Who dissuaded Aoibhinn from reporting her harassment?
There must be consequences for those who ignored issue, says professor
A UCD professor has said there has to be accountability for those who dissuaded Dr Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin from making a formal complaint about her harasser.
Dr Ní Shúilleabháin has said she considered leaving her job due to persistent harassment from a UCD professor.
Speaking about her two-year ordeal, the Assistant Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics, admitted that she felt she was dissuaded by the university from making a formal complaint against Professor Hans-Benjamin Braun despite repeatedly reporting incidents to the university’s HR department.
She said she wished she had
‘They knew of every single incident’
been ‘encouraged’ to make a formal complaint.
She told RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne this week: ‘Every time I saw him, every time he came to my office, every time I got a phone call or an email, I sent an email to HR. They knew of every single incident that had happened.
‘I asked myself continuously why I didn’t make the formal complaint sooner. I would have liked more encouragement to make a formal complaint.
‘The policy that was there at the time […] emphasised informal mediation and that is just not appropriate in harassment.’
Professor Kathleen James-Chakraborty has now told the Mail that UCD needs to establish why Dr Ní Shúilleabháin felt she could not make a formal complaint about the harassment.
And the Art History lecturer has called for the people who persuaded victims of workplace harassment to be held accountable.
Prof James-Chakraborty decided to step down from UCD’s Gender Equality Group in October 2019 as she felt that while the college had good equality policies, they were not being implemented in a satisfactory way.
She has now called for those who discouraged reporting, to be held accountable.
She explained: ‘If you look at the timeline of the case, the college knew. I did not know, but the college principal for science should have known and the head of HR should have known. There were senior people who knew and did not do the right thing at the right time. The fact that she had to go to the gardaí to get help was indicative of the problem.’
The Gender Equality Group oversees the university’s gender equality work and assesses Athena SWAN applications from different schools.
The Athena SWAN charter encourages higher education institutions to recognise commitment to advancing the careers of women. UCD was awarded a Bronze Athena SWAN award in 2017 for a three-year period.
Prof James-Chakraborty said: ‘The Athena SWAN process requires universities to report how many cases there were and what you have done about them. One of the things that’s clear in [Dr Ní Shúilleabháin’s] case is that she was encouraged not to report.
‘What are the punishments to be handed out for anybody who discouraged reporting? [Dr Ní Shúilleabháin] has said that she was initially discouraged from making a formal complaint. What do you do when you know that the complaint is true but you haven’t got a formal complaint?
‘In UCD, I think there were probably people discouraging formal complaints.
‘The process needs to have more teeth. You have to have two sets of consequences — one for the people who are doing the harassment and one for the people who do not implement the processes that are
‘I’m hoping this case will have an impact’
supposed to address the issues. To me, that second situation is just as serious as the first.’
The professor went on to say that college faculty members should be made aware of harassment incidents and complaints made by staff members as soon as they are resolved. This, she explained, is the only way to ensure that other harassers are held to account for their actions. She argued that it will also ensure that other victims will be confident enough to come forward with their own complaints.
‘If it is not made public that the man was dropped from the faculty then the next guy over doesn’t know that if he doesn’t stop he is at risk of being in trouble,’ she said.
‘I’m hoping that this case will have an impact not only on my own institution, but across the sector in Ireland. I personally know of nothing else at any other Irish institution but I wasn’t born yesterday — I’m 60 years old, I’ve worked in academia for 30 years. The chances that nothing else has happened elsewhere over the 14 years I’ve been here is fairly low.’
The lecturer also called for independent outsiders to be involved in conflict resolution cases.
The Irish Daily Mail contacted UCD for comment.