A nursing home has been ordered to pay €150,000 to three care workers who were sexually harassed by an alcohol-fuelled 93-year-old male resident. The three Complainants were dismissed in December 2018 after an investigation concluded they had created a situation which resulted in the maltreatment of a resident.

One of the three Complainants explained that the harassment consisted of physical conduct of a sexual nature including touching and foul language. She gave an example that the resident made commented about the size of her breasts. One of the care workers stated that the resident went to the local pub six days a week and always kept alcohol in the locker beside his bed. The Complainant’s raised the residents’ behaviour with the nurses and nursing home management. It was also raised with one of the Directors of the Respondent Nursing Home at a meeting prior to the taking over of the nursing home in 2017. Despite these complaints, no action was taken by management to prevent the ongoing issues and protect the care assistants from this behaviour.

An incident occurred in January 2018 when one of the Complainant's and her co-worker were attempting to provide care to the resident. The resident used foul and sexually abusive language towards them. He grabbed her co-worker at the crotch and made sexually inappropriate comments to her.   A Supervisor attended the room and was also subject to foul and sexually abusive language.

The Respondent informed the WRC that the resident suffered from dementia and stated that the man was largely bed bound and spent only about two hours a day sitting in his wheelchair. The Respondent categorically denied that any allegations of sexual harassment were made by the Complainants prior to the 7th of January 2018. It submitted at all material times male care assistants were employed at the nursing home and if any such allegations of a sexual nature had been made and management had deemed that those allegations had merit, male care assistants could have been allocated to attend to the personal hygiene of the resident. They submitted that there was no evidence of any documented complaint by the Complainants of sexual assault.

The Adjudication Officer was satisfied that the care workers were subjected to sexual harassment in the workplace by the resident and noted that she accepted that the Respondent had to balance its obligations to the resident and its employees and that dealing with challenging behaviour is a fact of life with certain nursing home residents. However, in these cases the Respondent’s focus was only on the resident which is commendable as towards the resident but not when it is at the expense of its obligations to the Complainant and her co-workers. The WRC concluded that there was a total failure in the Respondent’s handling of the Complainant’s complaints and that the nursing home “failed to put appropriate measures in place to stop this sexual harassment from occurring or to reverse its effects”. Therefore, the WRC ordered that a compensatory sum of €50,000 be awarded to each of the three Care Workers.
https://www.workplacerelations.ie/en/cases/2020/july/adj-00015039.html
https://www.workplacerelations.ie/en/cases/2020/july/adj-00015046.htm
https://www.workplacerelations.ie/en/cases/2020/july/adj-00015040.html