For the top brass from the Perth arm of office leasing heavyweight Savills, a skiing trip to New Zealand shaped as an opportunity for a bit of team bonding and frivolity. But for leasing agent Shelley Ritter, it was the nadir of what she alleges was 12 years of sexual harassment and discrimination against her.
It was during that August 2015 trip, Ritter alleges, that her boss Graham Postma – who would go on to be appointed managing director of the Perth office and the national head of Savills’ office leasing team – “pressured” her to join him, Savills national head of occupier services Mark Smith and a client on a visit to a strip club.
Smith, Ritter claims, earlier in the same trip had told her that her breasts looked “particularly large” and asked whether she had undergone a breast augmentation. He also, she says, sent him a late-night text message “to ask her for a hug”.
Perhaps the biggest humiliation, however, came when Smith put a sock in with Ritter’s washing. Both Smith and Postma, Ritter alleges, told Savills employees and clients that Smith had put his “wank sock” in her laundry.
The alleged New Zealand antics were just one small part of what Ritter and her lawyers claim was a prolonged pattern of deeply inappropriate behaviour that, if proven to be true, appears to have pervaded through the leadership of Savills’ Perth office.
To date, Ritter’s claims are only allegations that have yet to be fully tested in court.
But should they be substantiated, they will point to a long-running culture of sleaze and depravity inside the Perth branch of one of the dominant players in Australia’s premium office property management space.
Ritter’s statement of claim details specific allegations against some of the most senior current and former executives at Savills.
The company fought hard to keep details of the case under wraps, pushing to have the court throw out the case and filing an application to suppress certain documents and information on the court file.
After hearing legal arguments from The Australian, Federal Court Justice Craig Colvin this week released a redacted version of the document. Justice Colvin also released the reasons behind his decision on Savills’ attempt to have the matter thrown out, granting a permanent stay over only five of 49 particular allegations levelled by Ritter against the firm and its employees.
The alleged harassment began not long after Ritter joined Savills in 2007.
The following year, according to the statement of claim, Postma sent Ritter an email stating that she should “Go the boob shot” for Savills’ marketing material.
A few months before the New Zealand trip, Postma sent Ritter a “stream” of emails in which he allegedly wrote that “Smithy” wanted to see her in a sauna and referred to her breasts, allegedly saying “ … yours are very large and from the hot”.
Postma again allegedly made references to Ritter’s breasts at Savills’ dress-up Christmas party in December 2017. Ritter in her claim says Postma’s personal assistant took a photograph of Ritter’s breasts, telling her she would be sending it to her boss.
The following year, Ritter claims, Postma told her to “take one for the team” and accompany him, Smith and clients to the Penthouse strip club in the Perth nightclub district of Northbridge.
Ritter also alleges Postma was “frequently” verbally abusive towards her, and had referred to her as the office “token tart”.
The alleged sexual harassment towards Ritter also came from other leaders in the office.
Ryan Jacob, current director of valuation and advisory for Savills in Perth, allegedly sent Ritter a string of messages that started with the statement that he was “disappointed that it wasn’t a booty call”, followed by messages with emoticons referencing a penis and ejaculation.
Jacob, Ritter alleges, from 2016 onwards also “repeatedly” looked her up and down and stared at her chest.
Another Savills colleague, Michael Filippou, allegedly sent an email to Ritter and Postma with the subject line “shel we understand how u feel”. The email contained an image of a bare-breasted woman.
According to Ritter’s claim, the years of mistreatment took a major toll on her mental and physical wellbeing.
She has been on unpaid sick leave since July 2, 2019, having been “totally unfit for employment” since that date. In the years leading up to that, she had been earning on average more than $300,000 a year in her role, and in one year collected $556,332 in salary, superannuation and commissions.
That compensation package, she claims, was less than that afforded to male employees in the same or similar role to hers.
She continues to suffer from conditions including a major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety.
“The applicant’s personal injuries caused by the unlawful discrimination have caused the applicant to experience symptoms and disabilities including chronic stress, disturbed sleep, insomnia, despair, weight loss, hypervigilance, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, panic attacks, inability to focus and persist with tasks, fear of leaving her home and going into the CBD, social isolation, stomach pains, vomiting, and a change in personality being easily irritated and quick to anger,” the statement of claim says.
“The unlawful discrimination and the injuries caused by the unlawful discrimination caused severe dislocation to the applicant’s life including loss of a fulfilling career that she had aspired towards and worked for since high school, as well as damage to the applicant’s personal relationships, sense of self-worth and sense of identity.”
The statement of claim does not quantify the amount of damages sought by Ritter. But it says she has suffered a loss of earning capacity and has “poor” prospects of recovering and returning to her role.
Given her average annual earnings of more than $300,000, a finding in her favour could potentially be worth $6.6m in lost earnings alone.
A spokesman for Savills Australia says the company is aware of the claim.
“Savills Australia takes its obligations as a responsible employer extremely seriously and we remain fully committed to continuing to foster a respectful and inclusive work environment for all our employees consistent with our values,” he said.
“Consistent with our established policy of not commenting on matters which are the subject of legal proceedings, as this matter is now before the court, we will not be making any further comment at this stage.”
The sexual harassment claim against Savills has quickly become the talk of the industry since The Australian broke the story on Thursday.
If Ritter’s claims are substantiated, they will be the latest example of abhorrent behaviour in the world of office leasing, where huge commissions and intense competition for clients have at times fuelled a deeply questionable culture.
Last year, Savills rival JLL was engulfed in scandal following revelations that JLL national executives allegedly took a female employee and a client to a Melbourne strip club, and sent a string of crass messages in a WhatsApp chat filled with JLL employees.
Ritter’s compensation claim against Savills will also examine how she was treated after she flagged that she would speak up about her treatment.
She claims that she first flagged to Postma’s personal assistant in February 2019 that she intended to complain to Savills’ Sydney headquarters about the conduct of her colleagues.
A month later, she says, she was called into a meeting with Postma and Brett Kauffmann – then Savills’ company director and chief operating officer in Sydney – where she says the pair told her they had issues with her performance and offered her either a redundancy or a performance management process with no payout.
She says that after the meeting, once Postma had left, Kauffmann told her, “Don’t worry about all that performance stuff, we both know that’s all rubbish”.
The decision handed down by Justice Colvin earlier in the week described how, just a fortnight after Ritter went on unpaid sick leave, Savills sent her a letter telling her it was pausing its investigation into her workplace complaints because “it would be procedurally unfair to continue the investigation without your involvement and input”.
While some of those named in Ritter’s statement of claim continue to work at Savills, others have moved on.
Postma is now a director and commercial property adviser at LPC Western Australia, and Kauffmann is managing director of Revantage Asia Pacific.
Paul GarveySenior Reporter