"Darlington Nurses" vs County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust Tribunal Thread 6

[ThreeWordHarpy]

Thread 1, 7-Oct to 23-Oct; pre-hearing discussion, KD (day 1 of evidence) and BH (day 2).
Thread 2, 23-Oct to 28-Oct; BH (day 2), CH, JP, MG (day 3&4), TH, SS, ST, LL (day 4), JS, AT (day 5)
Thread 3, 28-Oct to 29-Oct; AT (day 5&6), TA (day 6&7)
Thread 4, 29-Oct to 31-Oct; TA, AM (day 7) JB (day 8)
Thread 5, 31-Oct to 04-Nov; JB (day 8), SW, CG, JR (day 9)

Five nurses working at Darlington Memorial Hospital have filed a legal case suing their employer, an NHS trust, for sexual harassment and sex discrimination. The nurses object to sharing the women’s changing facilities with a male colleague, Rose, who identifies as female. The hearing started on October 20th, with evidence starting on October 22nd and is scheduled to last 3 weeks. To view the hearing online requests for access had to be made by October 17th. The hearing is being live tweeted by Tribunal Tweets who have background to this case on their substack. An alternative to X is to use Nitter: nitter.net/tribunaltweets or nitter.poast.org/tribunaltweets

The Judge made clear at the start of the public hearing on Day 1 that only TT or press have permission to tweet. If online observers see/hear something in the court that isn’t reported by TT, we don’t mention it until the next time there’s a break. This is a very cautious approach to avoid any accusations of “live reporting” on MN. Commentary on the content of TT tweets is fine as soon as they’re posted on X.

Key people:
C/Ns - Claimants, the Darlington nurses
R/T/Trust - Respondent, County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust
J/EJ – Judge/Employment Judge Seamus Sweeney
NF - Niazi Fetto KC, barrister for claimants
SC - Simon Cheetham, KC, barrister for respondents
RH - Rose Henderson, trans identifying nurse
CG – Clare Gregory, NHS ward manager
SW - Sue Williams, NHS Trust HR
KD – Karen Danson, first claimant to give evidence.
BH – Bethany Hutchison, claimant
AH – Alistair Hutchison, husband of Bethany
CH – Carly Hoy, claimant
JP – Jane Peveller, claimant
MG – Mary Anne (aka Annice) Grundy, claimant
TH – Tracy Hooper, claimant
SS – Siobhan Sinclair, witness for the claimants, retired from Trust
ST – Sharron Trevarrow, witness for the claimants, retired from Trust, former housekeeper and wellbeing officer
LL – Lisa Lockey, claimant
JP – Professor Jo Phoenix, expert witness
JS – Jane Shields, witness for the claimants
AT - Andrew Thacker, NHS trust Head of HR
TA – Tracy Atkinson, NHS trust HR.
AM – Andrew Moore, NHS Head of Workforce Experience
JB – Jillian Bailey, NHS Workforce Experience Manager
AT – Anna Telfer, NHS Deputy Director of Nursing
SW – Sandra Watson, Matron for General and Elective Surgery
JR – Jodie Robinson, manager of Rose

That's his defence, everyone's a big old lying liar?!

More thoughts on Rose and his testimony ( to be posted at next break):

• Still a smug prick

• Not sure why he thinks emphasising that he intended to try for a baby “later in life” is somehow a reassuring thing; all he’s doing is emphasising that he has no plans to have so-called ‘bottom surgery’

• Liar, liar pants on fire answer about the scrubs

• Sophie gets changed quicker than the bloke who is in the habit of putting his clothes back on before he goes back to the get a different set of scrubs if the original ones he picked were damaged. Yes sure thing 🙄

• don’t remember the incident “in particular”. I don’t believe him.

• lots of staff got changed in the cubicles …. But he didn’t?

• oh but occasionally he did in fact get changed in a cubicle, or in a corner or always facing his locker ….bollocks.

• false allegation, false allegation, false allegation

• ooh good view of a bald spot

• ooooh getting a bit tetchy now

• is everyone calling him Rose? Rather than Mrs Henderson?

His demeanour was much less delicate flower and more pissed off man vibes by the end of that.

And also, who thinks well I can't possibly wear these scrubs with an ink mark on them, I'll just have to walk my holey pants back and forth over to the scrubs cupboard until I find a pair that meets my impeccable standards!

How many women has he accused of lying now? JFC, this is pissing me off.

TT

NF: No more Qs
J: thank you Mr Fetto. Need to check re Qs from us - we will take a short break, 10 minutes or so. You're still in evidence, can't discuss case meanwhile.

[BREAK]

Yes, it unfortunately starts young, I was eleven and in the back of my Dad's taxi when a man pulled down the window and started making sexual comments. I have never seen my dad so angry.

Totally.

Except the bit about the holey boxers - they are telling the truth about that but lying about everything else.😏

Not convincing

At least they have finally been heard.

Standard fare for a cross-examination, isn't it?

1 get the witness to state confidently they are 100% sure about everything in their statement
2 pick at the weak bits ("is it possible you were mistaken about this bit...") - clearly anyone who denies even the possibility of making a small error is unreasonable and therefore not credible
3 use the reasonable witness's reasonable agreement with the mere possibility of an error to make it look like they were lying about being 100% sure about their statement
4 ...and therefore having lied about that, everything else they say is therefore in doubt and not to be believed.

A good barrister can make you admit you lied about your own name and date of birth at the end of a session.

But remember Judges are barristers, and have been playing this game for their entire professional lives. They know how it works.

No matter what the truth is on either side, this shows that turning women's changing rooms into mixed sexed spaces and then pretending they're still single-sex is a terrible idea. Any employer enabling it is asking to create a bad working environment and a horrible mess that could end up in litigation.

It’s the “not all snakes” argument. Not all snakes are dangerous, but we don’t know which are so we don’t pick them up.

A male narcissist is only thinking about his own needs and responses and is completely oblivious as to what a woman may be thinking and feeling.

To them a woman is only ever seen through the prism of the male gaze and male desires. In a similar vein, the reference up-thread to the idea of changing rooms being split on sexual preference rather than sex (e.g. straight women/gay men in one room, gay women/straight men in the other) shows that for these men, everything is about men's sexual desire and attraction for women, and never about the women themselves.

If RH, by his own say-so, doesn't know or recognise by face any of the women that complained about all these very specific situations, how can he deny all of those situations with any certainty?

He also tries to have it both ways saying things/situations didn't happen but also that they happened, just differently.

I'm not watching but I did get that impression, that he was getting arsey.

Sophie gets changed quicker than the bloke who is in the habit of putting his clothes back on before he goes back to the get a different set of scrubs if the original ones he picked were damaged. Yes sure thing

I don't get this? He picks up some scrubs as he walks in, gets changed into them, doesn't like them for some reason, gets changed back into civies, and goes to get more scrubs?

Why won't you just wear the inconvenient scrubs to walk back to get fresh ones?

My video feed has frozen so I can only go on what I hear not what anyone looks like, but I'm hearing an awful lot of "don't know" and "that didn't happen".

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt...

Clearly. But when you lie and lie and lie this is the conundrum that you find yourself in.

After every single 'that's a false allegation' he took a big swig of water. The jug is now empty.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1985704039904846115.html

Is that...an emotional support dog?

Very good point!