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M`I 5-Persec ution - harass ment at w orkde vfefmi 01/02/2008 11:52 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= -= harassment. at work -= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 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. 3272
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