BY NIKKI ADEBIYI, FOUNDER @ BOUNCE BLACK
Content warning: distressing topics, suicide
The topic of workplace bullying and employee wellbeing has been front and center on social media in the past few weeks following the death of Dr. Antoinette Candia-Bailey, who ended her own life because of workplace bullying.
Since then, not a day has gone by without me seeing her name or face on my LinkedIn feed as many people have come forward with their own stories of workplace trauma, myself included. As important discussion and heartfelt advocacy continues, attention is shifting now to the investigators who are assigned to workplace bullying allegations.
In this second part to what has inadvertently become a series of articles on workplace bullying, with reference to my own story, I will reflect on the ways investigators and institutions fail workplace bullying victims and survivors. In doing so, I hope to shed light on the necessity and urgency of purging out corrupt leadership and performative procedures that have zero regard for the vulnerable people involved.
Investigations and institutional betrayal
In an ABC News article, cited portions of a letter from Lincoln University, where Dr. Candia-Bailey worked, about an investigation into her complaints reveal that the investigator did not uphold her allegations.
To the unaffected person for whom standard procedure suffices, such an outcome may be accepted at face value. Investigators heard her out, looked into whether the things she claimed happened did in fact happen, and concluded that they didn’t. Case closed, right? Wrong.
There are times when people are genuinely unfairly accused of bullying. This is something many assertive Black women deal with, which is not to say that Black women can never be bullies – they can. However, in many if not most cases, genuine bullying victims may find themselves up against institutions with toxicity so entrenched that they use deceit, manipulation and coverups to ensure investigation outcomes protect rather than penalise them.
As a result, victims of workplace bullying who report their experiences can unfortunately find themselves doubly wounded by the initial bullying acts and the compounding trauma of institutional betrayal. This is my story and it is the story of many others, regardless of race, nationality, age, seniority and gender.
In Dr. Candia-Bailey’s case, she made complaints about and to her boss John Moseley, then President of Lincoln University, concerning bullying, harassment and being treated differently to her White colleagues. In one letter to Moseley, she wrote:
“I couldn’t even finish the meeting because you didn’t hear me. I left in tears. You intentionally harassed and bullied me and got satisfaction from sitting back to determine how you would ensure I failed as an employee and proud alumna.”
ABC News
Elsewhere, Candia-Bailey complained about being made fun of by Moseley, who she also said had disclosed confidential information about her mental health to others. The investigator concluded this didn’t happen. Further, a letter from the University states:
“The investigator determined that you have taken no responsibility for the poor work you have done since your arrival at the University, and have set yourself against Dr. Moseley, believing he is the problem and that it is his responsibility to provide you with actionable items to make you feel better in your position as Vice President of Student Affairs, Dean of Students.”
ABC News
Without access to the full investigation report and the methodology, as well as Candia-Bailey’s own assessment of the outcome, it’s difficult to identify exactly what went wrong, how, where and why.
However, anyone who has experienced workplace bullying and abuse in the absence of witnesses will shudder as they read those words as they remind us of the investigations which were inadequate at best and a sham at worst. Whether due to bias, inexperience, collusion or just plain incompetence, investigators who vindicate perpetrators and vilify victims do incalculable damage.
Some of us live to tell the tale, while others, like Dr. Candia-Bailey, sadly do not.
My sham investigation experience
In my previous post about my experience of workplace bullying, I described some of the demeaning behaviour I was subjected to by my former boss, a White female senior in-house lawyer (let’s call her ‘Janet’) who headed up a team in which I was the only Black employee. I was shouted at, spoken down to in tone and content of speech, gaslit, sabotaged and set up to fail by Janet.
I also mentioned that, for the first time in my career, I reported these experiences to HR, after which things went from bad to worse. I knew it would when it was brought to my attention by a former employee that the person I reported my complaints to is friends with my former boss, and that my former boss had shouted at this employee in front of this same HR leader without consequence. I knew then that this couldn’t end well for me.
HR instructed an external lawyer to carry out the investigation into my complaint of bullying, harassment and discrimination (race and disability). However, knowing that my line manager (whom we’ll call ‘Delaney’) was informed of my complaint against her manager, Janet, it didn’t sit well with me that there was no transparency about how that investigator had been selected, even when I asked. Additionally, the investigator they appointed has a day job of defending employers, leaving me with little confidence in the impartiality of the investigation.
Nevertheless, I went ahead and presented the 11-page document I had prepared with details of incidents, dates, times and locations. I also submitted as much contemporaneous evidence as possible, including notes on my phone and diary entries. I also mentioned key colleagues who could corroborate my statements.
And yet… the investigator’s conclusion was that there was no evidence to support my complaints.
Unsurprisingly, key antagonistic emails sent by Janet were missing and therefore probably not included in the investigation. I’m almost certain the coverup began as soon as I made the report to HR as I recall the email filing system suddenly was declared to be “temporarily down”. Furthermore, not one of the people I named who could corroborate my statements were interviewed. And sure enough, when they finally agreed to release the investigation report to me, I was simultaneously in disbelief and unsurprised when I read it.
Janet had outright lied about, downplayed or misrepresented events. Things she definitely said, she conveniently couldn’t remember or omitted key details about. Betrayal doesn’t do justice to describe what I felt as I read that Delaney, the line manager I had previously respected, sided with Janet despite having told me in a private meeting that I had done the right thing by reporting Janet to HR.
The investigator also failed to address several issues I brought up. Not once was my complaint about Janet saying that I was “on thin ice” addressed. There was also a hyper focus on the race element, almost to the exclusion of the discriminatory remarks and behaviour that related to my neurodivergence. Instead, she ruled, Janet’s behaviour was “appropriate workplace supervision” and that her approach was simply “direct”. As if I’m not from Nigeria, where direct is the only language we know! There is direct and there is rude. Janet was rude.
What was most evident to me was that CCTV was not reviewed as part of the investigation because everything that I said took place in the final straw meeting with Janet would have been easily observed. I know there was a camera just above the door outside the room with transparent glass because I had checked.
Anyone who had reviewed the footage would have seen the manifest hostility in her posture and facial expressions. Scowling, shouting, demanding, accosting, berating, leaning over the table tauntingly and taking notes aggressively as if she were trying to catch me out. And me? I was a deer in headlights, as anxious but composed as ever. I remained calm and professional even when I decided to continue speaking despite Janet’s constant interruptions, at which point she brought up my “attitude” before attempting to save face when I asked her what she meant. What the investigator, a woman of colour, described as a ‘quizzical’ facial expression when I re-enacted the moment is what Janet described as “angry”.
By far the greater disappointment with the investigator came from the conclusion that it is unlikely that Janet shouted at me due to her seniority and experience in employment law. By that logic, those who know employment law well can never do wrong. Yet in reality, they can and do, and it is precisely because they ought to know better that their behaviour is shocking.
Investigation integrity depends on individual integrity
Janet saw my capabilities as a threat. And she did so from the very day that I met her. That’s the only conclusion I can make from the fact that she gasped when I excitedly told her that my first legal work experience involved shadowing a high profile discrimination case.
Janet saw my character as a threat. That’s the only conclusion I can make from the fact that she was visibly uncomfortable and self-conscious while staring at me and my notepad during the first training she gave myself and the other juniors in our team, who did not bring any note-taking materials.
Janet saw my conscience as a threat. That’s the only conclusion I can make when, in case review meetings, she would hesitate while looking at me before going on to ask a colleague what it would take to make a disgruntled employee go away. And yes, I heard discriminatory reasons put forward to justify the termination of employees, in response to which Janet would simply say, “we can’t say that.”
She didn’t want me around, as was made clear in her expression of relief when she interrogated me about who I was meeting with to discuss obtaining a solicitor training contract at the company, going as far as emphasising that there’s no room in her team. She probably also didn’t like that I networked with anyone and everyone, including leaders equal to or more senior than her. Regardless, Janet craftily manipulated people and processes to push me out, and the investigator added a stamp of approval to her abuse.
As I’ve said in a previous article, an investigation’s credibility only goes as far as the credibility of the individuals involved, namely that of the investigator, the accused and the complainant. Janet lied through and through, even more so when I filed a discrimination and harassment claim, in which 99% of what actually happened was denied, including things for which I have documented proof. That’s the problem when you spin a web of lies. Eventually, you get tangled in them.
Of course, I appealed the outcome of the investigation by pointing out its procedural and substantive flaws. Of course, I did so to no avail. I was simply met with a pat response about how they’d take on the feedback to ensure senior leaders are mindful of how they manage the performance of juniors who are new to the workplace…. And that’s nice, but I wasn’t new to the workplace. As a career changer, I was the oldest and most experienced of all the juniors in my cohort. Indeed, one of the other legal interns acknowledged verbatim that I worked the hardest among them. Because Lord knows I did. That’s not ego, that’s a fact. I fought hard to get the opportunity and fought harder to try to keep it. And still ended up being treated unbelievably unfairly!
I’ve been a juror, so I have an idea of the challenge an investigator faces when two parties tell different stories and you have to decide who is more likely to be telling the truth. Nevertheless, there were numerous flaws in this investigation and appeal process, the details of which I can rebut line by line.
Justice and the law: never the twain shall meet
One of my legal advisers managed my expectations early on. He told me that justice and the law are two separate things which rarely ever meet. I came to learn this the hard way in my experience at the company and since I left.
Before I even set foot in the venue for the investigation, retaliation was already well under way. A man crouching suspiciously at the bottom of a staircase photographed myself and the friend who accompanied me as we tried to find the entrance to the building. That was the first of countless and ongoing harassing photography incidents.
My institutional betrayal continues as my former boss grows increasingly emboldened by the legitimisation of her abuse of power by the investigator. That the investigator is a non-Black woman of colour is very much a deliberate optical decision which makes no difference to me since some of the people who participated in the retaliation are people of colour and sit on diversity committees. As the saying goes, it be ya own people!
Since I left the company, indeed since my previous post, I have been subject to covert harassment in the form of cyberattacks, stalking and surveillance. My personal phone, email, calendar and social media accounts have been hacked at one point or another. I have no privacy as my former boss desperately tries to hush me, or dig for dirt to discredit me.
As I reflect on my experiences, I remember the words of Janet’s line manager, another executive. During a lunch and learn meeting with several others in the room, he looked at me as he said “it matters how you leave because people talk”. I remember also my excitement to meet a C-suite executive, also a friend of Janet’s, was snuffed after he cut me off while I was explaining my background and career changing journey, despite letting my White and Arab counterparts speak freely and before me.
And those are the experiences that capture my ultimate feeling about my time at this company. Disregarded, silenced and simultaneously invisible and hyper-visible.
All it took was one person to turn the job of my dreams into my worst nightmare. Although I fought my case as far as I could and received a settlement, no amount of money can ever repair the damage done.
I wasn’t just up against a large multinational company, I was up against a system. One in which when it’s their word against ours, Black women can raise our metaphorical voices twice as loud to be rightfully heard, and yet still have our testimony be deemed as less than half that of White women.
Worse still, sometimes people of colour hold the knives that cut the portions.
Other related content:
- Blog: That Could Have Been Me: Surviving workplace bullying and victimisation
- Blog: This Can Happen Global 2023 – Part two: Conversations about workplace wellbeing
- Blog: Diversity, inclusion and mental wellbeing at work
- Blog: What the Workplace Bullying Bill could mean for Black professionals
- Resources: Links to other support
Bounce Black 
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