I was put on security blacklist after protesting about sex pest, says spy
A secret agent wept today as she told how she was "blacklisted" and had a security clearance downgraded after complaining she was being pestered by her married boss.
The woman, known only as Miss D, is claiming sexual harassment against her boss, Mr F, and a government in-telligence agency. A London employment tribunal heard how she went on sick leave after making a complaint about Mr F in January last year.
Her GP said she was fit to return in April. But Miss D said that when she finally returned, in August, her security clearance had been downgraded. Bursting into tears, she cried: "I was blacklisted meaning I could never do sensitive posts again. There was not much of a career left for me after the events." When Adam Tolley, representing her boss and employer, suggested "none of Mr F's conduct towards you was in any way unwanted by you," she replied: "Why would I be here if that was the case?"
He continued: "None of it had any unpleasant effect on you at the time." Miss D, giving evidence from behind a screen, sobbed: "Yes it did." Mr Tolley suggested she had "founded the allegations as a way to try to explain your performance". She replied: "I've always had good performance."
Speaking of her boss, Miss D said: "He didn't give me the creeps but he does now." She "had a feeling he liked me" when she first started working for him, but believed the harassment began when he asked her to call him in the evening as he was on his own that night: "I thought, why would I be phoning a manager outside work?"
Asked by tribunal panel member David Carter why she had not reported the harassment earlier, Miss D cried and said: "I didn't know much about harassment... I didn't know it was gross misconduct. He said he would wipe the floor with me."
She said she went to the agency's employee assistance department but it was "useless. When he started turning on me it was harder... he was still sexually harassing me at the same time as gunning for me." Mr F and the intelligence agency deny sexual harassment. The hearing continues
