Undiagnosed Ptsd Due To Destruction Of 20 Yrs Of Work

[emory1857]

Hello,

I'm a professor who is suffering from PTSD due to work place bullying. I would appreciate anyone who knows of US court cases that might be relevant bringing it to my attention.

I had 20 years of past & on-going research & teaching deliberately thrown out by a faculty member whom I was forced to share my lab with several years ago. I was threatened with retaliation from above if I pursued a complaint and neither the chair of the department nor the VP of Research conducted an formal investigation of the incident. I received no compensation from the university or assistance in reestablishing my research or teaching materials.

This person was a personal friend of the then university President and the department was forced to hire this person under threat of several not-yet tenured faculty losing their positions if we did create a new position for this person. This individual's previous college (where he was a top administrator) settled $0.5 million in settlements to staff members who worked for him there for sexual harassment and retaliation, and he had "not renewed" his contract as part of the settlement.

I further more had to continue to share my lab space with this psychopath for another 18 months and an office suite for 4 years and when he finally moved out to his own lab space he took vital equipment and supplies leaving my lab virtually stripped of useful equipment. The department was finally able to get a new chair this fall and finally deny the person who destroyed my research tenure last month, but I am now facing termination proceedings related to my PTSD issues.

 

[angymac1986]

Sorry to here that mate. I really hate psychopaths, I am pretty sure I work with one too. He is very covertly aggressive though....its only because I know I can be paranoid that I gave him the benefit of the doubt for so long. Seen his mask slip loads of times and it was only when he said "I don't like being good...its more fun being evil!" that I started kicking myself. If I just trusted my instincts rather than the observational skills of others I would be in a MUCH better position than I am in now.

It is sad that you had to go through this for so long. Best thing to do with a psychopath is avoid them but sometimes that isn't possible...I am sorry you had to be in such close vicinity to him for that length of time. I ain't been seen by a therapist yet so don't know if I have PTSD but definatley have some form of anxiety disorder so can relate. This guy should've been stopped by somebody but the people who should've done something failed you...I can definatly relate to that.

 

[Diore]

Oh my... that's just terrible! I can't offer much more than sympathy personally, but I know there are others on the forum who are more knowledgeable. (Your best bet is to check and/or post on the [DLMURL="https://www.ptsdforum.org/c/forums/employment-education.23/"]Employment & Education board[/DLMURL].)

I have to say I feel for you. I shudder just to imagine losing 20 years of research, and I wish I didn't know what it's like to be jerked around by bureaucratic systems (or rather, by people who've hijacked them)...

I wish you all the best, and I hope the forum can help you!

 

[reallydown]

Welcome to the forum! I can't imagine what it's like for 20+ years of hard work and research to just...be gone like that, because of some a**hole...My computer crashed recently and I thought I lost my "book" (half-assed thing I've been attempting to write for the last 2-3 years) and I spazzed out completely (I was lucky in that not all was lost though) so on some small level I can relate...

I was going to go into academia but have since reconsidered. Granted, that's mainly because of my ptsd but also, in part precisely because of the politics and utter BS that you have to face...You'd think people who are that smart and that well educated would be above pettiness etc. Add to that the psycho dimension and it's at least 10x worse. Unfortunately, I am not aware of any cases etc but the above suggestion to try in the Education and Employment area is a good one. Good luck!

 

[Deleted member 1860]

I don't have any advice Re: legal proceedings here in the US, but with a bit of research, I'm sure you'll be able to find something.

Welcome to the forum!

Hugs,
SOL

 

[kayak]

Welcome. I am also an academic researcher, work in lab, and all that jazz. And while I don't have much advice for you on the professional front, I totally (totally) understand. The system is set up for bullying and there isn't much room for retaliation...at least not if you want a job. Anywhere. Your PTSD can be viewed as a disability, for which it would be illegal to terminate you. However, if you don't have a solid record of publications/tangible evidence of your productivity/good evaluations in the past, then they can certainly use that as grounds to terminate you. Assuming that you are not unionized faculty, your dean should be able (and required) to refer you to the appropriate people in HR and the university's lawyers to discuss your options.

That aside, I'm sorry about the bullying and PTSD. You have no idea how much I understand this. Hang in there.

 

[TLight]

I am so sure you are suffering anxiety, rage, etc.
But please, see a phychiatrist. As a sufferer of PTSD practically my entire life.....it really does entail life threatenting circumstances.

I'm sure it feels this way to you, so not minimizing. But let it go. Find peace in something else. Don't look back.
If this doesn't happen and your experiencing nightmares, flashbacks, triggers......I mean, as a sufferer for so many years I can tell you what it is about. After you come out of denial, it is a true brain disorder.

Seek a counselor, get a diagnosis.........if it isn't, thank your lucky stars. Trust me.

 

[Eleanor]

I had 20 years of past & on-going research & teaching deliberately thrown out by a faculty member whom I was forced to share my lab with several years ago. I was threatened with retaliation from above if I pursued a complaint and neither the chair of the department nor the VP of Research conducted an formal investigation of the incident. I received no compensation from the university or assistance in reestablishing my research or teaching materials.

I am an academic too - and I have to say that this is a massive failure on the part of your administration - that being said the other two legs of university power are trustees and faculty governance. They are where you must go. The key thing here is whether or not you have documentation of the communication from the chair and VP. Did they send emails? Or was it all verbal? Have you talked to whomever is in charge of faculty grievances? (the FACULTY member - not the administrators).

This person was a personal friend of the then university President and the department was forced to hire this person under threat of several not-yet tenured faculty losing their positions if we did create a new position for this person. This individual's previous college (where he was a top administrator) settled $0.5 million in settlements to staff members who worked for him there for sexual harassment and retaliation, and he had "not renewed" his contract as part of the settlement.

His history will be most helpful in convincing other faculty and a lawyer to help you.

I further more had to continue to share my lab space with this psychopath for another 18 months and an office suite for 4 years and when he finally moved out to his own lab space he took vital equipment and supplies leaving my lab virtually stripped of useful equipment. The department was finally able to get a new chair this fall and finally deny the person who destroyed my research tenure last month, but I am now facing termination proceedings related to my PTSD issues.

Glad the person is gone. NOW is the time for you to lawyer up. Universities are scared of lawyers. Find a really really scary one - they cost a lot and they are worth it. Kayak is exactly right - PTSD is a disability and if you can show it was a) caused by the university (and exacerbated by their negligence) you have a really nice case, and better than that you have a great negotiating stick in threatening to drag them all into court to sort it out. No administrator likes being a headline on the Huffingtonpost.com college section. Remember, negotiation is NOT science - it is about presenting scenarios to people who have interests they don't want disrupted. Decide what you want (a year off, refurbished lab, compensation whatever - tell the lawyer that's what you want him to get. A caution - HR will SOUND helpful, and will mean to be - but ultimately their interest is the university's. Get a good psychiatrist and trauma specialist.

Science doesn't teach people to stand up for themselves very well, if at all - it tends to reward compliance and being "a good soldier". But it looks like you've got a crash course ahead of you. Best of luck.

Wishing you peace, healing and a lot of backbone...

 

[Deaf Global Nomad]

Welcome to the forum, Professor!

In which country do you live?

Sadly and frustratingly, your story is not a single incident. This type of thing seems to happen quite regularly.

I do have some questions for you:
How can your teaching be thrown out? You have taught and have course evaluations. They are part of your CV as well as your departmental evaluations. Those should help you fight any legal battle.
Similarly, how can your past research be thrown out? You hopefully have research articles that you have published in the past also supporting you in court.
From you story it sounds like you have received tenure as well as departmental support. However, if all of this spiraled out of control (e.g. a snow ball effect) a while ago and you were not able to react "early enough", there should still be a progression of what happened.

I, too, am a researcher and course instructor within my department at the public university where I live. I can definitely relate to the politics that take place in academia. My situation is a little different, but the harm is the same. From personal experience, finding a lawyer within your university is not possible, as they only take cases not connected to the university. As soon as it connects to anything internal, they step back. At the same time you need someone who is familiar with university operations.

Best wishes!

 

[Eleanor]

Right, DGN, the university counsel (lawyer) will NOT be on your side emory....

 

[emory1857]

Sorry this is long but it is easier to just answer the questions in one post:
I'm in the US in a state that makes it illegal for state employees to unionize, so our faculty associations have very little power. I did attempt at the time to contact our faculty ombudsman but he was serving as the interim VP of research and ended up being one of those trying to cover up the matter. Our faculty senate had been dissolved by the system a few years prior when they tried to stand up to the "evil" administration, and what they replaced it with was a farce with no power. By the time I figured out I was being strung along and nothing was going to be done, it was too late to meet the very short timelines for filing state/federal complaints.

I tried to find a lawyer at the time to pursue it outside of the university, once I saw the university was covering it up, but couldn't find one to take it on contingency. They thought it would be too difficult to put a money amount on the loss for a jury to understand and the psychopath had so many on-going lawsuits at the time that even if we did win, we might never collect due to prior claims . I just didn't have the money to pay hourly fees with two preschool kids in daycare etc.

"Evil" president resigned less than a week after his best buddy was forced on us for good. I was in shock, but I also naively thought that once the "bad" administration was gone we could get someone to help, but they didn't. The interim president and VP's wouldn't get involved at all citing that is should be the "permanent administrations choice about how to handle it - so lets just wait and see who gets hired". When nearly two years later, we finally had what I thought was "good" new permanent administrators (new president, provost, and most deans replaced within 2.5 yrs) I assumed they would do something, but they just said "we need to put the past behind us" and nothing was done - except punish me for having a nervous breakdown over the stress of all this.

I'm at a smaller regional university and had taught at that time about 8-9 different courses (2-3 ea semester) graduate and undergraduate on a semi-regular basis. I also had course notes, materials for several courses I had taught at other places, prior to this university. The way our course scheduling ran meant that I might develop a course and then not get to teach it again for 3 or 4 years. Or I might find out on the first day of class that instead of teaching X, the chair might reassign me to teach Y class, because some other faculty member's class didn't have enough students to make, so the chair gave them my X class to make their load. For each course taught, I had a labeled box, such as "Intro Basketweaving" with my course notes, handouts, exams, textbooks, CD's, supplementary materials, examples of student work from major assignments and the student course evaluations, as well as ideas I might incorporate in future iterations of the course. A rough estimate is each hour of lecture takes 3-4 hours of new prep time a week, versus maybe 30 minutes of review & edit when I had my prior course materials.

In a similar way on research - I am a field based scientist, so no project ever really ends. I, or my students and I collect a great deal of data when in the field and then my students and I will chip away at a small part of this mass of data for an individual project or paper and save the remainder for future work. For example I may go collect and record usage of a large number of baskets and mats in a region over series of years. I might have published on mat usage at the time, but then one student may study evolution of patterns in the weaving in the baskets, while several years later another student will study basket weaving materials using this data; and maybe I will come back when some new technique is developed,and use that to identify mat & basket makers from DNA traces left behind. Psychopath just saw a box of old baskets and tossed it all. He had the nerve to suggest at one time that I could just order some new "baskets" from "walmart" and he would pay for them, if I needed baskets to replace what he threw out.

Most of the lost projects had many years worth of prior data collected often at great effort (& danger sometimes). Much came from sites that are now inaccessible/gone due to political/criminal activity, or actual destruction of the sites. My field notes, a great deal of specimens, raw data and processed data, and data analyses were destroyed. Without the specimens and field notes, most of the data already gathered for these projects is considered unpublishable, because other scientists cannot examine the original data. I had two very large "mothballed" projects, two fully active in-progress projects and two projects on which I had preliminary data gathered (both with funding grants in review) that were fully or largely derailed/destroyed.

 

[Eleanor]

Sorry to be slow responding Emory. I am truly overwhelmed by your loss. I feel much the same way (on a lesser, but more immediate scale) as I do when contemplating the destruction of the library at Alexandria.:cry: And in some degree of awe that you have gone on for these many years after it. You are in a tough position and no mistake. The destruction of traditional university governance mechanisms always yields stuff like this:(. Sorry you got caught in the fire.

You need a serious labor attorney to sue the University (sorry I wasn't clear before.) The idea is not to go to trial and win - the objective is to scare the crap out of them so that they give you what you want - but you need a scary lawyer to do it. If you have a standing diagnosis of PTSD you are asking for something that is clearly within your rights - "reasonable accommodation." You have a compelling and true story that makes them look stupid, evil, and incompetent. You are an historian (of some sort) so tell the story - then enlist the help of a communications or english person to make it pull at the heart strings. (and Document the hell out of it so an impartial person can tell you are telling the truth and not just a crank) Then have your lawyer deliver it to your university's PR guy, president, and chair of the board, with your list of demands. Threaten to publish, go on the lecture circuit, talk on tv. They'll negotiate.

Stay strong, and please be kind to yourself in your process of healing and processing all this trauma and injustice. Best wishes. - E