Advice Required Very Sensitive Situation

beyer78

No the allegations are completely untrue.
Has malmonroe says if it had happened then it would have been reported to the police for certain. The former employer is a higher education institution after all.
Surely the person who has made these horrible allegations about my FM would be in very serious trouble and not just for defamation?.
There was a article in the Daily mail about a man who spread rumours and posted letters to other neighbors and contacted a neighbour's workplace accusing them of something similar to which my FM has been called.
The man responsible was given a 3 year custodial sentence and stands to lose his property by way of issuing compensation to the man he accused.
The person who has done this to my FM certainly deserves it in my eyes.

General_Grant

Your FM must get proof.

Manxman_in_exile

So this was a university!?

Your relative needs to gather his evidence and seek legal advice.  Your relative apparently already "knows" what is being said or written about him so he just needs to get this evidence in order (and some sort of statement from one of the organisations this has been told to).  Is he in a union if he worked at a university - I hope so.

As I said in my earlier post, I think these sort of allegations are so serious and repugnant that I would say they go beyond being a purely civil matter and are bordering on being criminal.  If I discovered that a former employer was spreading such malicious false allegations about me, I'd be reporting it to the police.  Those are the sort of malicious rumours that can result in violence and breaches of the peace.  Your relative (or his solicitor) might want to point this out to the former employer.

Having said that, I'm still really confused.  Apart from the fact that I find it very hard to believe that anybody in their right mind in a university HR department would be stupid enough to do this, I don't understand how your relative came to learn about it?  Another organisation (presumably a university?) contacted the former employer to get your relative's phone number so they could contact him to tell him what the former employer was saying about him?  It just seems highly unlikely and improbable.  Didn't the other organisation think to either (1) confirm with the former employer that the allegations were true, or (2) report it to the police? 

Are you absolutely certain your relative isn't winding you up?  If he isn't, (1) get legal advice and (2) report the malicious allegations to the police.

(NB - I would expect the police to at least investigate allegations that somebody has been downloading this sort of material.  That might be enough to get the person spreading these false rumours to reconsider.  A stiff letter from a solicitor should get some recompense and an apology from the university.  I'm certain they'd do pretty much anything to avoid it being known publically that one of their employees was spreading such rumours)

JamoLew

Just playing devil's advocate -- Of course the FM will deny it (even if they were guilty)

I don't know that the OP can be 100% certain there is zero truth or substance behind this

Not suggesting for 1 second there is and I agree with other posters that false accusations like this imo are almost as bad as the crime itself (potentially more damaging to the "accused")

Manxman_in_exile

JamoLew said:

Just playing devil's advocate -- Of course the FM will deny it (even if they were guilty)

I don't know that the OP can be 100% certain there is zero truth or substance behind this

Not suggesting for 1 second there is and I agree with other posters that false accusations like this imo are almost as bad as the crime itself (potentially more damaging to the "accused")

True.  But if these allegations had any element of truth in them, the last thing you'd expect would be for the relative to be spreading them further themselves, don't you think?

However, the whole thing sounds so improbable that I do wonder if the OP is being wound up or if their relative has manufactured an unlikely story to conceal something else.

Assuming the story is true though, I would take it extremely seriously, seeking legal advice and reporting the malicious allegations to the police.

(I still don't really understand how the relative found out?  Going to them and saying "Your ex-employer has told me what you've been doing.  Is it true?" doesn't sound like the actions of a responsible organisation to me.)

eamon

Assuming that there is a little truth to all this then it sounds like a "B" movie "you'll never work in this town again" scenario. Lots of industries can be incestuous and the various HR depts can & do talk to each other. Again if the story is true then as others have said go legal and for that evidence is needed. Get digging.

Savvy_Sue

Savvy_Sue said:

Is your family member working elsewhere now? Or still job-hunting? 

You say they were dismissed some time ago - how long? Did they appeal the dismissal? 

It might help people understand what has happened and what remedies might be available if the OP answered these questions. 

tooldle

I work in a University. The situation as describes sounds improbable to me. We have in the recent past had two high profile sackings. Universities do not sack staff on a whim. There is a process, it is very long and drawn out. There are various layers of scrutiny including confirming a decision to dismiss. If your family member was sacked they will have paperwork setting out the reasons for their dismissal. Have you seen this?

Diamandis

Are you sure it's actually his previous employer doing this and not just someone with a grude pretending to be them?

beyer78

Firstly why on earth would someone pretend to be the HR person to get them into trouble?.
The IP address on the emails would be traced back to the sender.
My relative has had advice from a solicitor.
That advice was if my relative had done what these horrible allegations say then the university would have had a legal as well as moral duty to immediately report it to law enforcement.
One of the companies that received a email from this HR person told my relative that they sent a reply and a copy of the email that they received to the HR person so that  will be on the universities sender's.
Solicitor says my relative must report this to the police. It is very serious harassment.
When my relative telephoned the university earlier today they were told the HR person took retirement 6 weeks ago.
These emails go back one year so my relative was told by one of the companies who received 3 on different occasions.