Isolating their Target

Survivors face great difficulties when advocating for themselves amid workplace mobbing.  First, many will be quick to dismiss them. They will reason the survivor is technologically inept, disorganized, or making it up as they are bitter over some private dispute.  Others will reason they are just paranoid. Their unwillingness to advocate for the survivor allows the mobbing to continue. Those who are aware of the mobbing scheme, meanwhile, protect the willing supervisors and employees involved. They will say it was a simple miscommunication or a human error. They may say that the policy changed as administration changed. This leaves the survivor feeling surrounded and helpless. No matter where they turn, no one is willing to investigate their case. When I finally had the courage to advocate for myself, my administration failed to protect me. They did not take my concern seriously and failed to diminish my fears that I was being gas light and mobbed. Here are a few examples of when I felt attacked and surrounded:

1. I gave my students a reading assessment as I was required to report results to administration. When I believed this google assessment was changed without my permission, I learned the district’s google account did (still does) not keep track employees’ IP addresses. I consequently asked my principal to scan my computers to determine who changed the file. They refused and offered no explanation.

2. When I asked the state Department of Education to add this IP address tracking feature to its google system, they refused. They never explained why either. It was just a flat dismissal. 

3. I asked the district to reopen my sexual harassment investigation June of 2020 as I had new evidence and believed their first investigation was partial. I reasoned more legislators would listen to me if I had evidence what I claimed in 2011 actually took place. I also, once again, felt obligated to tell them I was wanting to talk about my experiences. They refused. They knew the truth and so did I. Opening the case back up would mean they would have to contact the witness who would corroborate my story, a narrative they knew they covered up with their incomplete 2018 investigation. 

4. When I asked them in 2020 to interview employees who I believed where mobbing and bullying me, they refused. I told them I was under emotional distress and rather than address the problem, they asked me if I needed to take some time off. When I told them no and documented my sanity through a required note from my therapist (a requirement they made me complete so I could remain employed with their agency), they still refused to address my concern. In other words, I told them I was emotionally distressed, proved I was mentally competent, and they still failed to address my mental and emotional needs.

5. When I asked multiple times for the district to clarify my free speech rights, they refused and told me to “get a lawyer.” Now I am left risking the career I have tried to protect since the sexual harassment occurred in 2011. Now I am left making what could have been a private conflict, public.

6. The district has never explained how its student bullying policies differ than its teacher bullying policies. I have directly asked them to incorporate this training into our professional development, and they have refused.  As a result, their workforce remains uninformed.  Many will not believe the district will not investigate bully complaints brought to their attention.

7. When I told the district I could not ask employees if I was being mobbed, they ignored me. They never questioned employees I felt unsafe with or specified legally what a false accusation looks, sounds, or feels like. They demanded I have evidence but would not help me in collecting it.

8. After six months of employment, they still did not respond to my mobbing complaint. Hoping my need could still be met privately, I filed a formal sex discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The district ignored my complaint a second time. To date, I am still forced to work in close contact with employees who I believe have mobbed me. They have not been forced to lie (i.e. to deny any involvement in a mobbing plot) in a formal company investigation. They remain free to mob me without any legal threat to their career.  

I am not sure how organized my workplace mobbing was between 2011 and 2020. I remember my state email agency telling me my email account was full and consequently required I delete permanently files from my account. I know rumors were spread, I was stonewalled, I was gas light, I was manipulated with perceived deception, and I observed odd “coincidences.” Which employees willingly and unwillingly complied with any effort to mob me horizontally or downwardly remains unclear to me. I cannot be sure if my Department of Labor broke confidentiality and disclosed my informal complaint to their agency, who in turned tried to bribe me with an intimate friend joining my team. Even if they did not, they still looked negligent as a public-school teacher came forward with a sexual harassment complaint and, rather than investigate it in order to protect students, they told me they were going to ignore it.  I tried to get my company to help me determine what happened and to hold those who mobbed me accountable. I tried to help the woman who my therapist said was also sexually harassed and gas light by my company. I tried. 

For certain, any perceived downward mobbing within my district became systematic mobbing after I reported my circumstances to my Department of Labor, state democrat and republican legislators, governor, and Department of Education in the fall of 2019 through the spring of 2021. They knew I claimed my district allowed me to go off record with a sexual harassment complaint. They knew I claimed my district conducted a partial sexual harassment case that excluded a key witness. They knew I felt mobbed and gas lit in the workplace. They knew I had an hour recording where my therapist told me I was not the only sexual harassment survivor gas light by my company. They knew I wanted to talk publicly about these experiences, called for an investigation, and demand legislative reform.  And they did nothing to help me or the rest of the workforce. To date, I am unaware of any administrative changes my company or state has made voluntarily or involuntarily to ensure my experience does not happen again to other employees. 

By not working as a system to check the mob, my state became part of the mob that disempowered me.  Now they were the ones who were unwilling to clarify my free speech rights, investigate if there was corruption within my district, and provide me with a lawyer who could help me advocate for my rights amid the fear I could lose my job. Their passivity gave my district permission to continue its toxic practices. It also empowered my district legally. Now they had time to formulate what I perceived as their defense (i.e. mob me with events that discredited me, gas light my witnesses so they felt intimidated, destroy my witness’ credibility, delete key evidence I presented in my report).  My state demanded evidence yet refused to assist me in collecting it. As a result, they protected any employee who was part of a legitimate plot to mob me. No one was forced to take the stand in an internal investigation and consequently did not risk their jobs for lying should evidence later come out to prove they were in fact part of a workplace mobbing plot. 

In the end, all employees in my state remain under this oppressive system. Whatever their industry, employees who come forward with workplace mobbing and gas lighting complaints can file a report yet have it completely ignored by administration and the government. Only those who file a lawsuit can hold their company responsible, yet this act requires the survivor have access to legal counsel and a strong support system. Above all, the survivor must be courageous enough to testify in an arena that offers them little means to collect evidence and bold enough to make a stand in a cultural context of dismissal, disbelief, and demonization.  

It is with this understanding that I decided to create this web page. If my state and government will not train its workers on the dangers of mobbing and gas lighting, then I will. I will explain how mobbing and gas lighting operates and how it disempowers, discredits, and damages survivors. I will advocate for them and tell them they are not alone. I will acknowledge what they are seeing, feeling, and observing is real. They are not crazy. They have every reason to feel anxious, afraid, unsafe, deceived, manipulated, and depressed. I will validate that their psychological response is normal. I will empower them to speak up amid victim blaming statements and gas lighting tactics. I will continue to stand nonviolently in legislative attempts to reform our broken system. I will continue to hold our government leaders, businesses, and employees accountable when they enable workplace mobbing. I will advocate for best business practices, cultural change, and legal reform. And I pray I can do so with the same humility, grace, and love God has shown me.