Dianne Jolley guilty of sending knickers and threats to herself
A UTS professor has sensationally been found guilty of staging a bizarre hate campaign against herself costing the university thousands of dollars to protect her.
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A UTS professor has sensationally been found guilty of staging a bizarre hate campaign against herself costing the university thousands of dollars to protect her.
It took a jury of six men and five women three days to find the former dean of science, Dianne Jolley, guilty of sending herself a barrage of fake abusive letters, which caused her employers to fear for her safety, between July 2019 and November 2019.
The 51-year-old was also found guilty of dishonestly causing the university to pay $127,000 in security to protect her.
The jury accepted beyond reasonable doubt that Jolley sent herself 10 “creepy” letters, including a picture of her face with a red cross through it and letters containing her underwear, with a note saying: “I know what you wear.”
The jury foreperson told the NSW District Court Thursday they agreed Jolley was guilty of all 11 charges against her.
She will be sentenced by Judge Ian Bourke SC in August.
Jolley cried while giving evidence to the court, describing the letters as “stalkerish”.
“It escalated when they came to my home. That’s when I really started to crack. I became paranoid and I was always looking over my shoulder,” Jolley told the court through tears.
But her crocodile tears did not fool the jury.
The jury found Jolley wrote a letter to herself found at the university on July 31, 2019, which read: “Chop our future, we chop yours”.
She changed her story three times, telling the security guard the letter was planted in her duffel bag, telling a police officer it was on her table among paperwork and telling the jury she found it during a meeting.
The jury accepted she sent herself a letter with a picture of her face with a red cross through it, inside a card which read: “You are so ignorant, I made you sick on July 4 and again on 23 July. You can prevent it.”
Jolley had told the jury she felt sick those two days and nearly fainted, with the Crown accusing Jolley she pretended to be poisoned.
The police officer who investigated the letter was “brushed off” by Jolley who said she had to attend a meeting when he tried to interview her, the court heard.
The jury found she sent herself a letter to the University of Wollongong, which read: “You are f***ed racist bitch. China hating lesbian. I watch you. You are not safe.”
She told the jury a student had collected the mail and handed her the letter, but later told the court she had found it.
The threats continued, with the jury finding she sent another letter that arrived at the university on September 5, 2019, and read: “Dedication ignored. Losing job. Life shattered. You know you did this. Building 7, level 7 15 ultimo (Jolley’s office).”
The Crown told the jury she sent the letter before she left the country on a work trip to China, so she had an alibi.
The jury accepted she staged a home invasion, cutting up her own clothes and leaving the threat: “I know where you live” on her car on September 16, 2019.
And that she sent a pair of her red underwear — she pretended were stolen during the home invasion — to the school with a card that read: “Sorry for your loss”.
Police who investigated this charge said Jolley was reluctant to give a statement.
Evidence in the trial included a video from Jolley’s Seaforth home from October 11, 2019 showing her walking down the driveway.
She told the court when she was not in sight she saw a man from her neighbourhood called, Jim and patted his dog.
“There’s no person called ‘Jim’. That was just made up by her,” Crown Prosecutor Roger Kimbell had told the jury.
She returned clutching a bundle of paper items, before scrunching up an envelope and throwing it to her dog several times.
The envelope contained a letter she found shortly after among the other items, which read: “I know where you work, I know where you live, I know what you wear, I know how you smell.”
The video showed her reading the letter then dramatically dropping it, before being consoled by her partner.
Forensic expert Chapisal Kong told the jury Jolley’s DNA matched a thumb print under a stamp on another envelope found by a colleague in the staffroom two weeks later.
The jury also found her guilty of sending herself the ‘Goodbye’ card, with a pair of her green underwear.
The only charge Jolley admitted to was writing herself the last card which read: “We have removed a dean before and we can do it again. You don‘t belong here. You are not wanted here. Either you leave or we will do it.”
But she said it was to break her contract, unable to handle the ongoing hate campaign.
She was arrested two days later on November 15, 2019.
Jolley was seen during the five-week trial smiling and looking confident as she entered and left the courthouse.
Judge Bourke directed the jury earlier in the trial to find Jolley not guilty of nine charges including sending letters to staff, which he said could not be proven on evidence before the court.
A phone recording between Jolly and her assistant Doreen Borg on November 16, 2019, the day after she was arrested, was also played to the jury.
She said she was “cracking under pressure”, made “some bad judgment calls” and sent two of the letters when she felt her support was “disappearing”.
“The thing that scares me is that I’ve been naughty twice and now I’m going to be accused of everything … there’s still some people out there doing the wrong thing,” Ms Jolley said.
Jolley’s barrister Leah Rowan argued her client was no “drama queen”, telling the jury there was no common sense reason she would behave as the Crown alleged.
“What possible reason could there be for a dean of science to send her underwear to herself through the mail. It is not just implausible, it is ridiculous,” she told the court.
Jolley formally resigned from her position in March 2020.
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