A security guard has won €7,500 in compensation after he told a tribunal that a manager at his job threatened him with anal rape last year.
His former employer, RFC Security Ltd, was ordered to pay the sum after being found in breach of the Employment Equality Act 1998, on foot of findings of sexual harassment against the worker, Patrick Kinsella.
The company had denied any breach.
Mr Kinsella, a security officer, was working at a Dublin shopping centre as a static guard at the time of the alleged incidents of sexual harassment between October 2024 and January 2025, the tribunal heard.
RM Block
Mr Kinsella’s evidence to the tribunal was that on 14 October 2024, a manager threatened him with “anal rape and related violence”.
The exact remark was not recorded in a tribunal decision published on Tuesday, but the adjudicator who heard the case wrote that the alleged language used was “vile” and “outrageous”.
The complainant told the tribunal that another manager subjected him to more “sexually offensive comments” on one occasion in late December that year, and that there were more sexually explicit comments used towards him on 18 January 2025 after he was called to a meeting in the control room.
Mr Kinsella said he was also “mocked and subjected to abuse” over to his difficulties expressing himself as a result of a serious dental problem. Remarks were made that the condition of his teeth was the result of “smoking a pipe or abusing drugs” he said – telling the tribunal he denied this.
His position was that he raised these on a number of occasions with his manager and brought them up again during a disciplinary meeting in February 2025.
The company told the tribunal it “fully denies” the allegations of bullying, sexual harassment and discrimination raised by Mr Kinsella against his former colleagues and told the WRC: “No unlawful treatment occurred.”
It told the commission that the first time Mr Kinsella raised the allegations formally was during a disciplinary meeting in February 2024 after he “walked off site” on 15 February 2025.
Mr Kinsella was already subject to a formal warning dating to the previous September about “workplace behaviour”, the company told the WRC. It said Mr Kinsella had been moved on from a number of sites following client complaints about his “conduct and performance”.
The new disciplinary process was put on hold pending an investigation after Mr Kinsella made serious allegations of bullying during the first meeting, the company told the commission.
“While some colleagues acknowledged that certain remarks may have been poorly judged, there was no evidence to support Mr Kinsella’s core allegations of bullying, harassment or sexually inappropriate conduct” owing to a lack of corroboration, the company submitted.
It was further submitted that Mr Kinsella had made “racially inappropriate remarks over the site radio” and used “threatening language”.
The tribunal heard the company proposed that Mr Kinsella transfer to another site at the end of February, but that the complainant ultimately resigned towards the end of March 2025.
Adjudicator Pat Brady wrote in his decision that a “simple and predictable denial” or a lack of corroboration was not enough for a company investigator to reject a complaint like Mr Kinsella’s.
He said the company inquiry was “unusual” as it had been triggered by a complaint from Mr Kinsella, but “bizarrely contained almost as many complaints against him as were made by him”.
The alleged comments of 14 October were “so outrageous that it is doubtful that any person would own up to having made them”, Mr Brady wrote – a factor he said should have been given weight by the investigator.
The alleged perpetrators had not appeared before the tribunal to testify, while Mr Kinsella had given him “detailed and credible evidence on oath”.
This gave rise to the inference that Mr Kinsella’s dignity at work was violated and that he was sexually harassed, Mr Brady wrote – placing the burden of proof on the employer, which had “failed to offer evidence to displace that burden”.
Upholding Mr Kinsella’s sexual harassment complaint, he awarded him €7,500 in compensation. He did not uphold the ageism claim.
In setting the award, Mr Brady wrote that he was taking into account the claimant’s failure to raise a complaint with his employer sooner.
