Ex-housekeeper wins Christian centre compensation claim centre

Pakistan-born single mother Sadia Raza was ridiculed and humiliated by Whirlow Grange general manager Graham Holland in front of colleagues and chided for no reason, an employment tribunal heard.

While in the staff canteen Mr Holland picked up a cheesecake dessert and said: “If I drop this plate Sadia will lick it up off the floor.”

He also criticised the 49-year-old’s making up of bedrooms and said: “Is this how they run hotels in Pakistan?”

Mr Holland, who is married with three children, also asked her while in the kitchen: “Do you fancy a ride?”

Not realising this was a double entendre, Mrs Raza asked where to, and received a sexually explicit response.

Mrs Raza told the tribunal Mr Holland was “aggressive and insulting” towards her, as if he was “speaking to an errant ten-year-old child.”

She won her claim for unfair dismissal and victimisation and partly succeeded in a harassment claim following a three-day hearing in Sheffield and has now been awarded the damages against Mr Holland and Whirlow Grange.

The incidents occurred when she worked part-time at the residential conference and spirituality centre where the Archbishops of York and Canterbury have stayed in the past.

After she got a second job as a care assistant at a Leonard Cheshire home to boost her income she was sacked after just a fortnight there because of a poor reference from Whirlow Grange management.

She then took out employment tribunal proceedings against Whirlow Grange in February 2012.

She was hauled before a disciplinary meeting and two months later sacked for gross misconduct - over allegations that she sexually harassed four men at the centre.

Management claimed she pinched the bottoms of the male employees, cuddled and flirted with them, even suggesting to one man that they go to his flat.

However none of these witnesses were produced at the Sheffield tribunal and employment judge Philip Rostant in his judgment said “the tribunal draws an inference that the allegations are not true in their substance or at any rate amount to gross exaggerations of the experience of these men with the claimant.”

All Mrs Raza’s claims of sex and race discrimination, victimisation and unfair dismissal were denied by Whirlow Grange and Mr Holland, who lives in Chesterfield.

They claimed Mrs Raza “conducted a number of acts of gross misconduct” involving sexually harassing the head chef and bar supervisor and was sacked after a “reasonable” internal investigation.

Reaching its conclusions, the tribunal decided several other claims made by Mrs Raza were “outlandish” and that she could occasionally be “irritating” towards Mr Holland.

But Mr Rostant said she had suffered “appallingly unfair treatment” during the disciplinary procedure and the panel accepted she was “upset and humiliated” by Mr Holland’s behaviour.

After winning compensation, Mrs Raza said her life had been made “hell” and added: “Mr Holland told other staff he was a born Christian but his behaviour towards me was hardly Christian-like.”

Mrs Raza, from Sheffield, had worked in a Citizen’s Advice Bureau, for a letting agent and as a cleaner before taking the job at Whirlow Grange in November 2009.

She earned just £93 a week in her job which involved cleaning, helping in the kitchen and general household duties.

Mrs Raza claimed her former “sunny disposition” was wrecked after her dismissal and blamed Mr Holland, who left Whirlow Grange in September last year, for her plight.

The tribunal award included compensation for injury to feelings, lost and future earnings, unfair dismissal and victimisation.