help with her own work because she lacked the skills to do it herself (even after 12 years in the job), she would frequently, with extraordinary arrogance believe that she knew my job better than I did, to the extent that she undid work that I'd done because she thought I'd done it incorrectly, even after I had explained to her two times that it was correct. Her manager, Kathy McCabe knew about this, but just chose not to do anything about it in those 12 years. Mark had offered to arrange a meeting with me and Jackie to discuss the problems. That could have been very helpful to me, but also to Jackie. She has been doing her job for 12 years, but it's never been brought to her attention just how frustrating she is to work with. However, Mark changed his mind, and cancelled the meeting. So, I've been dismissed, Jackie has once again gone unpunished for screaming at me, and she still probably thinks she is doing a great job, and is a joy to work with.

Screaming at me was pretty bad, and is included in the university's examples of bullying. Much worse though, is that once again Jackie had gone to Kathy and given a very false account of the incident by claiming that MY mistake had caused her to have to work until 10pm that day. The truth is that HER mistake would have delayed her for about an hour. This was due to David and me quickly fixing HER mistake. HER mistake had caused me and David extra work. In her statement, Jackie still refers to MY mistake which she says is evidence of my stress. Erm, no Jackie. It was YOUR mistake which was due to your inability to focus on your work instead of looking for faults in other people. Mark wasn't interested in these mere facts. He says he sees no reason to disbelieve Jackie. He should explain why. If he can't give a reasonable explanation, he should resign or be sacked. He has irrefutable proof that she lied.

I was not allowed to talk to any of my colleagues, so my girlfriend, Ruth spoke with David about that incident. David confirmed that Jackie had shouted at me angrily. Ruth wrote a letter confirming this. I submitted that letter as evidence.

When I received the report from Mark and could see that the imvestigation had been carried out so dishonestly, my health deteriorated once again. Everything was stacked against me, except the facts, but Mark didn't care about the facts. I could see that he was determined to dismiss me, and that the same tactic of ignoring evidence would be used. If he had intended for the procedure to be honest, he would surely have asked the investigators to go back to the complainants to check out the conflicting evidence. He would also have insisted that they interview David.

I knew that there was lots of evidence available to refute the allegations, but I needed access to my office PC to obtain it. Mark placed strict time limits on my access to my PC, and because my health wasn't great, that was very inconvenient. Still, I managed to find lots, but could probably have found more if I'd had more time. The written evidence makes it absolutely clear that all of the complainants had lied.

For example, Una Forsyth had stated that she had avoided me for four years because I give her "the creeps". She also stated that she prefers to deal with my colleague, David, because he is more helpful than me, as I delay responding to her. She claimed that I had told Karen Eccleson that I had a soft spot for Una and hoped to get together with her five years ago while she was married, and that that was inappropriate. While giving that statement, she was reported to be "visibly upset". She claimed that I had made a certain female colleague's (LM's) life a misery and that I see women as being vulnerable. The picture she was intending to portray was that I was a woman hating monster, and this was to fit with the statements that the other complainants had given. It was obvious that the complainants had colluded.

I had stated at my interview that Una had recently cooked a meal for me. If that were true then it would render Una's evidence completely unreliable. The investigators and Mark didn't ask Una about this meal she had cooked for me, and I expect Mark was just going to say that he didn't believe me. However, I was able to submit emails that Una and I had sent each other about that meal she had cooked for me. It is clear from these emails that we were on very friendly terms, and that Una was eager to impress me with her culinary skills. She hadn't cooked a meal for David (or anyone else) with whom she claimed to get on better. It also throws doubt on the claim that I had said that I wanted to "get together" with her five years ago while she was married. Why would she be cooking for someone she believes has unwanted desires for her? Why would she wait five years to be "visibly upset" by this? Even more obvious though, I explained that Una's marriage broke up EIGHT years ago, and that shortly afterwards she had a four year relationship with another man. I even told them that she had relocated after her marriage broke up to be closer to her boyfriend and that this would be in HR's records. I was even able to give evidence that suggested that it was Una who had a soft spot for me, which was backed up by evidence submitted by my girlfriend who had suspected this too, and who had been living with me for more than 6 years.

I also submitted evidence that showed clearly that she would come to me, rather than David for assistance. Furthermore I showed evidence that she frequently came to me with matters that she knew wasn't my responsibility, and that she did this because I am very obliging. It's also possible that she came to me simply because she enjoyed being with me. I certainly felt she spent more time with me than was necessary when she was dealing with the lottery syndicate money. I also submitted an email she sent me telling me about a man who had his penis stuck in a metal pipe; hardly the sort of thing you do with someone who gives you the creeps. I also referred to an email she sent me (and just me) with two animated files that showed cartoon characters having oral sex. I also referred to a time when she had come to me first thing in the morning dressed provocatively, and that it had made me feel sexually intimidated, and that I felt she had done it deliberately. I also referred to occasions while she and I were both married, when she would tell me that she wished her husband was more like me. Also when we played squash, she would wear a very skimpy outfit, and when her marriage broke up, she told me that her husband thought she was having an affair with me.

I also showed Mark an email I'd sent to Una shortly after she had told me that she didn't like being line managed by Eileen MacDonald. She felt that Eileen was overly critical of her spending time collecting lottery money. She felt it was pointless being managed by Eileen as she learned nothing from her. She added that she learned far more from me. I had said in my statement that Una was very enthusiastic and keen to learn. Una replied to that email and highlighted that I have helped her a lot with her work.

Unknown to me, Una had been interviewed as part of my grievance against Kathy. She was asked about the occasion when she physically assaulted me 3 years earlier. She said that when she returned to our office following her interview, I looked at her gloating and smug because she'd been spoken to about the assault. Karen Stark confirmed that this was impossible because I was not told who was being interviewed or when. I had also written to Karen to protest that such interviews should not take place at all because they were irrelevant to my grievance, and would only cause bad feelings within the team. So even if I'd known she'd been interviewed, I wouldn't have been gloating about it. I hadn't expected Una would have been interviewed because when I referred to the assault in my grievance, I hadn't used her name.

Selina Gibb had given similar evidence about me. It was obvious that she had colluded with the others. She also made the claim that she preferred dealing with David rather than me. Yet again, I showed evidence that it was me she repeatedly came to. I even said that in the 6 years since David joined the University, I had never seen either Una or Selina go to David rather than me, despite the fact that they had to pass him in order to come to me. Selina had claimed that, following a conversation with me, she was anxious and nervous around me. I had told Mark that both Una and Selina were laughing and joking with me on the day of my grievance hearing. I also submitted a personal email that Selina had sent me in which she states that she is going to tell me "lots of funnies" about her skiing lessons in the tea room. That's not the action of someone who is anxious and nervous with me. She wasn't anxious or nervous because she had wholly misrepresented a private conversation I had with her, saying that I had frightened and alarmed her.

Selina had also claimed that I had asked her where she got her University degree, knowing that she didn't have a degree. She said that I did this to make myself feel superior. I denied saying that, and I told Mark that I had always been very supportive of Selina's education. She had taken a computing course some years ago, and she had asked me for some help with it. I also said that recently she had told me she was bored with her job, and that she wanted to do some technical work that Una does. I was able to prove that I had set Selina up with a training course and created space on a database for her to carry out the exercises, and I submitted an email she sent me saying that she was really enjoying the course. Neither Eileen nor Kathy had ever considered this for her.

To put some sense of perspective on this; just a few weeks before I was suspended, Selina came to me for the second time, to tell me about an issue that was upsetting her. About 5 times a year, there was a requirement for someone to phone HR to obtain a small piece of information. It would have taken no more than two minutes to do this. However, Selina was upset because she felt that EB should be the person to phone for it, and she felt that EB was being a bit bossy with her by telling her that she has to phone for it. To solve the problem, I spent roughly half a day, including my lunch hour and some time after hours, writing a program that would automatically provide Selina with that piece of information. So it could be said that I spent roughly four hours in order to save Selina about ten minutes work each year. That's not why I did it though. I did it to stop her feeling upset. I wouldn't have upset Selina for the world. She was one of my closest friends in the team. This is the email I sent her the first time the information was sent to her automatically.

I also showed Mark an email that Jackie claimed in her statement that I didn't send her. I also referred to a document that he should look at to see that her story was untrue. He chose not to look at that document.

The complainants had also colluded to claim that I delay responding to their work requests. My most recent appraisal form signed by my manager confirms that I respond quickly to requests for work in order to prevent my colleagues being held up. I showed Mark that appraisal which is extremely positive and contains nothing that supports the allegations.

It was abundantly clear that the complainants had lied and that they had colluded to arrive at their lies. Not only that, with the evidence I was giving it was clear that I was someone who went out of my way to help my colleagues, especially the ones who were complaining. At this point, if Mark had been genuine, he would have apologised and said that these were malicious complaints. Instead, Mark has said that he believes them. That's not a mistake in my view; it's a lie. If he genuinely believed the complaints, then he would surely try to explain the enormous inconsistencies between their statements and the facts. However, in his report in which he dismisses me, he once again does not refer to the facts. It's as though they don't exist.

He should explain how it is that Una came to cook me my favourite meal in order to impress me when she says she avoided contact with me. He should explain how I was able to add her as a friend on Facebook without her asking me to. He should explain the sexually explicit emails she sent me, when she claims I give her the creeps. He should explain how Selina is anxious and nervous around me, yet keen to tell me "lots of funnies" face to face. He should explain how Jackie claims not to have received an email from me, when I was able to show him it, and show that she had acted on it. He should explain the great many more examples where the complainants' statements are inconsistent with the facts. He can't explain any of that, and he hasn't even asked those individuals to explain it, because he knows that they can't either. He knows that they were lying, and he knew that long before he saw any evidence from me.

I raised a grievance against Eileen MacDonald more than two years ago. Kathy refused to deal with it, and passed it to Peter Kemp. Peter said he would deal with it, but didn't. It was then passed to Mark when he joined the university. He asked me if I still wanted to pursue it, and I said yes. More than a year later, in the presence of my union rep, I asked him when it was going to be processed. He falsely claimed that I had withdrawn it. I confirmed that I hadn't, and that I still wanted it to be processed. He never processed it, and still falsely claims that I withdrew it.

About a week before these complaints were made, I made a complaint against Jackie. Mark said he'd deal with it, then changed his mind. I had already made a complaint to Kathy about Jackie, but she never processed it, and said that she wasn't interested because she felt that her employees should sort such things out between themselves.

Although I hadn't made a complaint against Una, she had physically assaulted me at a work's night out in December 2006. Kathy, in the presence of Mark, admitted that she had known about it, but hadn't acted on it because it didn't happen in her presence. As part of my grievance, Una was asked about it (against my wishes), and took the huff. This undoubtedly led to Una colluding with Eileen and Jackie to make up these bogus complaints about me.

The biggest shock was discovering that Selina had taken part in the collusion. She was one of the last people I would ever have suspected would involve herself in a conspiracy to deprive me of my livelihood. You really cannot trust anyone.

Before the Disciplinary Hearing, I wrote to Mark offering to undertake a polygraph test along with the complainants. I even offered to pay for the testing. Needless to say, my offer wasn't taken up.

In total, five employees have made malicious complaints against me - all very obviously false. It is a very serious disciplinary matter to make malicious complaints, yet Stirling University has rewarded those individuals with my dismissal. Can you imagine how that makes me feel?

At the beginning of the hearing, Mark announced that the hearing would finish by 4pm, and that it would not be continued another day. This basically confirmed that he had already reached his decision and wasn't interested in hearing the evidence. I attempted to explain the background to events and referred to documents to support what I was saying, but we were running out of time. So I had to ask Mark to refer me to any allegations that he considered serious enough to dismiss me for, so that I could respond to it. He wasn't able to answer that, and said that we had to look at the picture as a whole. So I responded to every single allegation. No evidence was submitted that supported any of the allegations apart from two emails I'd sent Una Forsyth. Una collected the lottery syndicate money for me to buy the tickets. She emailed the syndicate to say that she didn't want to do it anymore. I replied and jokingly asked "Was it something I said?" Over the next couple of days I began to wonder if she was blanking me. This was something she had done a few years previously, and I didn't know why she had done it. Then I noticed that she had deleted me as a friend from Facebook. This confirmed my suspicion that she was blanking me again. I still didn't know why she was blanking me, but the previous time she had done it led to her physically assaulting me. So I emailed her to suggest that if there was a problem that she either speak with me or Mark Toole about it, so that we could have it sorted out. I was pretty sure I hadn't done anything to have caused it. Later I discovered the reason she wasn't speaking to me was that she had been interviewed about the assault as part of the grievance investigation.

I also submitted an email she sent me on another occasion when she had snapped at me and snatched a piece of paper from my hands. I couldn't understand why she had done it because I had just been helping her with a piece of work. She explained that it was something unrelated to me.

Background

See Timeline and Personnel

I joined the University in May 1997 as a Progammer Analyst. At that time, Kathy wasn't my manager. We got on okay, but I could see that she was a very angry person and was dissatisfied with her role and with the way the department was run. She would often send very aggressive emails to people in other teams and copy me in on them even though they had nothing to do with me. A local company held an open day to invite people with IT skills to consider working for them. Kathy attended and persuaded me and JSS to attend even though we were happy with our jobs. It appeared to me that Kathy wanted to create problems for the team. Not long afterwards, my manager left and was replaced by Kathy. I saw an immediate change in her attitude in that she became far more professional and positive. I was very impressed by her at that time, however I noted that she was still very critical of the men in the team apart from me. Those men were more senior to me, and they had known her longer.

After 18 months service, I took up the post of Database Administrator (DBA), but although this had been a grade 3 post, I remained on grade 2 for two years. I met with Kathy to ask that I be promoted to grade 3. She refused, and I said that I would probably have to look around for another job because with the experience I had I could easily have found another job that both paid more and was also closer to home. At first she threatened to have me dismissed. Later during the same meeting, she agreed to promote me to grade 3. I was suspicious of her sudden change of decision, and I asked what caused it. She just said that I had persuaded her that I was worth the increase. Kathy has promoted five women, but has never required any of them to work for two years in their new role in a lower grade. During her grievance interview, Kathy said that I was a Trainee DBA. This was completely false and could easily have been checked out. indeed I checked it out with HR myself, and they confirmed that I was a DBA.

The DBA workload had increased significantly. The number of databases had increased from three to around 25. I also had to provide a lot of technical support for an SAP system that had been introduced, and I still had programming responsibilities. A big factor in my workload was time I had to spend helping Programmers with their work. This had not been part of the role for the previous DBA because at that time the Programmers were fully competent, but the number of Programmers had increased, and some were brought into the team with very little programming experience, and some of those had little desire to learn to be programmers. Kathy had brought them in for personal rather than professional reasons. This meant that I ended up doing a large proportion of their work too. I had been working on average an extra 15 unpaid hours every week. (This was a situation that continued for almost 7 years). Eileen MacDonald and Jackie O'Neil in particular required a considerable amount of my time. For a long time Kathy would not have been aware that I was having to spend so much of my time doing their work because there was no process for me to bring it to her attention. At that time I worked largely unsupervised.

With me doing a large proportion of their work, one would expect that Eileen and Jackie would be grateful, but that was not the case. Jackie is very aggressive, and she would often shout at me, even though she would be in the wrong about what she was shouting about. She had even shouted at the previous DBA when he had offered to do her a personal favour but hadn't done it in the time she would have liked. Eileen seemed much more friendly, however I later discovered that to be false, and that she was gossiping about me behind my back. Now I realise that while I was doing their work for them, Eileen and Jackie were going to Kathy and gossiping about me and misleading her about my performance.

At an appraisal meeting in 2003, Kathy was very happy with my work, but she said she would like me to be more assertive with the Programmers so that they would gain maximum benefit from my knowledge and experience. It must have been clear to her that I lack assertiveness and that some of the Programmers were ignoring my advice to them. It's odd that the Programmers would not hesitate to come to me for help, but they were much less receptive to my advice. Often I'd find myself providing help that would not have been required had they not ignored my advice.

At my next appraisal meeting in 2005, Kathy's attitude changed and I could not have expected what she was about to say. She asked me if I thought I was the best employee in the team, which I took to mean that she thought I was very arrogant. I said I did not. Ever since I joined the Uni, I have sung the praises of my colleague, JSS. I have always considered her to be a genius. Kathy knew this, so there seemed no logical reason for her question. Kathy then said that I had become unapproachable. I assured her that that was not the case, and that I was regularly being approached by colleagues, and that the reason they did so was because I would stop what I was doing and help them right away to prevent them from being held up. Kathy then said that I lacked visibility. Again I said that this was incorrect, and that I was frequently in the company of colleagues, and that at times there had been queues forming in my room with colleagues wanting help from me. I asked her what she meant, and she said that she rarely saw me in room 2b30, which was a room occupied by Programmers. I told her that I don't avoid that room, but that it was more common for Programmers to come to see me in my room and that I would work at my PC to investigate their problems. In reality, I would have been in that room far more often than Kathy, and this was not a genuiune explanation for her criticism. I felt I had sufficiently explained that there was no reason for concern, and she was unwilling or unable to come up with any tangible reasons for saying these things. However, she included them in my appraisal report. I was very disappointed, and for several days I considered what to do about it. In the end, I decided not to do anything.

Then I noticed the change in Kathy's behaviour towards me, and in December 2006, I plucked up the courage to meet with her to try to find out what it was all about. I told her that it was causing me a great deal of stress. I talked about my appraisal report, and asked her if someone had made a complaint about me being unapproachable. She denied it, and amazingly said that it was just something she had overheard in the corridor. Then she said it wasn't a problem anymore. So I was left wondering if she had heard that in the corridor too. I explained to her about Jackie spreading false rumours about me, but she denied she had heard them. I told her that Jackie had come to me one day demanding that I fix a database problem, and I had to explain to her that it was not a database problem, and what she would have to do to resolve her problem. Jackie became aggressive, shouted at me and slammed the door as she left. She then went back to her room and phoned the software vendors. She angrily described me as "our useless DBA" to them. They told her exactly the same as I told her to resolve her problem. Kathy said she was not intereseted in such things because she thinks her staff should resolve such matters between themselves. I told her that I believed she was receiving false reports about me from my colleagues. Kathy had also lied to me at this meeting in order to try to cover up her behaviour towards me. I told her that I wanted it to stop. She goaded me by suggesting that I bring a complaint of harassment if I wasn't happy. She was obviously confident that management would support her, and she was absolutely correct.

In February 2008, I was suffering from stress due to Kathy's bullying as well as another work related issue which was role evaluation. Kathy met with me and suggested I visit the Occupational Health Department. I said I'd think about it. She said that if I didn't refer myself, she would refer me. I decided not to.

She met with me again and said that she was going to refer me to OH. I said that I didn't think that would be helpful, and that I just needed the two things that were causing the stress to be resolved, and reminded her that I'd asked her to stop ill treating me and that she hadn't. I informed her that if it continued then I would have to raise a grievance. She denied any knowledge of me having discussed this with her previously.

I was referred to OH, and I discussed the issues with the doctor. The doctor agreed with me that there was no medical or councelling solution to my problem, and he stated in his report that the University should take me more seriously. Later I received a copy of the letter of referral and discovered that Kathy had lied about me in order to make me appear as though I was some mad man. It included a false claim that I had been aggressive with staff. When I saw this, I became extremely stressed and required five weeks sick leave. It had been about 8 years since I last missed a day's work. I'd never needed to see a doctor in over 20 years.

When I returned to work, Kathy's behaviour was extremely odd, and again she was dishonest. I feel sure that Karen Stark was in some way caught up in this too.

When I was off sick, my doctor gave me a cerificate, and then I needed another one, so I tried to make another apoointment to see him. His receptionist said there was no need for me to see him, and that she would get him to leave a certificate for me to collect. Then I needed another certificate, and when I phoned, the receptionist said the same again. However, when I arranged to collect the certificate, the receptionist said that the doctor wanted to see me first, and made an appointment for 8th May. The doctor had emphasised that it was important for me to return to work as soon as I felt able. My certificate had run out, and so I returned to work on 6th May with the plan that I would collect my certificate on the 8th. When I returned to work, Kathy called me to her office and said I had to return home until I had permission from the doctor to return. I explained that the doctor had wanted me back as soon as I felt able and that my certificate had run out, but she insisted I was to go home.

Prior to me returning to work, I had been in regular contact with Karen Stark telling her what was happening. I told her about the appointment arranged for 8th, but that I intended to return earlier if possible. She said nothing to suggest I shouldn't. I had also been in regular contact with the Departmental Secretary (JH). I told JH that I was likely to return before seeing the doctor too. She replied saying that she thought that the regulations didn't allow it. She quoted a sentence from the Sickness and Absence Procedure that said that if you wish to return to work before your certificate runs out, you must first get approval from your doctor. JH must have told KM that she had told me this. I replied to JH saying that my circumstances were different because my certificate had already run out. I could tell that JH was acting on her own initiative and was just being thoughtful and helpful, but she later followed up by apologising as it may have seemed that she was telling me what to do. I replied saying that that was not the case and thanked her for her concern.

Karen wrote to me asking me to obtain proof that my doctor had instructed me to return to work as soon as I felt able. My doctor agreed to provide this information to Karen on request. He also agreed to confirm that there was no medical solution to my health problem, and that my health would naturally improve once the problems at work were solved. I wrote to Karen to give her permission to contact my doctor and ask about these points, but she chose not to.

On 8th May, I returned to work for the second time, and Kathy arranged a return to work meeting with me by email. She said that I could bring a colleague with me if I so wished, but I didn't. I just wanted the meeting to be as short as possible and private. When I arrived at her office, Kathy noted that I was alone, and said she would go and get Eric Hall to join us. I protested and said I didn't want anyone to join us because I considered it to be a private matter. She insisted that someone else be present, so I went and asked JSS if she would join us. I told her what had happened, and she agreed to join us.

At the meeting, Kathy asked me how I was. I said that I was still suffering from stress but that I felt well enough to return to work. I added that it had caused me more stress to have been sent home two days earlier. This is when Kathy became very defensive and dishonest and aggressive. She said that I should have known not to return because it says so in the Sickness and Absence Procedures (SAP). I said that I didn't think it did. I added that my doctor had said he thought it was nitpicking to have sent me home. Kathy then printed off a copy of the SAP, and highlighted a sentence on it, and then placed it in front of me on the table. I started to read it, but Kathy continued talking. I asked if she could give me a few seconds to read what she had highlighted. She abruptly refused to let me read it. This is because it was the same sentence that JH had brought to my attention, and Kathy, after highlighting it, now realised that it didn't apply in my case. She said that JH had told me not to return, and I said that JH was not instructing me not to return, but was just being considerate. Kathy then implied that she had instructed JH to tell me not to return. I knew right away that this was false. I said that JH had not known that my certificate had run out. Kathy then threatened me with disciplinary action because I had not returned to work when my certificate had run out. I could see she was now being very aggressive. I told her that I'd explained my circumstances to Karen that I would try to return and that Karen had not discouraged me. Karen works in HR and would have known far better than me. Kathy then falsely claimed that on the 6th I had told her that I did not think I was well enough to return. I was astonished at this claim, and quickly denied it. Kathy then said she was disappointed that I had invited JSS to such a stressful meeting, because JSS was pregnant at he time. I said I hadn't anticipated such a stressful meeting, and I reminded her that I was returning to work after being off for five weeks with stress. I also reminded her that it was she who insisted that I have someone else present. She then denied that she had insisted. SL was a team member who had been off with stress for several months. I asked her if she had forced SL to have someone present at her return to work meeting. She said that it was none of my business as it is a private matter. So I asked her why she should insist that my private matters should be attended by a colleague. Kathy was now beginning to lose the plot, and she accused me of being disrespectful. I told her that it was she who was disrespectful. and I asked her to please not raise her voice at me. She then said she would stop the meeting, and get someone else to attend with me later, but no other meeting was arranged.

Immediately after the meeting, I wrote down everything that had been said, and showed it to JSS. This was because I was going to include it in my informal grievance that I was about to raise. JSS disputed only one thing I'd written. I said that Kathy had claimed to have told JH to instruct me not to return to work. JSS correctly said that Kathy had asked "Did you not stop to think that it was perhaps me who had told JH to tell you not to return?" Even though I knew that JH had told me this on her own initiative, I later asked her face to face, and JH confirmed that Kathy had not told her to tell me. In Kathy's grievance she actually states that she told JH to tell me. Also in her grievance she states that she had to check with Karen on whether or not I was allowed to return to work on 6th. She goes on to say that Karen had to then check with another HR colleague. Yet Kathy was adamant that I, an IT employee, should have known that I wasn't supposed to return.

I completed my 25 page informal grievance which I had begun writing during my sick leave and sent it to Peter Kemp. It gave great detail of Kathy's behaviour towards me over several years. In Kathy's grievance papers, she included an email she had sent to Peter shortly after this in which she tells him that she is going to need his full support on this matter. In his reply, Peter said that he fully understands and supports her position. I was disgusted to see this, as it is my view that he should not have been taking sides on this matter.

Peter offered Kathy and me the services of an external mediator called Liz Law. We both accepted. My girlfriend, Ruth and I spent a total of 7 hours with Liz discussing the mediation process and the background to the problem. She explained that I was to prepare a five minute statement to read to Kathy, and that Kathy would do the same with me. We were then each to ask questions of one another and to ensure the answers were satisfactory. I spent more time preparing for the joint meeting. Then on the day of the meeting, Kathy announced that she had written a letter of complaint to the Uni stating that I had folded my arms during a team meeting, leaned back in my chair, and grunted when saying Good Morning to her. We each read out our statements. This was my statement:

I am glad to have this opportunity of mediation because I would like answers to a number of serious concerns that I have.

When you first became ISD Manager 10 years ago, you took over the management of the Finance project at the same time, and I was very impressed by the way you approached your new roles. Along with Jaana and Brian, you became a hero of mine.

When I became the DBA, I was pleased with the support you gave me, allowing me to make significant changes to the way the team worked, despite my lack of experience.

When my marriage broke up, you kindly invited me to your home at New Year. I was very grateful to you because it would have been a very difficult time for me to be alone.

Since then, however, I feel that things have deteriorated. I had told you a number of times that I felt you were treating me unfairly and that I wanted you to stop because it was causing me stress, but you didn't stop, and I felt I had no option but to make a complaint because your behaviour has damaged me very significantly.

I first recognised that you were treating me unfairly at my last appraisal three years ago, although looking back; I can see that it was happening before then. You abruptly asked me if I thought I was the best person in the team; yet prior to that you had been concerned about my lack of confidence and assertiveness. You said that I was unapproachable, but gave me no explanation why you thought this. About a year later you said that this was because you had overheard someone say this in a corridor. You also said that I lacked visibility with the other team members, but you didn't offer a sensible explanation. Despite me strongly denying that there was any truth in your allegations, you included them in my appraisal report. I felt very hurt and shocked by that, and I need to know why you did it.

In another meeting with David and me, you attacked me again about the "visibility" issue. I felt that this was in retaliation to a suggestion I made to which you had taken offence. You also misrepresented my views at another meeting in relation to this. I need to know what this is all about.

Despite the fact that I have gone to extraordinary lengths to make our team, including you, look good, I feel that you do not treat me with equal respect and dignity that you provide to other team members. I feel that you strongly favour certain team members, especially Eileen MacDonald. This was abundantly clear when I talked with you in February. This makes me feel like a 2nd class person. For example, training courses, conferences, merit awards, system upgrades. Why do you need to do that?

Since I became DBA, there have been many occasions when I have been badly treated by colleagues. I have been shouted at, sworn at, physically assaulted, had a malicious rumour spread about me. I've been told that I wasn't worth the promotion I received. One phoned a supplier and angrily told them I was a "useless DBA". And, Eileen once said she would never speak to me again. I have told you some of these incidents, and you replied saying that you were not interested. I want to know why, as our manager, you were not interested. I feel you have made me the team's scapegoat.

There have been matters relating to me about which you have appeared to be irrationally obsessive. For example, time off in lieu and also the diagram I drew on the whiteboard to help me with my work as a DBA. I feel that your obsessions were due to things colleagues were saying to you, but you were not being entirely frank with me, and indeed you were dishonest with me, and I want to know why.

At one meeting, you strongly denied that I have trained Programmers. I felt offended by that. How did you imagine that Programmers who had been appointed with little or no experience could be producing programs without substantial help from me?

We had a meeting for you to verify the contents of the DBA role outline for framework. Without warning, you had invited Eric to this meeting. The meeting was very confrontational because you aggressively challenged many of the statements included in the form, including three statements that you had typed yourself a few days earlier. Immediately following that meeting, Ruth and I went on holiday, and that holiday was ruined because of the stress I was feeling. I would like to know why you acted in that way.

You completely ignored me at one meeting and laughed at me at another. I felt humiliated. I want to know why you do this.

You have insulted me twice by calling me "patronising". I want to know why you do that.

You also sent me an email, copied to Eric, in which you criticised me. This was in relation to a matter for which an email containing praise would have been far more appropriate. I would like to know why you did that.

You composed a letter referring me to Occupational Health which contained false and serious allegations about me. This was the main reason for me becoming so ill with stress that I required five weeks sick leave. Why did you do that?

You made my Return to Work interview very stressful for me. I felt that you wanted me to suffer more stress to keep me from work longer. Why did you do that?

When Liz asked us to start putting questions to each other, Kathy announced that she would not be answering any questions. She said that if I asked her a question, she would leave the room. Kathy had brought Colin Sinclair, who is her long time friend and colleague, with her as support, and I had brought Ruth with me. I felt that Kathy may have been embarrassed to answer my questions in front of Colin, so I offered to ask them back in the office afterwards, but she refused that too.

My statement contained reference to Kathy's dishonesty. She protested at this, and asked me to withdraw it. The best I could do was to say that she is sometimes dishonest. She didn't like that either. She said that honesty went to the very core of her being. She said that three times, and it didn't gain any credibility with each performance. So I offered to give her examples of where she had been dishonest, but she quickly refused to allow that too. She feigned upset and went to the toilet for ages. Colin said he was surprised that I had said she was dishonest. He said that he had known Kathy for a long time and considered her to be one of the most honest people he'd ever known. At the time I genuinely believed him. I had been a big fan of Colin, and I just assumed that this was a side of Kathy that he didn't know. I later discovered that Colin too was dishonest. When he was interviewed about the mediation during the grievance investigation, he said that Kathy had answered my questions. Of course the investigators didn't ask for any examples of the questions I'd asked.

This was now the third time that Kathy had avoided explaining why she was mistreating me, and it wasn't to be the last. I feel it would have increased her chances of becoming an ex-bully if she were to open up and explain what it is that compels her to do it. It was a wasted, expensive opportunity.

With time running out, Liz tried to create an agreement between Kathy and me. Kathy agreed that if she was to receive any complaints about me, she would let me know about it and arrange a meeting with me and the complainant.

Three weeks later, Eileen MacDonald sent a lengthy email to Kathy complaining about me. She said that I was confrontational and a poor team player. She described an incident that happened the day before, but in a misleading way. I believe Eileen would not have expected Kathy to let me see it. Kathy forwarded her email to me and asked for my comments in advance of a meeting. At last I could see what was happening. Eileen was deliberately giving Kathy a false impression of me, when in fact it was Eileen who was at fault. I replied to Kathy and explained exactly what had happened. Eileen and Una had been deliberately breeching database security procedures several times over a lengthy period and each time I reminded them of the correct procedure. I also asked them to contact me if they ever felt it necessary to breech security procedures, because I knew that it wasn't. The previous day, Eileen had instructed Una to ignore the procedures again and logon to a database using an account that I had explained several times before that they were not to use. From my PC I could see Una logged on. I phoned her and asked her to log off. She agreed to do so, but 10 minutes later when I checked, she was still logged on, so I remotely logged her off myself. During those 10 minutes I'd heard Eileen talking with Una, and it seemed likely that Eileen was telling Una to just ignore me. I also made it clear that it was Eileen who was a poor team player by refusing to answer emails I'd sent her. She had also sent me a very sarcastic email and been very rude to me. I also described an incident from December 2006 when Una had physically assaulted me for no apparent reason, and had refused to explain why she did it.

When Kathy received my email it would have been absolutely clear to her that Eileen was in the wrong because I'd sent her written evidence. Eileen's email had also demonstrated her poor understanding of technical matters. Bizarrely, Kathy replied to me saying that she had only asked for BRIEF comments when in fact she hadn't. She said that because my reply was too long she was cancelling the meeting. She also said that she was going to raise a grievance against me. I immediately raised a formal grievance against Kathy and an informal grievance against Eileen which she passed to Peter. My grievance against Eileen was never processed. In fact Mark Toole has used that grievance as reason to dismiss me. He states that it was insensitive of me to raise a gievance against Eileen two weeks before she was due to go on maternity leave. I raised the grievance two MONTHS before her maternity leave. Her maternity leave and the timing of it formed no part of my grievance. The timing was due to the time that she had chosen to write to my manager. Mark's view is sexist, because his criticism could not have been made if I had raised a grievance against a man.