K J v British Council: [2026] EAT 46

“Deeply flawed… perverse and unreasonable… inexplicable and entirely unsustainable”  The workplace investigation that blamed the victim says the EAT

KJ, a teaching centre cluster lead based in Morocco during the Covid lockdown, was sexually harassed and stalked by Tony Reilly, the British Council’s most senior person in the country and 27 years her senior. She raised concerns informally in December 2020 and lodged a formal grievance in June 2021. The Council’s Speak Up Committee upheld the harassment complaint but rejected the allegation of sexual harassment, concluding KJ had been flirting and was partly responsible. She resigned in November 2021. The Employment Tribunal upheld her claims for constructive unfair dismissal, direct sex discrimination, and harassment, and earlier this year the EAT confirmed the tribunal’s findings on jurisdiction.

Employment Judge Shore’s criticisms of the investigation are striking.
The tribunal called the process “deeply flawed” and the Speak Up Committee’s findings “perverse and unreasonable.” Its conclusion that there had been no unwanted sexual advances, despite two admitted instances of unwanted physical touching, was “inexplicable and entirely unsustainable.”

Specifically, the tribunal found that:
– The investigation ignored the Council’s own policies, ran on a “confused remit,” and relied on a “biased and unfair” HR summary. HR then rewrote the investigator’s report in ways that “watered down” his findings, and never told him what the panel had done with his work.
– The panel “erroneously and inappropriately attributed blame and responsibility” to KJ for Reilly’s conduct, dismissing his behaviour as having been encouraged by her. In doing so, it implied that a woman who flirts gives consent to be harassed, stalked and assaulted until she withdraws that consent in writing.
– The panel “justified and romanticised” Reilly’s behaviour by describing his messages as having “the tone of a spurned lover trying to understand where things went wrong.”
– Reilly’s mental health was given greater weight than KJ’s, with one HR manager emailing him to sympathise that the process must be “distressing for everyone involved, especially you.”
– Reilly was not suspended on the basis that there was “no safeguarding risk,” a decision the tribunal called unjustifiable and for which no explanation was ever given.

You don’t often hear such damming findings or such poor investigating. Policies count for nothing if the people running investigations do not know them, do not follow them, or treat the complainant as the problem to be managed rather than the person to be protected.

K J v British Council [2026] EAT 46

The full judgment can be read here