The claimant worked for the respondent as an assistant, initially on an informal basis, and then under a contract of employment. He had significant personal issues affecting his health and wellbeing. The claimant described the respondent’s initial attitude towards him as friendly and civil. She provided him with a job, a place to live and an all-expenses paid holiday to Egypt.

The claimant said the respondent’s attitude then changed when he received his contract of employment. The claimant was a devout Catholic. He attended mass every day and had a number of religious statues in the accommodation she had given him. One day he returned home to find the statues had been moved. The claimant expressed shock that, not only had the respondent entered the house while he was at work, but also that she had moved the statues and then sent mocking text messages to him.

The claimant submitted that he continually felt belittled at work by the respondent about his religious devotion and that the respondent constantly berated him because he was male. He was genuinely and deeply offended by her actions. Not only had his privacy been breached, but his employer openly mocked his religion, to him and to the colleagues she brought with her into his home. She desecrated his religious statues, and, in her role as employer, instructed two of his colleagues to be actively complicit in it.

The tribunal concluded the actions of the respondent amounted to direct discrimination on grounds of religion and sex. His dismissal, whilst not unfair for the purposes of the 1996 Order, was also a detriment for the purposes of the relevant discrimination legislation.

The wages provided by the respondent were the claimant’s only source of income and his dismissal was not anticipated. The offer of the job, the provision of accommodation, the all-expenses paid holiday, appeared from the evidence to emanate from the respondent.  Whilst this was advanced on her part as being evidence of her generosity, the true situation appeared to the tribunal to be very different.

“The respondent’s behaviour was entirely consistent with conduct bearing all the hallmarks of a campaign of control and denigration of the claimant, whom she already knew to be a vulnerable individual, embarked upon by the respondent from her position of power over his situation.”

Considering the Vento bands the tribunal concluded the case fell at the upper end of the scale and ordered the respondent to pay £30,000 compensation for injury to feelings.

“It is difficult to conceive of a more blatant and corrosive campaign of conduct conducted by the respondent, who additionally involved other members of staff in the humiliation of the claimant, in his home and at work.”
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