Woman wins fight against 'bully' banks

She allegedly received 550 calls for missing one loan repayment.

A woman in the UK has won a landmark victory against a bullying bank that reportedly bombarded her with nearly 550 phone calls.

UK publication The Mirror reports that Amanda Roberts, 48, was bombarded with phone calls from the Halifax Bank of Scotland during a seven-month period after she missed a single payment on a $11,990 (£7,300) loan.

Roberts also alleged in her case that the bank continued to harass her even when she asked it to stop and even started calling her elderly parents.

The bank also reportedly froze her current account, which prevented Roberts from pauing off a credit card debt, The Mirror reported.

The Court of Appeal has now ruled the calls were “intimidatory bullying” and ¬amounted to harassment. Roberts has won a payout of $12,318 (£7,500).

Ray Hadley sued over alleged 2GB bullying incident

Sued: Ray Hadley. Photo: Louise Kennerley

Talkback host Ray Hadley is being sued for allegedly bullying a junior colleague at 2GB radio station.

A statement of claim against Hadley was lodged in the District Court of NSW on Friday, and it is understood his lawyer has been served papers.

When I do get wound up I can be a bit scary. 

Ray Hadley

The claim alleges that Hadley deliberately inflicted psychological harm on Richard Palmer, a digital content manager at 2GB. Fairfax Media has not seen the statement of claim, which the District Court is refusing to release. But the court confirmed Mr Palmer’s claim was lodged on Friday.

It is understood Hadley is also facing allegations of "false imprisonment" because a colleague guarded the exit to Hadley’s office while the radio host verbally abused Mr Palmer.

Mr Palmer, who has engaged high-profile media lawyer John Laxon, is understood to be suing Hadley personally, rather than Hadley’s employer, the Macquarie Radio Network.

Mr Palmer declined to comment, as did Hadley's lawyer. The radio host did not respond to questions from Fairfax Media, but released a statement to News Ltd in which he expressed his disappointment over the action.

"The action arises out of an incident that occurred in February this year in my office and which was reported in detail at the time and, more recently, on the ABC's Australian Story program. Following the incident, I sincerely and openly apologised to Mr Palmer and the staff at 2GB," he reportedly said.

"Mr Palmer remained employed at 2GB and working at our Pyrmont offices for some time afterwards and I had hoped he had accepted my apology and we could resolve the situation and work well together in the future. It is disappointing he has chosen to pursue legal action seeking damages against me."

The alleged bullying incident happened on the morning of February 7, when Hadley called Mr Palmer into his office. The top-rating host was angry because Palmer had not uploaded a podcast of The Ray Hadley Morning Show quickly enough onto 2GB's website.

When Hadley began verbally abusing Mr Palmer, the website manager is understood to have opened the voice recording application on his phone. It is believed Mr Palmer secretly recorded Hadley because he was concerned about a threat to his employment.

The secret recording of Hadley's bullying is understood to have disgusted Macquarie Radio Network’s managing director, Rob Loewenthal.

On Tuesday, February 12, Mr Loewenthal took the extraordinary step of suspending Hadley for the bullying incident. An email was circulated to staff explaining that the radio host would be off the air for the rest of the week.

Well placed sources at 2GB told Fairfax Media that Hadley phoned the network’s majority owner, John Singleton, who then overruled Mr Loewenthal’s decision. However both Hadley and Singleton deny there was any intervention on Hadley’s behalf.

What is known for certain is that Mr Loewenthal’s decision was overruled. On Wednesday, February 13, Hadley was back on air and has been presenting his show ever since.

That Wednesday morning, Hadley appeared to brush off the incident, telling listeners: “Sometimes in the hurly-burly of life of radio, just like other organisations and families, people have disagreements. It's part of life. The relationship between myself and the executives of this station will always survive any disagreement we might have … So let's get back to business.''

But after two days of intense media pressure over the incident, Hadley relented. On Friday, February 15, 2GB staff gathered in the boardroom to hear the radio host apologise for the bullying.

“I addressed the staff and there were more than 100 gathered,” Hadley said in a May interview on ABC’s Australian Story.

“I firstly apologised to them for the discredit I had brought to the radio station in the past week through my behaviour… It’s hard to change when you get to my stage of life but in some respects I’ll have to change I guess because the workplace in 2013 is far different from the workplace in 1983”.

Hadley admitted on the show that Singleton was “appalled” by his treatment of Mr Palmer.

“When I do get wound up I can be a bit scary,” Hadley said.

“I think to a certain extent that I’m a bit of a dinosaur and I’m viewed that way by many people that I still blow up occasionally, sometimes inappropriately.”

It is understood Mr Palmer has been working from home for 2GB since February 14.

Summer Safety: How kids can stay safe from cyberbullying over the holidays

Evolving social media and new technologies are changing the way the world communicates. There are no longer boundaries – one can be connected to their social circle 24 hours a day, and communicating with friends in real time.

And their bullies.

It’s a problem that affects most kids through their pre-teen and teen years.

“The last time we did a thorough examination, we found that 80 per cent of our kids had either been bullied or acted as bullies,” said Marianne Noakes, executive director of Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Hamilton and Burlington.

With school out students will lose access to the network of resources and supports provided by the school board to combat bullying, and parents lose the extra sets of eyes they rely on during they year to make sure their kids are safe from the terrors of bullies.

Summer Safety:

This story is the first in a series of three stories that offers advice on staying safe over the summer. Wednesday, find out why, in the eyes of the law, you might be better off making your summer backyard bash a BYOB affair.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t resources available.

Contact Hamilton helps coordinate support services for children under the age of 18 from the city.

24 hour crisis line

The Crisis Outreach and Support Team (COAST) provides 24 hour crisis line access for troubled teens looking for someone to talk to, and provides a mobile outreach unit that consists of a mental health worker and a police officer for crisis situations between 8 a.m. – 1 a.m.

Big Brothers and Big Sisters doesn’t have a specific anti-bullying program, but does operate an eight-week “Summer Buddies” program that works in anti-bullying messages and content.

“Our programs have a duel message,” said Noakes. “We try to identify signs of bullying and encourage kids to talk to people they trust, but we also try to identify and prevent bullying behavior.”

“We ask the kids if they think they’ve ever been a bully and how it would make them feel if the roles were revered, demonstrating the cause and effect,” she said.

Noakes also noted the importance of parents being aware of their kids’ computer activity.

“A portion of our training is talking to parents about it – we do a lot of teaching on electronic stuff,”

A recent study out of Halifax and presented in Edmonton found that youth suicides relating to cyber bullying are on the rise.

Erasebullying.ca provides several tips for parents to help identify and address cyber-bullying in the home. Here are a few of them:

What you can do to help prevent cyberbullying:

1. Encourage your child to not respond to cyberbullies – whether your child is a bystander or victim, he/she should not respond. This also means encouraging them not to “like” negative comments or pages that are targeting other students, or forwarding content that is targeting others.
2. If your child is a victim or witnesses cyberbullying, keep evidence. Hold onto those text messages, emails, photos, etc. as they could help identify the bully.
3. If your child is being threatened, harassed or being sent illegal content, contact the police and give them the details – include usernames of the bully, and any other identifying information you can collect. They will want to see proof, so show them all the evidence you collected.
4. Try to block contact from the bully by blocking their phone number, email or username (for example, Facebook allows you to block and report a user if they are engaging in activity that violates Facebook’s Terms and Conditions).
5. Contact your child’s school and let them know what is happening. Even if cyberbullying is happening at home, they should be made aware of the situation.
6. If the bully is identifiable and known to you, print off evidence of the attacks and contact their parents. They may be responsive, but may also be defensive. Show them proof and ask them to intervene.

What is Workplace Bullying and How Does it Affect People?

Workplace bullying is like bullying on the playground except that it occurs in the workplace.

It usually involves verbal comments and incidents that are intended to hurt, harass, isolate, intimidate, or humiliate a person. It is not new but has become what some have called a silent epidemic because it is happening frequently but isn't always reported.

It is estimated that as many as one in every six workers is bullied at work and it occurs more frequently than sexual harassment. Bullying creates a horrible, hostile and poisonous work environment that leads to severe problems.

Bullying can be obvious and subtle and may take the form of any one or more of these behaviours:

• spreading malicious, untrue rumours, gossip, or innuendoes
• excluding or isolating someone
• intimidating a person
• undermining or interfering with a person's work
• threatening
• restricting former responsibilities
• changing work requirements
• setting impossible deadlines
• withholding information
• providing erroneous information
• making offensive jokes
• pestering, spying or stalking
• not providing sufficient work
• swearing, yelling or being rude
• constant unwarranted criticism
• blocking applications for training, leave, awards or promotion

It is very important to understand that the people who are bullied are not to blame. The victims or targets are usually highly competent, accomplished, experienced and popular. The reason why they have been singled out for this upsetting and unfair treatment is due to the needs and personalities of the persons who are doing the bullying.

Ken Westhues, a sociologist at the University of Waterloo is survivor of academic mobbing (bullying in universities) and has become a recognized expert. He has developed this checklist of indicators.

1. By standard criteria of job performance, the target is at least average, probably above average.
2. Rumours and gossip circulate about the target's misdeeds: "Did you hear what she did last week?"
3. The target is not invited to meetings or voted onto committees, is excluded or excludes self.
4. Collective focus on a critical incident that "shows what kind of person they really are".
5. Shared conviction that the target needs some kind of formal punishment, "to be taught a lesson".
6. Unusual timing of the decision to punish apart from the annual performance review.
7. Emotion-laden, defamatory rhetoric about the target in oral and written communications.
8. Formal expressions of collective negative sentiment toward the target. A vote of censure, signatures on a petition, meeting to discuss what to do about the target.
9. High value on secrecy, confidentiality, and collegial solidarity among the bullies.
10. Loss of diversity of argument, so that it becomes dangerous to speak up for or defend the target.
11. Adding up the target's real or imagined venial sins to make a mortal sin that cries for action.
12. The target is seen as personally abhorrent with no redeeming qualities; stigmatizing, exclusionary labels are applied.
13. Disregard of established procedures as the bullies take matters into their own hands.
14. Resistance to independent outside review of sanctions imposed on the target.
15. Outraged response to any appeals for outside help the target may make.
16. Bullies' fear of violence from target, target's fear of violence from bullies, or both.

How Does It Affect People?

The target of bullying may suffer from or experience a great number of symptoms all of which result from his or her treatment at work. The events taking place in the workplace are bad enough and very upsetting, but they can also lead to a number of physical, mental, emotional, social and financial problems.

Don't be alarmed by the list that follows. Victims do not suffer from all of these things but they could encounter any of them.

Weight gain Cancer Heart attacks A stress-induced illness Inability to concentrate Low motivation Memory difficulties Learning difficulty Increased fear Panic attacks Anger Desire for revenge Depression Anxiety disorders Loss of confidence Posttraumatic stress disorder

Career loss Social difficulties Social isolation Separation Divorce Lowered sex drive Suicide Shock Increased feelings of frustration Feelings of helplessness A sense of vulnerability Loss of appetite Sleep disorders Headaches Stomach upsets Family tensions

How Workplace Bullies Get Ahead

It can pay to be a bully.

In a rather disheartening study, a team of researchers led by Darren C. Treadway, of the University at Buffalo School of Management, found that many workplace bullies receive positive evaluations from their supervisors and achieve high levels of career success, despite organizational efforts to curtail bullying.

The researchers sought to study the relationship between workplace bullying and job performance. They collected behavioral and job-performance data from 54 employees of a U.S. health-care firm, and found a strong correlation between bullying, positive job evaluations and social and political skill in the workplace.

The study defines workplace bullying as “systematic aggression and violence targeted towards one or more individuals by one individual or by a group.”

The researchers found that many bullies thrive by charming their supervisors and manipulating others to help them get ahead, even while they abuse their co-workers. Because many bullies can “possess high levels of social ability,” they are “able to strategically abuse co-workers and yet be evaluated positively by their supervisor,” the authors write.

“If people are politically skilled, they can do bad things really well,” says Dr. Treadway.

(Political skill, Dr. Treadway says, is “the ability to effectively understand others at work and to use such knowledge to influence others to act in ways that enhance one’s personal and/or organizational objectives.”)

The study notes that workplace bullying is prevalent: About half of all U.S. employees have witnessed workplace bullying and more than a third have been the target of bullying, according to past research.

The researchers suggest that firms assess civility and camaraderie as part of performance and help staff develop skills to manage bullies.

The study was published earlier this year in the Journal of Managerial Psychology.

Province announces new rules to help teachers deal with bullying

People gather at a memorial honoring teen Amanda Todd in Maple Ridge, B.C. Todd, who was a victim of bullying, took her own life. (Jonathan Hayward / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

The province is developing a code of conduct for teachers to help them deal with kids who are being bullied.

It’s meant to be a tool for teachers and to promote a consistent provincial anti-bullying strategy.

The document is being developed collaboratively by the province and various school system representatives, including teachers, parents and trustees.

It will also provide guidance to principals and teachers on how to respond to inappropriate conduct, including bullying or cyberbullying, that take place both in and outside of school hours

It's all part of the province's larger anti-bullying action plan, which includes the controversial anti-bullying bill, Bill-18.

LeAnn Rimes: ‘A bully tried to kill me’

LeAnn Rimes was once attacked at school by a bully wielding a knife.

The singer opened up about her horrifying childhood experiences in an interview to coincide with her performance at the Friend Movement’s Anti-Bullying Benefit Concert in Los Angeles on Monday.

Speaking to “Entertainment Tonight,” Rimes revealed she was tormented at school when she was an aspiring singer, and survived a violent encounter with a bully.

She says, “I used to perform around Dallas and Texas where I lived, a lot. My (school) principal would put something on the bulletin board if I was in the newspaper or something, and there was this clique of girls that did not like it. So, I had my locker egged, I had a girl bring a knife to school the last day of sixth grade and (she) tried to kill me!”

Rimes took to the stage to sing during the benefit gala at L.A.’s El Rey Theater and she urged the crowd not to let bullying get them down, shouting “S**ew them!” during her emotional performance.