Victim of ‘unalloyed sexist’ behaviour at ministry tells story

Tuesday, 22 October 2024

For the first time the Public Service Commission will survey public sector workers on whether they’ve experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. One former staffer says the Ministry of Education and other public service agencies’ handling of her case was scarring. Anna Whyte investigates.

It was fresh after the first level four Covid lockdown.

Three days back in the office, Zara (not her real name) says she was sexually harassed by an older, senior staff member, setting off a chain of events that saw her pinballed across the public service as she sought change and closure - neither of which she got.

“It was never about me. It was about the reputation of the ministry,” Zara says. “I've just felt like a problem and it's me versus this gigantic beast of a machine of the public service.”

Four years later, she’s finally ready to speak.

‘I felt icky, just sick’

It was her first job out of university. The man, who held a leadership position and was significantly older, worked in the same building.

“You couldn’t get any lower than I was. You had this huge power imbalance that existed from the very beginning.”

In June 2020, at Friday night drinks at the ministry’s office, Zara said the man touched her upper thigh multiple times, put his hand on her crotch, and made an inappropriate comment to her.

She had no idea what to do next. “I woke up the next morning and felt so weird, after a shower. That feeling didn’t go away, I felt icky, just sick.”

About two weeks later she approached HR on a separate work matter, and told them what happened. She thought it was the right thing to do. Zara didn’t want anyone else to feel how she did.

She had no idea what a formal complaint entailed, but was told nothing could be done unless she made one.

Meanwhile, she kept seeing the man around the office. She was anxious every day, worried about it happening to someone else.

The formal complaint

The next month Zara asked if she could make the formal complaint via email - but was encouraged to do it on an HR staff member’s computer. It was then printed out.

“The HR staff kept saying to me, ‘your privacy is so important to us, it's better to have in-person meetings and discussions over the phone.’”

Zara believes this allowed them to avoid a paper trail which could then be subject to OIA and Privacy Act requests.

“Whether that was the intended purpose or not… when you do an investigation and look through what you have in your system, there's a huge amount of information that's not there.”

Asked about the claim that MoE encouraged complainants to keep details, including the formal complaint, offline, then chief executive Iona Holsted said, “there was a need for confidentiality for all parties”. Holsted’s final day as chief was last Friday. Deputy secretary Ellen MacGregor-Reid, who has been at MoE since 2015, is acting chief executive.

After formally complaining, Zara felt confused. “I kept saying, what is the process involved? I don't understand, I don't know what's expected of me.”

About three weeks after making the complaint, she was informed she would be interviewed by lawyer Maria Austen, then of Port Nicholson Chambers, who was brought on by MoE to lead the independent investigation.

According to MoE official guidelines from the time, resolving sexual harassment via a formal complaint starts by making a complaint to a complainant’s manager, the Secretary for Education or people capability. MoE then decides whether to formally investigate.

Zara later wanted it noted in the report she had no lawyer for her interview, “and he showed up with two”.

The subject of the allegation was still working at MoE during the beginning of the investigation, even after the complaint was made. He was not allowed to go on her floor, but Zara would see him around and outside of the building.

“My entire body felt like jelly, but stiffened up at the same time and I was shaking.”

Asked why the respondent was working in the MoE building for part of the investigation, while complainants were there, Holsted said he was “required to work from home for the duration of the investigation, except in circumstances where physical attendance was absolutely necessary (in which case prior agreement of the CE was required)”.

Says Zara, “I was in the middle of a process that I didn't understand at the very beginning of my career. I just was this anxious ball of mess. I was so stressed out that I struggled to eat and lost weight.

“I was crying frequently at work. I was trying really hard not to do it in front of people but sometimes I didn't make it to the bathroom and I was just bawling my eyes out.”

That one investigation, sparked by her formal complaint, unsurfaced other disclosures, The Post understands from multiple people.

“It started out with me. And then some people were brought on as witnesses… Then it was apparent it was a wider issue and then they expanded the terms of reference, which I didn’t know about, because I didn’t know there was a terms of reference.”

The Post understands the man denied the allegations of sexual harassment and the law firm that represented him did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The terms of reference lay out the scope and purpose of an investigation. Other complainants and witnesses involved in the complaint didn’t know the details either. But the man at the centre of the allegations had the terms of reference from the start. Holsted acknowledged it was an error not to provide the terms of reference to the complainants from the start.

Zara says the terms of reference were expanded to look at MoE’s drinking culture, but it should have focused on the culture in MoE “that enabled [the harassment] to happen in the first place”.

“Young women were put in positions where a man in power was touching their bodies that they did not consent to, and was… saying disgusting and entirely inappropriate things to them. And they were too scared to speak up about it. All of this was allowed to happen because of the culture that existed.”

Holsted said it was “during the course of the investigation that other people were identified and the investigation’s terms of reference were widened to include the additional allegations”.

By early 2021 Zara received the investigation’s draft report. By then she had left MoE. She received the final report in February 2021.

“I just remember wanting to know, was I believed? Yep… I'm just going to leave it at that. There was so much that was redacted. It was actually laughable that they would call that a final report.”

Holsted said “as soon as the findings were complete and the allegations upheld, the appropriate action was taken”.

The man did not return to the ministry.

Then Education Minister Chris Hipkins was apprised of the outcome, according to MoE. Hipkins said he did not recall being made aware of the investigation and reviews. “I would not expect to be notified of individual staffing matters unless there was an exceptional circumstance. However, if systemic issues within the ministry were identified, that is something I would have expected to be informed of.”

The meeting with Iona Holsted

About three weeks later, Zara received an email from MoE’s HR team asking if she wanted to meet with Holsted. Others involved in the investigation, including witnesses and others who had made allegations, were also invited, despite throughout the process being told not to talk to each other. Some had no idea certain people were involved.

There were about 10 people there, the tense meeting ending with tears from complainants.

“[Holsted] just went in there… not expecting how angry we all were,” Zara says. “I thought she was going to sit there and be like, ‘I'm so sorry that you've all gone through this, thank you so much for speaking up. This is really important that we hold people to account’ - there was none of that.

“There was no official apology. It shouldn't take us telling them how bad it was to front up with an apology.”

MoE and some of the complainants went through restorative justice later that year. Another report was created, which relayed that participants said the ministry had a culture that promoted and enabled harmful behaviour, Zara said.

There were issues with a lack of leadership during the investigation, the isolation of participants, unclear confidentiality boundaries, a lack of support, lack of timely communication, inadequate sharing of the terms of reference, and MoE being unable or refusing to offer support and advice to the participants who had limited access to legal support, Zara said.

Another person involved in the investigation told The Post the process was “incredibly stressful and poorly handled”.

“As young public servants, the damage they caused is long-lasting for a number of us. You think your employer will protect you in times like this. Instead we were made to feel like we were the problem.

“The worst part is that they have learned nothing from it and made no real changes to how they support complainants.

“They have never apologised.”

The second report

In 2022 Zara was trying to move on with her life and had been diagnosed with PTSD.

She found out through unofficial channels that MoE had produced another report - a review of the initial investigation - a year earlier, in June 2021. She immediately contacted Holsted, who promptly sent her the report, written by employment relations consultant Denis Asher.

“The purpose of the second report was to look into the ministry’s processes of the first investigation,” Holsted said.

It reviewed key documents, included ‘noteworthy’ quotes, observations and findings, including that the respondent was removed from the workplace promptly - which was not the case, Zara says, as the man had continued to work there, including from the office, until partway through the investigation.

About 20 people had already received the second report, about the handling of her own sexual harassment complaint, by the time Zara found out about it.

“I knew that sharing very, very personal information was going to be used for the purpose of investigating what happened and finding out from their perspective if I was telling the truth or not - I consented to that.

“What I hadn't agreed to was having an unknown man… reading through incredibly personal and private details about me, from what was, at that point, the worst thing I'd gone through in my life.

“I just remember sitting on the floor… and crying.” It felt like a privacy violation.

“It's a complete and utter waste of taxpayers’ money to investigate something without actually ever talking to the person involved.”

Asher wrote that the investigation made for painful reading, that he expected the event to have deeply disturbed, if not traumatised those involved, Zara says. She said the report stated that at the heart of the situation was “unalloyed sexist, bullying behaviour”, where a senior manager “has deliberately used a significant power imbalance to manipulate staff”, and that there was significant grooming.

Asher recommended a reset following the apparent failure to pick up the behaviour.

Holsted said the details given to the second investigator included the statement of allegations, correspondence with the respondent regarding the proposed process and workplace restrictions during the investigation, correspondence to potential witnesses advising of the investigation and requesting their participation and a copy of the original investigation report and resulting decision document.

Holsted said “employment investigations of any sort, and those involving sexual harassment in particular, can have a significant emotional impact on complainants”.

“I know, in this case, there were complaints about the process. The ministry had the process externally reviewed. Our goal was to identify any actions that could reduce the trauma attached to the process.

'While restorative justice was provided by an external organisation and made available to anyone who felt they were affected by the process, we understand that it does not mitigate the feelings of the complainants. We recognise that the process was found wanting and have sincerely apologised for any additional distress this may have caused.”

Zara emailed Holsted, saying she believed her privacy had been breached - Holsted said if she had concerns she could go to the Privacy Commissioner.

Public Service beast

Instead, she sought guidance from the Public Service Commission - the overarching body of Government agencies or ministries, in an attempt to improve the way agencies deal with, or prevent, complaints of sexual harassment in the workplace.

“I was hoping that they would take me seriously enough to actually investigate it.”

She met with the PSC, which suggested she contact the Ministry for Primary Industries, which has a unit to provide support to chief executives, senior leaders and the health and safety teams of government agencies.

Zara says the government health and safety team lead told her they could “explore” turning her case into an anonymised case study, which she hoped would be provided to agency leaders to help other organisations.

Zara was optimistic - change might actually happen.

Then, after meeting with MPI, she says she received an email from the unit’s director, Lance Goodall, saying they had decided not to go forward after talking with the MPI deputy chief executive and the Public Service Commission.

They were worried about the likelihood of agencies being distracted, thinking it was about them, Zara says.

If the main problem was agencies thinking an anonymised case study was about them, “it's clear you know you have a problem', Zara says.

MPI said Zara’s case exposed key weaknesses and messages agencies needed to hear, so it intended to place “messages” through their work, such as training, support and communication, which was circulated to agency health and safety leads and put on its website.

Goodall told The Post “we were concerned that it would be difficult to maintain anonymity and a case study would potentially retraumatise the person involved, given the nature and seriousness of their experiences”.

The first investigation, which MoE said Maria Austen undertook for Dyhrberg Drayton Employment Law firm, cost more than $15,000. The second Denis Asher report cost $8500.

Sexual harassment across the public service

The Public Service Commission holds no central data to know how widespread sexual harassment is.

Reporting across the public service is varied - with some ministries unable to provide basic details, while others recorded all disclosures of sexual harassment.

However, in what could be a breakthrough, the commission is including the question in its 2025 public service census.

What next

Zara says there has been a cost in speaking up. “And not just a financial one; but a cost to my mental health and my career. I was naive in thinking that bringing my case to the appropriate departments would result in tangible change to stop this from happening again.

“The system served to protect the perpetrator, and shuffle him to his next role within the wider public service.

“I can’t take away what happened to me, but I can advocate for change to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Do you know more? Email anna.whyte@stuff.co.nz.