CCI’s response to IRO, IRO’s handling of it, the treating evidence, the missing safeguards—and the human beings left carrying the harm.
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In my previous post, I described the update I sent to TAL on 13 January 2023. TAL’s income protection was keeping me afloat while I tried to get Catholic Church Insurance (CCI), ACU and the workers’ compensation system to cooperate with my recovery and return to work.
My nominated treating doctor’s statement, signed on 10 January 2023, recorded:
“always been able to perform suitable duties — workplace not facilitating this”
Asked about return-to-work planning or rehabilitation, my doctor wrote:
“awaiting this from CCI”
Now compare that with the account CCI supplied through the Independent Review Office (IRO), preserved in the correspondence I later included in my NSW Ombudsman complaint package concerning SIRA:
“Ms Bourbous has always been unfit.”
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Always? On what evidence? For which duties? Under what workplace conditions?
Those questions concern my health, my livelihood and my ability to recover in the job to which I have contributed since 2001.
An insurer’s sweeping (and false) “description” can follow a person through a system. It can become the explanation repeated by officials while the practical work needed to support recovery remains undone.
I demanded answers in writing because I needed a record I could challenge. Now there is one.
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18 October 2021: I asked about the work CCI had failed to do
On 18 October 2021, I wrote to IRO. My subject line was:
“I demand the truth from CCI and expect compliance with the law - including from SIRA.”
I explained the trauma I associated with my dealings with SIRA and SafeWork NSW. I attached the 25 June 2020 Injury Management Plan, an injured-at-work guide and the workplace injury poster.
I was asking about concrete failures in injury management. Who was coordinating with my GP and nominated treating psychologist? Why had the psychologist’s return-to-work recommendations not led to action? Why had questions already answered by my psychologist been asked again? What contact had actually occurred with my nominated treating doctor?
I also raised serious concerns about private information and the use of my factual investigation material.
My request was explicit:
“I withhold phone numbers because I demand (not expect, request, or prefer), DEMAND the answers in writing”
That insistence had a purpose. I needed to know precisely what CCI was claiming, ON RECORD, rather than receive another verbal explanation relayed by an IRO official, OFF THE RECORD.
The same email made my objective unmistakable:
“Get me back to my job!!!”
I expected cooperation, communication and implementation of the plan. This was meant to be the insurer’s responsibility, not mine. I wanted to recover in my substantive role.
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I asked for writing. IRO invited a phone call.
On 18 October 2021, a senior IRO complaints officer replied. He asked whether the questions had first been put to the insurer and whether a response had been provided.
Then, despite my express demand for written answers, he concluded:
“I look forward to a phone call … at your earliest convenience.”
Why was I still being directed towards a phone call after explaining what I needed - and why I needed the answers via IRO, in writing?
A written answer gives a worker something to examine. It preserves the words used, the explanation “offered” and the questions left unanswered. It makes it possible to compare an insurer’s “account” with the evidence.
I was already traumatised. I shouldn’t have had to fight for a usable record of the response to my complaint.
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CCI’s explanation: a claims specialist, an alleged “unknown” report, and “always unfit”
CCI’s answer to my question about case management was:
“Ms Bourbous was always assigned a claims specialist whom attempted contacts with NTD and psychologist.”
Let’s ask my nominated treating professionals if that statement was true. IT WAS A LIE!
And which claims specialist? This dodgy person written about in other parts of my story, that suddenly disappeared from CCI and reappeared at Transport for NSW, after CCI gave my nominated treating doctor the run around, when he was trying to contact her? CCI WERE DELIBERATELY DODGING MY GP!
See that instalment of my story in the link below:
SIRA NSW and the Illusion of Regulation: When Oversight Fails - October 2021
See also this claims “specialist’s” other suspiciously dodgy and unconscionable conduct:
CCI - Cruel Con Insurance? - September 2020
Catholic Church Insurance - October 2020
Deception from CCI - October 2020
Therefore, that bullshit response didn’t actually identify who had responsibility for implementing my Injury Management Plan, when they assumed that responsibility, or what coordinated work they performed. Why was a name not given to IRO by CCI?
A claims specialist being assigned is not, by itself, evidence that the plan was implemented. IT WASN’T IMPLEMENTED. Attempted contact isn’t evidence of effective consultation or that it’s the truth.
Then came my question about my psychologist’s report and return-to-work recommendations. CCI answered:
“We are unsure of which report they are referring to.”
REALLY? Should we get a copy from my nominated treating psychologist? There’s also the one she prepared for the first IRO funded workers compensation solicitor, not long after. That one was part of the evidence pack when I reported CCI TO APRA. SIRA NSW also has this APRA evidence pack regarding CCI’s conduct!
STOP IGNORING THE EVIDENCE AND THE TRUTH SIRA NSW AND IRO!
Immediately afterwards:
“Ms Bourbous has always been unfit.”
This was the most degrading, defamatory, discriminatory and disgusting false statement of all. It diminished two decades of high level work and service to my university community into nothing. It diminished my three university qualifications I worked hard to earn, along with my valuable contribution to our society in the higher education sector. I feel sickened that this insurer includes the words Catholic Church in its company name. How does this disgrace, on record, align with Catholic Social Justice principles including the dignity of the human person and the value of work and the worker?
IRO could have easily independently verified the truth by googling my name! But they didn’t. CCI lied to IRO and IRO just accepted it!
How could CCI dare to put in writing such a sweeping and false account of my capacity while saying it was unsure which treating psychologist’s report I meant?
My complaint identified my psychologist and the recommendations CCI had requested, received and ignored. The response should have prompted a search for that report and a careful examination of its contents.
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They had the information. Where was my protection?
CCI had the factual investigation report dated 9 June 2020, recording the no-contact instruction concerning Rena Christmann. I repeatedly said that she needed to stay away from me. I sought psychological guarding through a medical certificate. See Enter unSafeWork NSW & “that” RTW plan I drafted - October 2020.
I also applied for an APVO against this perpetrator relentlessly harassing and stalking me, who even violated my family‘s privacy, followed by intimidation attempts against them too! See:
Prohibited workplace surveillance - September 2020
APVO & a court registrar’s response - September 2020
Yet the contact continued. She contacted my treating psychologist without my permission. The therapeutic spaces where I was seeking help became another source of distress. See:
Gaslighting and harassment continue under workers compensation regulations - 2020
Email address created strictly for Return to Work communication - July 2020
The workplace harassment continued - September 2020
What was I supposed to do? How many times did I have to ask for protection?
The 25 June 2020 Injury Management Plan was supposed to provide a coordinated way forward. After the original case manager left, I was left without the replacement case management needed to put it into practice.
I needed a genuinely ethical and capable case manager working with my nominated treating doctor and psychologist. I needed the return-to-work coordinator to carry out her responsibilities safely. I needed the person causing me harm to stay away.
Instead, my doctor and I were left chasing people who wouldn’t respond.
I repeat, that person I understood to be the original case manager’s supervisor (that above mentioned claims “specialist”) didn’t reply to my requests. Again, use the links above to read those instalments of my story.
Only after ACU achieved its employment outcome (that’s unlawful, has left me in trauma and distress, and is completely against its Catholic Mission and Identity), did RG present herself as my case manager to the workers compensation solicitor’s office. I only noticed this in emails much later, after I started to forensically analyse my records. At the time I didn’t know what was going on.
It was inhumanity after inhumanity. Betrayal after betrayal, and the withholding of information I legally should have been informed of!
My GP noticed it before I knew what was going on. As I said, when my GP tried to contact CCI, he was given the runaround and then told this so called claims specialist had left.
I looked at LinkedIn. The profile still showed a connection with CCI. I sent a private message challenging what my GP had been told. Afterwards, I saw the profile change, with traces of the CCI claims-specialist role still visible. Later, it showed a senior claims-specialist role at NSW Transport. Re-read SIRA NSW and the Illusion of Regulation: When Oversight Fails - October 2021
Why was my doctor told she had left? What were the actual employment dates? Who was responsible for my claim while we were trying to reach her?
A profile can’t answer those questions. The employment records, contact logs, emails and claim-allocation records can. Someone with investigative authority needed to obtain them and establish what happened.
THE RESPONSIBLE REGULATORS!
It should never have fallen to me to track professional profiles to find out who was responsible for helping me recover.
There was communication between ACU and CCI. Decisions were being made and explanations exchanged. Yet my nominated treating professionals and I couldn’t obtain the cooperation needed for my recovery.
How did they manage to communicate about an outcome affecting my life while leaving us outside the coordination that was supposed to protect it?
That’s why I’m asking for an investigation into how ACU and CCI worked together, who made the decisions, and how their actions affected the safeguards and injury management I needed. Their own explanations need to be tested against the whole record.
I haven’t resigned. It’s my right under a statutory scheme and an agreed injury management plan to recover in my job! It’s a legal obligation of both the employer and insurer to communicate with my NTD and provide suitable duties! Make them comply SIRA NSW!
I needed protection. I received an explanation that left the missing protection unanswered. Then the complaint closed.
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My doctor was still waiting for CCI
The 10 January 2023 statement came after CCI’s 2021 response. It recorded what my treating professionals and I were still asking somebody to address: capacity for suitable duties, the workplace’s failure to facilitate them, and the continuing wait for CCI. See Why Was I Still Waiting for CCI? - January 2023.
What duties could I perform? Under what conditions? With what safeguards? Those were the questions that needed coordinated action.
Put the treating evidence beside CCI’s explanation. What did CCI do with the recommendations?
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IRO closed the complaint because CCI had supplied answers
IRO’s response set out its limits: it couldn’t compel an insurer to overturn a liability decision, assist with what it described as an employer’s business decisions, or raise complaints about other government departments.
What a manipulative, harmful and distressing answer to excuse the inexcusable! I’ve suffered because of such manipulative and inhumane administrative responses! CCI was providing false statements to regulators, as did my employer (the very perpetrator herself “on behalf of the university”) to SafeWork NSW! This is serious systemic failure!
It’s systemic abuse!
What scrutiny did IRO apply to CCI’s answers?
IRO referred to earlier complaints, saying CCI had reported trying to obtain clinical notes from my doctor and requesting information from my psychologist. It said those explanations had been relayed to me in conversations (note: in conversations - not in writing) on 20 October 2020 and 4 February 2021. And the compliant taxpayer is rendered more helpless and vulnerable, where our records and our human right to be protected under a statutory scheme are displaced by this harmful systemic abuse inflicted on us by public servants paid with our tax money!
I’m retraumatised right now! This is one incident of proof (in many), why I can’t engage with any more government communication right now. I don’t feel safe! This repeated government communication to shut down legitimate reports of non-compliance (and even fraud) from employers and insurers has resulted in serious secondary trauma!
Requests for information don’t establish that meaningful consultation occurred or that return-to-work recommendations were implemented.
Yet IRO wrote:
“IRO notes the complaint that the insurer did not answer the above questions has now been resolved by the insurer addressing these matters.”
It then said it would close the complaint.
CCI had supplied a response. I still had no answer to the missing safeguards, no implemented recovery arrangements and no safe pathway back to suitable duties.
I can’t keep looking at what they wrote. Even briefly revisiting it causes enormous distress. My family has suffered alongside me.
Behind those words is everything I have given: my work, my study, my commitments and my care for other people. Reading that response felt as though all of it—and I myself—could simply be brushed aside. And annihilated.
The complaint closed. The distress did not.
Who considered what receiving that response would do to me? Who considered my family? Who took responsibility for making sure we were safe afterwards?
The closures felt like an institutional way of saying: “Fuck off.” Those are my words for how it landed. We were human beings asking for help, and we were left carrying the harm.
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“Always unfit”? Who do you think is doing this work?
If I was “always unfit”, how am I still here, examining these documents, analysing their contents, reconstructing the chronology and showing how the records connect?
Who do you think is doing this work? I am.
I’m applying the skills of a highly qualified information manager, an academic and research librarian. I’m drawing on everything I have learned through three degrees, distinction-level achievement, honours and years of professional practice.
I’m organising evidence, checking dates, comparing accounts, identifying contradictions and tracing the questions that remain unanswered. I’m making the records intelligible so other people can examine what happened.
That’s information management. That’s research. Those are professional skills being used here, in front of you.
And I’m doing this because I have been left to do it myself.
I’m doing work I have repeatedly asked public agencies to undertake: examine the evidence, connect the records, scrutinise the explanations and account for the failures. I’m doing it without pay, while carrying the health and financial consequences of the very conduct I’m documenting.
I experience that as being used as slave labour: professional work extracted through necessity, for free, because the consequences of leaving it undone fall on me.
To the society reading this: look at the work. Look at the analysis. Look at the years of effort required to make this evidence visible.
Then ask how an insurer could describe me as “always unfit” without properly addressing the duties I could perform, the conditions I needed and the treating recommendations about suitable work.
My ability to undertake this analysis doesn’t mean I can sustain unrestricted duties, or that doing it has come without distress, exhaustion or harm. But it makes the demand for a precise, evidence-based account of my capacity unavoidable.
Why am I left using my professional skills to investigate my own treatment, unpaid and under pressure, while still waiting for those skills to be supported through a safe return to suitable duties?
Why is this work mine to carry, while my capacity for work is described so dismissively and disrespectfully?
If you insist I was “always unfit”, Catholic Church Insurance, explain the work I am doing—and answer the treating evidence about suitable duties.
Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 620-623.
I am frightened and writing my story publicly for my safety, after exhausting the avenues reasonably available to obtain protection. I want the harm to stop so I can recover safely in my job.
