A former college lecturer is seeking nearly half a million pounds after winning a disability discrimination tribunal case which ruled she was harassed by colleagues and suffered false racism claims.
A judgment published last week sided with Dr Sharon Turton, who was a psychology teacher at MidKent College before taking voluntary redundancy in 2022.
The tribunal agreed that counts of harassment related to disability and direct disability discrimination were well founded, as well as her complaint of a failure to make reasonable adjustments for her disability.
Turton’s legal representative told FE Week £450,000 in compensation will be sought at a remedy hearing later this year.
John Horan, an anti-discrimination lawyer representing Turton, said the ruling was an “extraordinary result”.
He added: “After all the discrimination had gone on, the only way out for her was to take voluntary redundancy.”
‘False racist remarks’ led to investigation
Turton was a specialist psychology lecturer at the college from August 2014 until August 2022.
The report noted she has Asperger’s syndrome, severe complex post-traumatic stress disorder and ADHD, which she was open about with her students and staff.
Her complaint of disability discrimination began in September 2021, when she experienced a number of “difficult social interactions” with a new lecturer hired to cope with rising student numbers.
In early 2022, the lecturer made several critical references about Turton to students and mocked her disabilities by tapping her head to indicate that she had “mental problems”, causing students themselves to report the incident to the college’s curriculum manager.
Meanwhile, a formal investigation was launched into Turton after a student complained they were told by the same lecturer that Turton deleted her work and disliked them “because of your family background and that all Gypsies should not be allowed to have an education”.
The judge concluded Turton’s colleague spread “fabricated” information of “false racist remarks” which led to rumours and the investigation into Turton.
“It was an attack on Turton’s reputation and could, and indeed did, turn students against her,” the tribunal concluded.
Soon after, Turton was signed off work with “stress-related illness”.
She returned to work in March 2022, working mostly from home, which she had requested to avoid the lecturer and another colleague she did not get on with.
When Turton was working in the Medway campus, she encountered the two teachers in the staffroom, who shouted at her to “force her” to communicate. Witnesses said this was “very confrontational”.
“We considered that the actions were done to humiliate Turton,” the court ruled. It found this encounter amounted to harassment related to disability.
Turton later took sick leave after being diagnosed with a heart condition.
‘No option but to take redundancy’
Before the end of the academic year, Turton and the two other lecturers were informed they were at risk of redundancy “due to a reduction in student numbers”, which Turton disputed.
She was invited to a redundancy selection interview whilst she was signed off sick. HR offered to delay the interview and conduct the meeting online or accept answers via email if she was not well enough to attend.
Instead, Turton accepted voluntary redundancy due to her health.
She told the HR department: “This whole year has been utterly traumatising for me and I can no longer cope with everything work-related. I will be taking early retirement from teaching because of it.”
The judge heard in evidence that she was “having a breakdown” and could not go through the redundancy selection process at all.
“She felt that she had no option but to take redundancy saying she believed if she stayed she would have died,” the report said.
The tribunal found “considerable evidence” that decision makers considered Turton to be difficult and internal HR emails suggest that they may have seen redundancy as an “opportunity” to dismiss her.
Simon Cook, principal and chief executive of MidKent College, said the college takes the findings “extremely seriously”.
He added: “Throughout this time, the college has continued to learn and grow, strengthening its policies and practices to foster a more inclusive workplace.
“We are reviewing our internal processes to ensure that all concerns raised by staff are appropriately addressed and that our commitments to equality, diversity and inclusion are upheld in all aspects of college life.”
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