M-I'5.Persecut ion ` harass ment at w ork

[Guest imievm@bigfoot.com]

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-= harassment. at work -=

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Once I stopped watching television. and listening to the radio at the end of

1990, "they" had to find other ways of committing abuses. So. they took what

must be for them a tried and tested route; they get at you by. subversion of

those around you. Since they wouldn't be able. to do that with my family or

friends, that meant getting at people in. the workplace to be their

mouthpieces and do their dirty work. for them.

 

They. supplied my employers in Oxford with details from what was going on in

my private. life, and what I and other people had said at my home and

accommodation. in Oxford. So people at work repeated verbatim words which

had been said in my home, and repeated what I'd been doing. recently. Often

the most trivial things, the ones from your domestic. life, are the ones

which hurt most. One. manager in particular at Oxford continuously abused me

for. ten months with verbal sexual abuse, swearing, and threats to terminate

my employment. After ten months I was forced to seek psychiatric help. and

start taking medication, and was away from work for. two months. I spoke

later with a solicitor about what. had happened at that company; he advised

it was. only possible to take action if you had left the company as a result

of harassment, and such an. action would have to be started very soon after

leaving.

 

Over a year later the. same manager picked on another new worker, with even

more serious. results; that employee tried to commit suicide with an

overdose as a result of. the ill-treatment, and was forced to leave his job.

But he didn't take action against the company,. either. Abuse at work is

comparable to that elsewhere in. that tangible evidence is difficult to

produce, and the abusers. will always have their denials ready when

challenged. And even if a court accepts. what you say happened, it still

remains to prove that abuse causes the type of breakdown I had. at the end

of 1992. In a recent case before a British court, a former member. of the

Army brought a case against others who had. maltreated him ten years

previously. Although the court accepted that abuse had occurred, it did. not

agree that depressive illness necessarily followed, and. denied justice to

the. plaintiff.

 

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