ACU Governance Was Told: My Family’s Trauma Was Not a Plaything - November 2022

On 28 November 2022, I wrote to ACU’s governance with a reminder that should never have been necessary:

“This is a kind reminder of your commitment to the dignity of the human person and common good.”

By then, I was describing more than three years without respite, the depletion of my leave entitlements, financial pressure and concerns about the use of deeply personal information.

I was asking governance to confront what was happening under its authority.

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Even confidentiality had become a question

At the beginning of the email, I wrote:

“I ‘trust’ you’ll keep this email confidential.”

The quotation marks around “trust” mattered. I was sending an appeal for protection while questioning whether the information I disclosed would itself be protected.

I then made the boundary explicit:

“My privacy and my family’s grief, trauma and life adversities are not to be treated as a plaything.”

I went on to describe my concern that this information was being exploited by university executives, managers and staff in what was unlawful adverse action and discrimination.

My family’s grief was personal. Our trauma was personal. The adversities we had lived through were part of our lives, and I was asking that they be treated with dignity.

What does a university’s commitment to the dignity of the human person mean when an employee feels compelled to write those words to its governing body?

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“On behalf of the university”

In that same email, I raised allegations of employer fraud involving ACU’s employment relations leadership. I referred to the wording used in formal letters:

“on behalf of the university”

That phrase raised a fundamental question of governance responsibility. If actions were being taken on behalf of the university, what were those entrusted with governing it doing to examine those actions and stop the harm I was reporting?

I’m an ethical, law-abiding employee of twenty years. My leave entitlements had been taken in circumstances involving workers’ compensation, and raised concerns about the involvement of Catholic Church Insurance, the NTEU and others, including coercion or attempted coercion affecting me and my family.

These were serious allegations I put directly before governance. They required examination and an accountable response.

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The snowball effect reached another deadline

I wrote:

“I’ve had no down time for over three years”

That sentence captures something that a list of correspondence cannot: the absence of a chance to recover.

By late November 2022, I was also struggling with ATO and myGov identity-verification requirements to obtain a director ID for my self-managed superannuation fund. In the email, I described the pressure of a possible $13,400 ASIC fine if I didn’t complete the process by close of business on Wednesday.

I was still trying to meet my obligations while asking who was making the institutions involved meet theirs.

This was the snowball effect of harm. The workplace issues I had raised were consuming the capacity I needed to manage the rest of my life. Financial administration became another crisis. Another deadline arrived. Another consequence threatened the security I had worked to build.

The system failed me, and now I felt threatened with punishment while struggling under the consequences of those failures.

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Governance had a decision to make

I told governance that those appointed to comply with workplace health and safety responsibilities were causing harm themselves.

Then I ended with a direct statement:

“The decision to continue or end the gross negligence by COB 1 December, 2022, is ultimately yours.”

That was my call for action, with a date attached: 1 December 2022.

I signed the email in my role:

“Vicki (Senior Library Coordinator, Strathfield campus. HEW 8 Step 4).”

I was writing as an employee seeking protection, accountability and an end to the harm.

On 28 November, my appeal was before ACU governance.

My privacy. My family’s grief. My leave entitlements. My health. My financial security.

The people governing a university committed to human dignity had been told what I was experiencing. 

What did they do with that knowledge?

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 573.

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Research that helps explain why I went to governance

Boddy and Boulter’s HRM’s Response to Workplace Bullying: Complacent, Complicit and Compounding examines workers’ perceptions of human resource management’s response to bullying.

The researchers analysed 924 comments beneath a TEDx talk about workplace bullying and corporate psychopathy. Four themes emerged: workers expected HR to address bullying, but described inaction, alignment with management, and HR involvement that worsened the harm. The authors discuss a double betrayal when the expected source of protection becomes part of the problem, and suggest enforceable standards and intervention beyond HR where necessary.

This was a qualitative study of self-selected online comments, not a representative survey. It doesn’t  establish what happened at ACU. 

For me, the connection is direct. My email of 28 November 2022 was an appeal to governance about the conduct of people entrusted with protecting employees. I was reporting that the structures I should have been able to rely on were implicated in the harm.

Even my request for confidentiality carried doubt:

“I ‘trust’ you’ll keep this email confidential.”

I wasn’t simply asking someone to resolve a disagreement. I was asking the governing body to take responsibility for what was being done “on behalf of the university”, while my health, family privacy and financial security were being damaged.

The research offers a framework for understanding that experience. My email supplies the contemporaneous record of what I told governance.

When an employee reports that the people responsible for protection are themselves causing harm, referring the employee back into those same structures cannot be treated as an adequate answer.

Reference

Boddy, C. R., & Boulter, L. (2025). ‘HRM’s response to workplace bullying: Complacent, complicit and compounding’. Journal of Business Ethics, 197, 541–555. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-024-05755-3⁠. Open access.