A security guard has won \u20ac7,500 in compensation after he told a tribunal that a manager at his job threatened him with anal rape last year.<\/p>\n
His former employer, RFC Security Ltd, was ordered to pay the sum after being found in breach of the Employment Equality Act 1998, on foot of findings of sexual harassment against the worker, Patrick Kinsella.<\/p>\n
The company had denied any breach.<\/p>\n
Mr Kinsella, a security officer, was working at a Dublin shopping centre as a static guard at the time of the alleged incidents of sexual harassment between October 2024 and January 2025, the tribunal heard.<\/p>\n
Mr Kinsella\u2019s evidence to the tribunal was that on 14 October 2024, a manager threatened him with \u201canal rape and related violence\u201d.<\/p>\n
The exact remark was not recorded in a tribunal decision published on Tuesday, but the adjudicator who heard the case wrote that the alleged language used was \u201cvile\u201d and \u201coutrageous\u201d.<\/p>\n
The complainant told the tribunal that another manager subjected him to more \u201csexually offensive comments\u201d on one occasion in late December that year, and that there were more sexually explicit comments used towards him on 18 January 2025 after he was called to a meeting in the control room.<\/p>\n
Mr Kinsella said he was also \u201cmocked and subjected to abuse\u201d over to his difficulties expressing himself as a result of a serious dental problem. Remarks were made that the condition of his teeth was the result of \u201csmoking a pipe or abusing drugs\u201d he said \u2013 telling the tribunal he denied this.<\/p>\n
His position was that he raised these on a number of occasions with his manager and brought them up again during a disciplinary meeting in February 2025.<\/p>\n
The company told the tribunal it \u201cfully denies\u201d the allegations of bullying, sexual harassment and discrimination raised by Mr Kinsella against his former colleagues and told the WRC: \u201cNo unlawful treatment occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n
It told the commission that the first time Mr Kinsella raised the allegations formally was during a disciplinary meeting in February 2024 after he \u201cwalked off site\u201d on 15 February 2025.<\/p>\n
Mr Kinsella was already subject to a formal warning dating to the previous September about \u201cworkplace behaviour\u201d, the company told the WRC. It said Mr Kinsella had been moved on from a number of sites following client complaints about his \u201cconduct and performance\u201d.<\/p>\n
The new disciplinary process was put on hold pending an investigation after Mr Kinsella made serious allegations of bullying during the first meeting, the company told the commission.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile some colleagues acknowledged that certain remarks may have been poorly judged, there was no evidence to support Mr Kinsella\u2019s core allegations of bullying, harassment or sexually inappropriate conduct\u201d owing to a lack of corroboration, the company submitted.<\/p>\n
It was further submitted that Mr Kinsella had made \u201cracially inappropriate remarks over the site radio\u201d and used \u201cthreatening language\u201d.<\/p>\n
The tribunal heard the company proposed that Mr Kinsella transfer to another site at the end of February, but that the complainant ultimately resigned towards the end of March 2025.<\/p>\n
Adjudicator Pat Brady wrote in his decision that a \u201csimple and predictable denial\u201d or a lack of corroboration was not enough for a company investigator to reject a complaint like Mr Kinsella\u2019s.<\/p>\n
He said the company inquiry was \u201cunusual\u201d as it had been triggered by a complaint from Mr Kinsella, but \u201cbizarrely contained almost as many complaints against him as were made by him\u201d.<\/p>\n
The alleged comments of 14 October were \u201cso outrageous that it is doubtful that any person would own up to having made them\u201d, Mr Brady wrote \u2013 a factor he said should have been given weight by the investigator.<\/p>\n
The alleged perpetrators had not appeared before the tribunal to testify, while Mr Kinsella had given him \u201cdetailed and credible evidence on oath\u201d.<\/p>\n
This gave rise to the inference that Mr Kinsella\u2019s dignity at work was violated and that he was sexually harassed, Mr Brady wrote \u2013 placing the burden of proof on the employer, which had \u201cfailed to offer evidence to displace that burden\u201d. <\/p>\n
Upholding Mr Kinsella\u2019s sexual harassment complaint, he awarded him \u20ac7,500 in compensation. He did not uphold the ageism claim.<\/p>\n
In setting the award, Mr Brady wrote that he was taking into account the claimant\u2019s failure to raise a complaint with his employer sooner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A security guard has won \u20ac7,500 in compensation after he told a tribunal that a manager at his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-82329","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-workplace-relations-commission"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}