Volunteering got complicated …..

@ItTook9Years

I appreciate Charities have a Code of Conduct. And the Equality Act doesn't cover volunteers as such, however in some cases the EA does apply. Or rather you can't just have charities behaving willy nilly, unreasonably.

I would go. Explain the situation with evidence and say you clearly can't work together so it's her or you.

If the charity are going to sanction you - then best to step down

regardless of you having evidence of their affair so it can't be denied

OW joined a charity as a volunteer and has a long ongoing affair with one of the trustees’ DH and is now trying to make life at the charity difficult for her. Turning up at an event she has no need to attend knowing full well OP can’t choose to miss it. That is a kind of low key harassment.

I don’t think the way OP handled it is ideal but nor do I think that requesting your DH’s ex mistress stays away from an event she has no choice but to attend herself given OW’s recent behaviour is unreasonable. And pulling her up before a panel to air her private life which is not the charity’s business is not even a remotely professional way to handle the situation.

I see - the OP's husband played no part in any of it? He was just led astray a wanton female?

But you are confusing the issue just as the OP (and most posters) have. What anyone does or doesn't think about people who have affairs has absolutely nothing to do with the price of tea in China. Volunteers or not, this is a profesional workplace, and the affair has nothing to do with that workplace. Not so long ago there was a thread from a woman who wanted her husband to sack an employee that he'd slept with, and she rightly got her arse handed to her on a plate. This is no different. You can judge the affair if you want (of course, we only have one side of the events anyway) but that isn't what this is about. It is about how people interact. If the OP is correct and the other person was speaking / acting inappropriately then that should have been what was dealt with, and nothing else. As it is the other woman got her version in first because the OP stupidly made inappropriate threats.

Revenge pornography is a criminal offence, and unless the OP was threatening to disclose photos of her husband and a woman having a picnic (I doubt that is the case) then she has seriously misstepped. If someone was threatening to disclose your personal and private messages and photos, would you be as sanguine about it?

@MellowTiger Why don’t you just leave the charity? I know you said the charity could collapse, but how? Maybe say you’re going to leave on April 1st, to give them a chance to get things in order.

Be brave and make the move!

Shaking my head at the replies that are oh so indignantly concerned with how the OW was treated. If she wants to be treated with fairness and respect herself, perhaps she should keep her legs closed to other women's husbands rather than eagerly and sneakily trying to help break up their homes behind their backs.

If it's the same charity she's talking about, and if she is a trustee and OW is not, then her behaviour towards OW in this context is awful. She should be removed from her role, no doubt about it.

It's unconscionable that a charity would have to close due to one trustee leaving. If that is the case, the whole board has been remiss in its duties and it probably deserves to shut down!

As an aside, what on earth is going on with all these people going to things they don't need to? OW going to a meeting she doesn't need to be at (allegedly ). In the other thread Person A trying to claim expenses for an event they didn't have the right to claim expenses for (i.e. had no need to be there!).
I wonder if either of the people in the other thread are OW??

OP has never said she wants her out merely that if she chooses to make things awkward between them to the point that other volunteers are noticing that’s not ok, that if she doesn’t stop she will be obliged to make a formal complaint.

It’s perfectly reasonable on a personal level to ask someone who has been fucking your DH for 6 years not to attend an event that you are obliged to attend if she’s going to make things difficult.

And yet you’re unable to see that OW is bringing her own personal beef into the charity’s sphere when it has zero to do with charity or indeed the OP.

It’s completely unacceptable to make things difficult for another volunteer to the point of making a meeting awkward that OP is obliged to attend due to her role but OW is not.

But it is not op place to decide who can and can't attend meetings. She clearly wants ow out but her h can continue as before.

She’s not targeting her. OW is targeting OP and making things awkward and OP is making clear she won’t tolerate it.

Why are you targeting her and tolerating him? It does sound vindictive that you are singling her out and using you relative importance to influence the operation of the charity to your advantage. You have brought issues into the workplace. Maybe time to accept you need to move on, professionally and personally,

To be honest, this charity can try and "sanction" you all they want. Good luck to them, but it's meaningless. You aren't their employee, you're a VOLUNTEER.

I can kind of see where they're coming from with regard to the OWs complaint. You should never have spoken to her, but their attempts to punish you are irrelevant.

Either way, your involvement with this charity has come to an end. And if the departure of a single volunteer could cause the entire charity to collapse, I'd argue that they're not doing much of substance anyway.

The OW brought her personal life in to the role both with her affair and with her harrassment of the op since then at charity related meetings.

If I were a trustee I would not want the moral rot of a skank like the OW or the cheating POS husband involved in the charity.

Harassment and bullying require a pattern of behaviour- in fact the only person that has engaged in anything that looks like harassment and bullying is the OW in this case based on her behaviour towards the op in meetings where other people noticed the behaviour - one conversation where you make a request and assert that if the request is not fulfilled you will sinply tell truth is not bullying or harassment.

In fact it is absolutely appropriate to raise the issue of both the affair and the OWs harassing and bullying behaviour to the charity.

I can't understand how a charity will fold if a volunteer leaves it but it has panels and disciplinary procedures.

I beg to differ, having actually run the HR for a national charity with something like 40k volunteers.

Harassment, bullying and threatening behaviour is not just physical though, and that is a substantiated fact. What so many people seem to be getting confused about is the way the OP acted. Her "issue" was the way that the other volunteer spoke to her. If, as she argues, the behaviour was inappropriate in a business setting, then she could have either:
(a) told the other volunteer that she did not appreciate being spoken to in XYZ way, giving examples, and saying that she expected this behaviour to stop, or
(b) taken the examples of inappropriate behaviour to somebody else in the organisation with appropriate authority and asked them to deal with it as a grievance.

Instead she threatened to disclose private messages and photographs which had absolutely no business being disclosed to a third party if the other woman did not adhere to her wishes. That is a threat. Just because the affair is true does not make disclosing those details and images right, and nor does it make them relevant in this matter. In fact, if the images etc portray half of what I suspect they do, them disclosing them would quite probably be a criminal offence! This is further complicated by the fact that, if she is a trustee of a charity, she is effectively in a position of authority and so her behaviour and the way she deals with this is no different in many ways to that of a manager threatening a subordinate in a workplace.

No. I stand by what I think about her. Deliberately not caring about another woman and treating her so poorly deserve harsh language. Treating your wife so poorly also deserves harsh language.

Threatening to bring the OW personal life into the role isn't just telling the truth. Regardless of how wrong her behaviour with OP's husband was, it had zero to do with the charity. I don't know how so many people on this thread are unable to see this.

As a trustee of this charity, I might even go as far as to say that OP was abusing her position trying to get another volunteer to do as she was told or be outed.

So the OP can write the letter in whichever words most accurately reflect what happened 🤷‍♀️

the fact is she’s been treated poorly by all.

by her DH who had the affair
by the OW who is being awkward/hostile/a bully (as you wish)
by the charity who don’t appear to have included her properly in their “investigation”.

shes a volunteer, life is to short - she should leave the lot if them to it.

What you did wrong was threaten to expose their conversations. You should have said please don't attend if you can't communicate professionally with me for the sake of the charity.

However, you would be far better off if you walk away from the charity and the cheating loser husband. He has no respect for you.

Have to agree - if you're from the vol sector then we've all had volunteers like @Livingtothefull 🙄

It is not wrong imo - threatening physical violence is wrong, threatening to tell the truth - well make you sperm filled bed and lie in it I say