The complicated love life of Mr X

A prison guard who posted intimate sexual details about one of his workmates on Facebook was rightly fired, the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) has found.

The decision released this week traversed the complicated love life of a guard who can be known only as Mr X due to suppression orders.

In an application to the ERA, heard in Dunedin in March, Mr X asked for his job back and compensation for lost wages.

He had been fired in July 2015 after complaints about his behaviour by a fellow prison guard who can be referred to only as Ms Z.

The guards began an affair while Mr X was living with another prison guard, Ms Y, who returned home one day in 2013 to find Mr X and Ms Z in bed together.

Mr X moved out of the home he shared with Ms Y and pursued the ‘‘highly sexual’’ relationship with Ms Z.

By October 2014, Ms Z wanted to end the relationship, which distressed Mr X who felt he had ‘‘walked away from everything in his life’’ – including his children, family and close friends – for Ms Z.

In November he sent her unsolicited emails suggesting he would disclose elements of their relationship – including their bondage and discipline sexual practices and her genital herpes – to their workplace, which is also suppressed.

The emails continued after Mr X became a voluntary psychiatric patient and after his release he posted intimate details on Facebook about Ms Z and also posted about Ms Y.

The post was initially seen only by Mr X’s Facebook friends, some of whom were fellow prison guards, but a screenshot of the post was more widely shared.

After making the post, Mr X admitted himself to a psychiatric unit, but left and tried to take his own life.

In December 2014, Ms Z made a formal complaint to the Department of Corrections alleging Mr X had ‘‘bullied, emotionally blackmailed, harassed, stalked and verbally threatened’’ her.

Corrections began an employment investigation in January 2015 after Mr X had returned to live with Ms Y. A month later Mr X was ready to return to work, but was suspended.

The investigations found Ms Z’s complaint well founded and also said the issue of a trespass order, a police safety order and a harassment order against Mr X was likely to put Corrections in a bad light.

After Mr X was told he would be sacked, he and his advisers raised with Corrections three other cases where they said prison guards had been treated more leniently.

One was a guard who had bullied a female staffer after a relationship breakdown, but had been allowed to go on an international secondment and had not been suspended.

Another case was a guard who assaulted his partner, also a staff member, who retained his job.

The third case involved a senior male guard who had acted inappropriately towards a female colleague, who had complained. Mr X’s advisers said it was ‘‘common knowledge’’ there was no investigation and the guard was given only a ‘‘slap on the wrist’’.

Corrections responded that the ‘‘employment landscape’’ had changed since these cases, prompted by guard Edward Livingstone who murdered his two children and killed himself in front of his former wife in Dunedin on January 15, 2014.

ERA member David Appleton found Mr X’s behaviour had the potential to bring Corrections into disrepute and was sufficient to cause loss of trust and confidence in him.

While it was true Mr X was diagnosed as suffering from acute adjustment disorder after the failure of his relationship with Ms Z, Corrections was entitled to conclude his illness did not excuse or justify his conduct.

Appleton said Mr X had not been unfairly treated when other cases were taken into account.