A property manager has won a sexual harassment case after her harassing boss bombarded her with text messages and suggested they go to his house in Turkey to do “all the fun stuff.”
Frances MacDonald was left in tears and suicidal by Dilawar Khan’s constant messages “berating” her, an employment tribunal heard.
Married Mr Khan, 47, is reported to have made “inappropriate” offers of dinner and talked about satisfying his “sexual needs”.
Mr Khan boasted of being “surrounded by women”, having a “very high IQ” and saying: “I need sex when I’m stressed”.
A court heard his ‘bullying, invasiveness and constant nagging’ became too much for Ms MacDonald and she was left crying and experiencing suicidal thoughts.
Property manager Frances MacDonald was subjected to bullying and disparaging comments by her boss, Dilawar Khan of Alpha Property Management and Services, based at this shopping centre in Thetford, Norfolk.
She was about to resign when he fired her.
However, she is now entitled to compensation after a judge ruled she had been harassed by Mr Khan, who showed a “lack of respect” and “objectified” women.
The court heard she applied for a personal assistant and property manager position at Alpha Property Management and Services, based in Thetford, Norfolk, in February 2021.
However, she was told she already had two “strong” girls, but raised the idea of training a project manager, something that would require her “passion and commitment”.
In April 2021, he messaged Ms MacDonald saying he was “surrounded by women and it’s hard sometimes” because they were in “different worlds”.
He continued, ‘Don’t get me wrong, I love beautiful women, but their way of thinking and logic is very different from men.
“I have a very high IQ so I’m going about 200 miles per hour and my personal assistants have a hard time keeping up with me *haha* so I have to slow down.”
Mr Khan arranged an interview and later texted her with positive feedback that she would “adapt well” to his “speed”.
He then offered to sponsor Ms MacDonald, who previously worked in the music industry, to write a “sexy” song and the team-building exercises her teams had been doing.
“We’ll have to go to Turkey together, I have an apartment down south by the blue lagoons and we can do all the fun stuff,” she wrote, accompanied by a sticking out tongue emoji.
Giving evidence, Ms MacDonald said the messages were sexual in nature and she felt “extremely uncomfortable” but was unsure how to respond because she wanted the job.
Ms MacDonald said she was left distraught and suicidal after being subjected to bullying by her boss.
He was offered the job in late April and in a subsequent conversation said: “I need sex when I’m stressed” and that his wife sometimes “couldn’t stand it”.
She told the panel she felt “disgusted” by the exchange of messages, but compelled to respond in a “lighthearted” manner, because she did not yet have a contract.
Ms MacDonald told the panel she did not believe the dinner suggestion was meant as a joke and that he had only said it was to divert attention from the fact that his invitation was “inappropriate”.
After further messages, he said he was “a man of action” and did not like “harassing women.”
In May 2021, Ms MacDonald signed her contract and began work, but he continued to text her in the evenings, telling her “women are so good at excuses I get bored”.
The panel heard that during her first week he sent her demanding messages outside of her contracted hours.
He was also “unhappy” that she had another part-time job teaching singing and “frequently” expressed how much he hated that his previous assistant had taken on too much outside work.
After being criticised for 30 minutes, Ms MacDonald messaged him to say his treatment had “reduced her to tears”.
The panel heard that upon receiving the message he “dropped everything” to go into the office to “train” her further, but then “reprimanded” her later that day for not checking her phone and handling last-minute bookings.
The following week he again compared her to her former personal assistant, which only got worse.
Ms MacDonald said “the bullying, invasiveness, constant nagging and belittling had increased”.
As a result, her mental health deteriorated dramatically: she couldn’t sleep, cried, suffered from migraines and had suicidal thoughts.
The panel heard she “dreaded” receiving calls from Mr Khan but knew she would be reprimanded if she did not answer the phone.
After breaking down in tears again, her family advised her to contact ACAS.
Mr Khan continued to send her messages despite her telling him she was unwell.
She checked his messages and discovered that he had fired her the night before, but was already planning to quit due to “bullying, derogatory comments and harassment.”
When she mentioned this, Mr Khan said the allegations were “baseless”, that he would file a defamation suit and that she was “messing with the wrong person”.
The court, held at Bury St Edmunds County Court in Suffolk, ruled that Khan’s messages were “abusive, threatening, intimidating and exhortative”.
The court, in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, ruled that his messages were “abusive, threatening, intimidating and exhortative”.
The tribunal panel found that Ms MacDonald had been sexually harassed when Mr Khan asked her if she had children before offering her the job.
The panel also ruled in his favor regarding allegations of sexual harassment.
They concluded: ‘We accept (Ms MacDonald’s) evidence that many of Mr Khan’s messages were unwanted, which she found humiliating and degrading, but which she felt she had to respond to quickly and in a light-hearted manner in order to persuade him to give her the job.
‘We consider that she was indeed walking a tightrope, wanting to demonstrate her energy and enthusiasm for work, whilst at the same time trying to deflect what appeared to be, amongst other things, invitations from (Mr Khan) to have dinner with him and to stay with him at his apartment in Turkey and ‘do all the fun stuff’, as well as direct references to her sexual needs.’
The panel said Khan’s messages indicated “a lack of respect for women and an objectification of them.”
He also won a wrongful termination lawsuit.
A reparation hearing will be held at a later date to decide your compensation.
