Public servant who touched the bottom of a female colleague fails in bid to keep misconduct finding secret

A female public servant found guilty of misconduct for touching the buttocks of her colleague, has failed in her bid to keep her identity a secret and to overturn the misconduct finding.

Lorraine Edgar was found to have touched her colleagues right buttock on June 4, 2021.

A public servant who was found guilty of misconduct for touching the buttocks of her colleague and her “uninvited” on the shoulder, has failed in her bid to keep her identity a secret and to overturn the misconduct finding.

Lorraine Edgar, a Toowoomba youth worker within the Department of Children, Youth Justice and Multicultural Affairs, was found to have touched her colleague’s right buttock on June 4, 2021.

The alleged victim reported that the touching was “absolutely not consensual” and that she immediately turned around and told Ms Edgar not to touch her.

The alleged victim reported that Ms Edgar “looked shocked” following the alleged incident.

Ms Edgar, who worked for the Toowoomba and South West Youth Justice Service Centre, flatly denied ever touching the woman’s buttocks or ever touching colleagues inappropriately at work.

The shoulder touching was alleged to have taken place two weeks earlier on May 24, 2021 when Ms Edgar was in a car with the woman.

After patting the complainant on the shoulder “a couple of times”, the alleged victim said Ms Edgar said she was sorry and that she was a “touchy feely person”, the commission heard.

Ms Edgar denied touching, rubbing or patting the woman on the arm, shoulder or wrist and said that she did not even move her wrist much because she was wearing a brace on her right hand.

Details of the incident were revealed in the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission in a decision handed down on June 6 by deputy president Catherine Hartigan.

Ms Hartigan refused Ms Edgar’s application to suppress publication of the decision, or to give Ms Edgar a pseudonym.

Ms Edgar unsuccessfully argued her identity should be kept secret because “private and personal matters” about her were referred to in the investigation, discipline process and appeal to the QIRC, a claim the department denied.

The department argued against a suppression order, submitting that “prospective employers” should have the ability to know if “either party within this matter have behaved inappropriately”.

The department also stated that the use of a pseudonym to protect Ms Edgar “from embarrassment or stress’’ was not a “valid reason to limit open justice’’.

Ms Edgar also failed in her bid to have the commission rule that the misconduct finding was unfair and unreasonable.

The commission heard that the alleged victim reported the buttock touching to operational practice leader David Sherman immediately on June 4, 2021.

Mr Sherman told investigators that the alleged victim was “angry, jittery, upset and felt sick that she had been touched”.

The finding that the allegations of inappropriate workplace behaviour was substantiated was made by the department on November 16 last year after an investigation by the department’s professional standards unit.

“I consider the conduct that is alleged did occur, and that it was unwelcome and uninvited,” the department decision states.

The department told Ms Edgar that it was giving serious consideration to transferring her to another youth worker role within the Ipswich youth justice service centre, with up to $5,000 in relocation expenses, the commission heard.

No decision has yet been made with respect to the imposition of the proposed disciplinary action, the commission heard.

Ms Edgar was also accused of calling her colleague “bub”, but this accusation was not upheld with the departmental manager accepting Ms Edgar’s explanation that she calls people by the “rural colloquialism” of bud, short for buddy.

She explained to the internal investigators that she “call peopled Bud or Matey due to living in rural” areas and she was “horrified” that the complainant thought she was “referring to her as bub and more so that it made her uncomfortable”.

Ms Egar told the internal department investigation that the allegations and decision to suspend her had been “devastating” and hurt her mental health.