Sociology Talk

Guest

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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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