Friday - March 20, 2009

false accusations of racism and religious discrimination at a primary school dominated by Muslims

I’m damn sorry she didn’t get a million. And I wonder if any of the jerks who didn’t support her got the sack.  Yeah. Don’t hold your breath.

Last post for the evening and will leave you with what I think is a very interesting story, but it won’t surprise any of our BMEWS regulars.
Shouldn’t surprise anyone else either.

This crap will continue at great cost till there are none of these left in our midst.  Or at least so few that they no longer present a problem to the rest of the civilized world.  And that won’t be in my lifetime.

A headteacher whose health and career were ruined by false accusations of racism and religious discrimination at a primary school dominated by Muslims has won £400,000 in damages.

By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 7:30PM GMT 19 Mar 2009

The High Court agreed that the Surrey County Council was negligent in not stepping in to support the head teacher

Erica Connor was forced into early retirement through stress after governors at New Monument School in Woking turned her into a scapegoat by claiming she was Islamophobic.

But the local education authority failed to help her as its “excessively tolerant” officers were more worried about complaints to the race equality watchdog than her suffering.

ACTUAL PHOTO OF A COUNCIL MEMBER

The High Court agreed that the Surrey County Council was negligent in not stepping in to support the headteacher, and ordered it to pay £407,781 in compensation. This includes damages for psychiatric injury, loss of income and pension, medical expenses and the premature end of the career she loved.

As she left court, Mrs Connor, 57, said: “The last five years have been a long haul at great personal cost to myself and my family, so I am thrilled that justice has prevailed.

“It is so unfortunate that matters have taken so long to resolve and at such a financial cost, but I finally feel vindicated in terms of the accusations of racism and Islamophobia against myself.

“For a protracted length of time I was subjected to dreadful pressure from a small group of individuals, unrepresentative of the local community, without the support I would have expected from Surrey County Council.”

The court heard that in 1998 Mrs Connor took over the school – where up to 85 per cent of pupils were Muslim and 90 per cent spoke English as a second language – and test results improved “very considerably” for the first few years.

However in 2003 two new members – Paul Martin, a parent governor, and Mumtaz Saleem, a nominee of the local education authority – joined its governing body and tried to take it over.

(KNOW YOUR ENEMY. THEY’RE NEVER FAR AWAY AND BELONG TO THE ROP LIKE MR. MARTIN, MENTIONED HERE.)

The judge, Mr John Leighton-Williams, QC, said: “I am satisfied that they sought to monopolise governors body meetings with a view to imposing their own agenda and were prepared to do so regardless of the interests of the school and anyone who resisted that agenda.”

While clearing Mr Saleem of harassment, the judge added: “Mr Saleem’s approach extended to offensive verbal attacks at governing body meetings.”

He said it was “not unreasonable” for Mrs Connor and the school’s staff “to consider that there was an agenda to convert New Monument to an Islamic faith school”.

Eventually Mr Martin was voted off the “dysfunctional” governing body but claimed he had been “removed for blowing the whistle on institutional racism” and “cited an old school document with pictures of seven children, only one of them dark-skinned”, the court was told.

An anonymous petition was circulated, “attacking Mrs Connor falsely and in vituperative terms”, it was claimed.

However the council failed to intervene or spot that Mrs Connor, who now lives in Abergavenny, was at risk of suffering stress. She was forced to take sick leave in late 2005, never to return.

The judge said that instead, council officers had shown “excessive tolerance” towards the two governors and displayed “misplaced sympathy for Mr Martin”, fearing that they were at risk of a complaint to the Commission for Racial Equality.

He added: “The lack of timely intervention in the governing body meant that Mr Martin’s and Mr Saleem’s conduct there had the effect of tearing apart the governing body.

“And these matters, together with poor response by the council, had as their effect two years of anxiety and low morale for the school staff, stress leading to a need for early retirement in some staff and Mrs Connor and disruption in the local community with, on the evidence, little, if anything, positive to show for it.”

ARTICLE SOURCE, TELEGRAPH

In the world we live in today, if we can cut the PC crap for a minute, it would be entirely unreasonable and unrealistic for a person NOT to be,
Islamophobic!

Of course we are, and with damn good reason.

Definition, “PHOBIA”

Posted by peiper     on 03/20/2009 at 02:05 PM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life • Education • RoPMA • UK •  
• Comments (5) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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