Social worker tells how boss described her as ‘Miss Whiplash’

A female social worker has described how she was left mortified and upset when one of her local authority’s most senior figures referred to her as Miss Whiplash in front of male colleagues.
  The woman, identified only as Miss A, said she wanted the ground to swallow her up after Douglas Adams, 56, assistant director of children’s services at Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council made the sexually disparaging remarks in her office.

Mr Adams, who was sacked for gross misconduct in 2006, has also been accused of making inappropriate remarks to two other women in his department and breaching the confidence of a third.

Details of the exchange emerged at a hearing of the General Social Care Council, where Mr Adams faces becoming one of the most senior members ever struck off the social work register.

Miss A explained she had been talking informally with a group of male colleagues in her office in October or November 2005, when Mr Adams approached them and said: “I’m glad to see you’re not taking any stick of them.”

When a male colleague jokingly replied: “She never does”, Mr Adams said: “Oh yes I can see you in a Miss Whiplash outfit with high leather boots taking them [her male colleagues] in hand.”

Giving evidence at the disciplinary hearing in London Miss A said: “My reaction was that I became incredibly defensive. I think I said something like, ‘yes but they like that’, because I was so mortified.

“I just wanted the ground to open up and swallow me.”

She added: “We weren’t talking about anything in particular that could have led to it. It was highly inappropriate. Working in an office with a lot of men I have always prided myself on barriers in terms of things like racist and sexist language.”

Miss A said her male colleagues who had witnesses the incident had been as embarrassed as her.

“A colleague later referred to it as a tumbleweed moment, when you could have heard a pin drop,” she said.

It is alleged Mr Adams also complained to the same woman that a junior member of staff was “…completely off her head”, adding, “she’s having treatment as she’s trying for a baby and she’s all over the place”.

Miss A said she regarded this as a serious breach of the woman’s confidence.

At a Christmas meal in December 2005 Mr Adams also allegedly made a highly offensive sexual remark to another female member of staff.

Finally in April 2006, during a private conversation with a junior temporary member of staff, it is alleged he made a series of inappropriate remarks about the fact she was pregnant, advising her to have an abortion.

He is accused of telling he had noticed her breasts had got bigger; claimed her boyfriend was only using her for sex and that having a baby would result in her losing her figure and ending up with no job.

It was after these remarks he was sacked, prompting the other women to come forward.

Asked by the hearing’s chairman, Barry Picken, what Mr Adams had been like as a boss, Miss A conceded at times he had been “dynamic”.

But she added: “I did notice a turn over of staff, admin and secretarial from older more mature to very young staff, in their late teens or very early 20s. As an observation I thought it was a bit unusual.”

The hearing is expected to last three days.