A maintenance man in Wales has won a sexual harassment case against a much younger female colleague who badgered him for sex and threatened to make “his life hell” if he reported her to their boss.
The Daily Mail reported that the maintenance man, who is 50 years old and married, had repeatedly begged the woman to leave him alone, but she wouldn’t, going so far as to email his wife to imagine him cheating. The Daily Wire will not the name the man, since the woman has not been named in news reports.
The man and the woman both worked for the same cleaning company. She was the administrative assistant and the two bonded over a similar humor, which apparently “contained innuendo.” The man at some point offered the woman some help while she was having some difficulty in her life, and that’s when she started aggressively propositioning him.
She first texted the man that she could “repay you in kind LOL” and asked the man out for a drink. A week later she texted him again saying “I’m totally f******, think of the fun.” The man told her he was happily married and just wanted to be coworkers.
The woman continued sending him messages asking to have sex at work while the boss was away. The man responded, “Just stop… it’s offensive and intimidating.” But the woman wouldn’t stop. When the man said he would report her to their boss, she pointed out a particular kind of female privilege in the workplace.
“You need to remember I am a single crying mum and can make your life hell,” she told him. “I guarantee you go to [their boss] I will make your life hell. I just want you to want me.”
The man reported her to their boss anyway, and he ended up getting suspended and eventually fired after she made good on her threat to ruin him by filing her own false allegations against him. The man was suspended five days before the woman was, and an employment tribunal ruled that the man’s boss unfairly punished him simply because he chose to believe the woman over the man.
“[Their boss,] perhaps unconsciously, considered a complaint by a fifty year old man, that he was being harassed to have a sexual relationship by a woman many years his junior, was less credible or urgent than a similar complaint from a woman,” an employment judge ruled.
The tribunal also accepted the man’s claims that he was unfairly fired as a result of the woman’s false claim, but said he may have been fired anyway because his workload was being reduced.
Had the woman not provided clear evidence of her harassment, the man probably would not have won his case, as men accused are routinely seen as guilty in the U.K.
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