In June 2022, I had reached a point I never imagined possible.
Catholic Church Insurance had asked me to complete a medical authority so they could contact my treating doctor. I completed the form, but after everything that had happened over the previous two years, I found myself asking a question that should never have needed to be asked.
Why was I, the injured worker, expected to sign declarations of honesty and cooperation, while there was no equivalent requirement for the employer or insurer?
I wrote:
“I need to ask, given my experience in the last couple of years. Why isn’t a similar agreement signed by employer and insurer representatives, especially the checkboxes also agreeing that these entities will not provide false, misleading or fraudulent information.”
It was a remarkable position to be in.
I wasn’t refusing to cooperate.
I had signed the authority.
I had limited my consent to information relating to my work injury because trust had already been damaged. Then I simply asked for the same commitment from those administering the scheme.
I continued:
“I need the same verification given my experience, including insurer and employer failing to cooperate, communicate and collaborate to implement the legally binding injury management plan we had agreed on.”
The Injury Management Plan already existed. It had been agreed. Yet the very organisations responsible for implementing it had failed to do so, while I continued trying to engage with them and the system in good faith.
I reminded CCI that I had done everything reasonably expected of an injured worker.
“I have all the records compiled of my repeated attempts and that I, the injured employee, took all reasonable steps to mitigate damages…”
Then I added something that still resonates with me today:
“Had CCI done so previously, the damages would’ve been contained.”
Those words reflected years of escalating harm that could have been prevented if the statutory obligations designed to protect injured workers had simply been followed.
I finished that email with cautious optimism:
“I expect the insurer to comply with worker’s compensation regulations this time. Contacting my treating doctor … is a positive start.”
I wanted to believe CCI would finally do the right thing and comply.
But later that same day, after receiving only a brief acknowledgement — “Thank you for completing the form Vicki.” — I found myself writing again.
I asked for something very simple:
“Can I please have the same written verification that CCI are going to comply with worker’s compensation regulations and also not provide false and fraudulent information as I agree. I expect support to return to my job at ACU as per injury management plan.”
Think about that for a moment.
An injured worker was asking an insurer to confirm, in writing, that it would comply with the law.
Compliance.
Honesty.
Just the same standard expected of me.
As the evening went on, my frustration became impossible to hide.
Believing the regulator was not investigating my complaint, I wrote that I had referred my evidence elsewhere and that public scrutiny would eventually expose what had occurred. I again asked for the verification I had requested.
Yet despite all of the legal arguments, the regulatory failures and the growing paper trail, my final email that evening returned to the human reality behind the case.
I wrote:
“I just want to get back to my job of twenty years. I need the bullying by mobbing that’s still happening … to stop. Worker’s compensation and its benefits are meant to help you recover in your job. Not take everything you worked for and earned away. I need a voice in my own recovery.”
That is what this was always about.
Not litigation.
Not paperwork.
Not endless correspondence.
I simply wanted to recover, return safely to the career I had built over twenty years, and have a genuine voice in decisions affecting my own health and future.
Instead, I found myself asking one of the most extraordinary questions imaginable:
If I am required to promise honesty, why aren’t the institutions entrusted with protecting injured workers required to do the same?
Before ending that day, I forwarded the correspondence to my Nominated Treating Doctor.
For the first time in a long time, I genuinely believed the workers compensation system might finally begin operating as it was intended.
I wrote:
“I look forward to finally recovering back in my job as per injury management plan agreement.”
Then I explained what had gone so wrong over the previous two years:
“The reason it wasn’t was because you as my NTD, … my allied health professional and me, the injured employee, were completely left out of the compliance and key stakeholder equation.”
That sentence still stops me.
Most people assume that an injured worker’s recovery is led by the treating doctor, the treating psychologist or allied health professionals, and the worker themselves. That is certainly what I believed. Yet my experience was that the very people responsible for supporting my recovery had been sidelined, while decisions continued to be made without meaningful collaboration with the treating team.
I asked my GP for one thing:
“Please support me to hold CCI accountable to get me recovering in my job as Senior Library Coordinator HEW 8 Step 4 at ACU Strathfield campus library. It’s time the law is enforced on insurer and employer.”
That email communicates what this journey has always been about.
Not compensation.
Not litigation.
Not endless disputes.
Recovery.
Returning to the university community I had served since 2001.
Returning to my role.
Returning to the life I had worked so hard to build.
That was all I ever wanted.
What happened next has never made sense to me.
After years of my Nominated Treating Doctor being excluded from coordinating my recovery, there was finally movement towards the statutory process actually occurring. I genuinely believed things were about to change.
I didn’t know it then, but the optimism I felt would be short-lived.
Before that process had any opportunity to occur, I found myself being directed to yet another IME with Olivia Lee.
Turks Legal, “on behalf of CCI”, sprung into action, yet again, with this OBSTRUCTION.
Instead of allowing my treating team to coordinate my recovery as contemplated by the legislation and the Injury Management Plan, the process took another turn.
Once again, the focus shifted away from my treating doctor…
…and back towards another Independent Medical Examination.
WHY?
WHY DID CATHOLIC CHURCH INSURANCE REPEATEDLY DO THIS?
The timing remains deeply troubling to me. Within days of my treating doctor finally being brought into the process, that opportunity disappeared and the claim moved back towards another IME.
I still have these questions about why the statutory recovery process was not allowed to proceed.
And the institutionalised wage theft continued.
To be continued…
Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 360, 364-365.
——
Further reading
I came across a blog post by Professor David Yamada, “Workplace Bullying and Mobbing: Toxic Systems and the Eliminationist Mindset”. It resonated with me because it describes severe workplace bullying not simply as the actions of one individual, but as a system in which different organisational actors can each play a role.
Professor Yamada identifies what he describes as the typical "players" in a workplace mobbing campaign:
- The main aggressor(s) – in my case, I believe this began with the conduct of my direct workplace leaders that led me to raise formal psychosocial safety concerns.
- The supervisor or boss of the main aggressor(s) – the organisational leadership that, in my experience, did not intervene effectively and instead allowed the situation to continue.
- Peers recruited, pressured or incentivised to join in – what I experienced as workplace mobbing, where my much needed connections with colleagues was removed and I felt increasingly isolated within a community I proudly served since 2001.
- Human Resources – who became responsible for “managing” complaints and disciplinary processes rather than restoring a psychologically safe workplace.
- Legal counsel – whose involvement shifted from resolving the underlying safety issues to defending organisational decisions and communicating with me through a distorted “legal lens”. The conduct was unethical and aggressive adverse action, rather than the integrity to align with the University Identity and Mission and comply with WHS regulations.
For years, I’ve tried to explain that what happened to me resulted in a frightening level of systemic abuse, as more and more parts of the organisation (and further beyond the initial organisation itself), became involved over time. As each new participant entered the process, the possibility of simply recovering and returning to work seemed to move further away.
And yet, I fought a serious and extensive level of systemic failure, to bring recovery and returning back to my work into the spotlight, making it fully visible again as I write my story. I want to finally move recovering and returning to my work in the right direction - closer and closer in my direction.
Requesting a safe work environment is a generally protected workplace right and recovery at work is another protected right under a statutory scheme that should have protected me too.
Professor Yamada's framework articulates the problem clearly: the problem is systemic problem, not a personal one.
But regulators in the system, like SafeWork NSW and SIRA NSW, the very regulators we trust to ensure safety and compliance, repeatedly chose to redirect the “problem” as “personal” rather than systemic, as my story of lived experience and contemporaneous records clearly show.
The regulatory processes have been a big part of the problem.
In my case, the greatest tragedy is that the Injury Management Plan we all had agreed on (before the “system” reared its ugly head again), had one purpose: to support my recovery and my return to work.
Instead, the focus gradually shifted away from recovery and towards processes, investigations, legal correspondence and organisational defence.
What the insurer did and what they put on record, via the Independent Review Office (another part of the “system” that doesn’t ensure independent verification), when I demanded answers in writing, is completely indefensible, and Catholic Church Insurance know it.
And so then more “players” were recruited into the “system” to obstruct procedural fairness and natural justice - a group of IME practitioners.
Accountability is way overdue and the whole system needs an overhaul.
All I want is to recover, return safely to my substantive HEW 8 Step 4 professional role, and continue serving the university community that’s been my workplace since 2001.
If you're interested in understanding workplace mobbing from a systems perspective, Professor David Yamada's blog post is worth reading:
Workplace Bullying and Mobbing: Toxic Systems and the Eliminationist Mindset
