A London court has tossed a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by a female employee against her male superior, in which she alleged that his use of acronyms in emails was indicative of him romantically making a pass toward her.
Karina Gasparova was formerly a project manager at the London office of essDOCS, a global company that provides paperless trade solutions. As part of her lawsuit that was ultimately rejected by the London Central Court, she alleged sexual harassment, discrimination and unfair dismissal in relation to her communications and experiences with her boss, Alexander Goulandris.
Gasparova claimed that Goulandris “tried to chat her up” on work calls, would stare at her in a sexual manner, and expressed a desire “to engage in sexual acts,” according to reports from the BBC and other British publications.
Goulandris has worked at the company for over 18 years, most recently as a “co-head” focused on commercial aspects including business development, marketing and sales, according to the essDOCS website and his LinkedIn page.
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One Goulandris email, presented to the court as evidence, reportedly said:
Can you please complete the following:
The solution is currently used by xx Agris companies and yy Barge lines in corn cargoes in south-north flows in the ???? Waterways.
Gasparova, who did not retain defense counsel, claimed that the “xx” within said email referred to kisses; “yy” referred to sexual contact; and “????” was a coded way of asking “when she would be ready” to engage in sexual acts.
She also said that Goulandris renamed a work file with his initials “ajg” but insinuated that it was actually an acronym for “A Jumbo Genital.”
Gasparova, who submitted a formal grievance letter in April 2021 against Goulandris and resigned after it was rejected, told the legal panel that her former boss was “rich and powerful” and that a “man in his position would be too clever” to make any obvious sexual advances.
She had reportedly worked at essDOCS since November 2019.
“Our primary reasons for rejecting her account of events were that we considered her perception of everyday events was skewed,” employment judge Emma Burns said, according to The Independent. “She demonstrated a tendency to make extraordinary allegations without evidence, and she contradicted herself in a way that could not be attributable to a fallible memory.
“Ms. Gasparova interpreted entirely innocent work-related conduct, some of it accidental, by Mr. Goulandris as having a sinister intent.”
Gasparova was also ordered to pay 5,000 pounds (about $6,198) to essDOCS due to her failure to comply in time to parts of the tribunal’s procedures.
Newsweek reached out to Gasparova via Instagram and Goulandris via Twitter for comment. Newsweek also reached out to essDOCS and the London Central Court via email for comment.
A data study conducted by the House of Commons Library and the Liberal Democrats and published in October 2022 by the London daily newspaper Evening Standard found that one in five members of the United Kingdom workforce experienced at least one form of sexual harassment within a year of the study’s release—amounting to approximate 1.5 million employees making such complaints.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission found that almost half of reported incident cases resulted in the employer taking no action, minimizing the incident, or placing responsibility on the employee.
The U.K. government introduced legislation in July 2021 for employers to take proactive steps to prevent workplace sexual harassment, according to The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), an international professional human resources membership association, including making employers liable for failing to provide such assurances, as well as having to show that anti-harassment policies are in place along with up-to-date training regiments.
A section of the U.K.’s Equality Act, enacted in 2010, defines sexual harassment as “unwanted conduct specifically of a sexual nature or related to gender reassignment and has the purpose or effect of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for the complainant or violating his or her dignity.”
The data presented last October was hoped by the Equalities Office to facilitate new, additional measures regarding workplace harassment.