A healthcare manager who was sacked two days after accusing her boss’s husband of ‘sexual impropriety’ has won a £27,000 payout.
Amber Stoter was fired by Olinda Chapel-Nkomo on June 28, 2023 – just 48 hours after lodging a complaint against the CEO’s husband Tytan Nkomo.
She had only started working for care staffing company Gain Healthcare, in Bicester, Oxfordshire, just over 20 days prior.
The worker had reported Mr Nkomo for crude remarks about her making him ‘hard’, referring to her as his ‘property’ and claiming she was ‘like his girlfriend’.
Company director and founder Mrs Chapel-Nkomo called her into what was framed as a standard performance review to dismiss her shortly after.
It has now been concluded the businesswoman, who also has a large social media following, did so because she saw the allegations as ‘problematic’.
And Ms Stoter, who successfully sued for unfair dismissal, has also now won £26,948 in compensation as a result of the ruling at Reading Employment Tribunal.
Some 23 days after she started as a manager at the health firm, she had a discussion with her line manager Jessica Cannon on June 26, 2023.
She raised concerns about Mr Nkomo’s conduct, confessing he had been ‘sexually inappropriate’.
The tribunal said he occupied a management position – but noted this was disputed by Gain Healthcare, which claimed he was ‘not an employee’.
Ms Stoter said on one occasion, while she was in a car with him, he told her: ‘Don’t allow men to look at you like that, you are part of my property.’
This remark came after she had simply ‘half-smiled’ at a man.
Another time, she posted a picture on social media with a caption reading ‘working hard in the sun’.
He wrote a comment underneath it, saying: ‘That’s not the only thing you make go hard.’
Mrs Cannon had asked, during the conversation with her staffer, to see the messages Mr Nkomo sent.
But Ms Stoter said she could not display them as the app they had been sent on had a disappearing messages function so they had not been saved on her phone.
The line manager decided, following the discussion, Mr Nkomo should stop working from the office. The matter was not escalated any further after this.
But the next morning, against Ms Stoter’s wishes, Mrs Cannon spoke to Mrs Chapel-Nkomo about the issue.
She told the CEO ‘her husband had apparently sent inappropriate texts’ to the employee.
On June 27, Mrs Chapel-Nkomo told all managers via a WhatsApp group she was going to hold performance review meetings.
Ms Stoter was dismissed during her meeting with the company boss the next day.
This conversation was ‘heated’ and the employee became ‘distressed’, the tribunal heard.
She felt ‘ambushed’ in the meeting and told Mrs Chapel-Nkomo she had ‘done this because of what your husband did’.
In her dismissal letter, Gain Healthcare set out several reasons for Ms Stoter’s sacking.
This included how she had allegedly ‘been witnessed leaving our premises to frequent the neighbouring tanning studio during contractual working hours’.
She was also accused of sending an ‘excessive’ number of messages to colleagues on a WhatsApp chat, among other claims.
In her witness statement, Mrs Chapel-Nkomo said: ‘I dismissed her because of her exceptionally concerning and escalatory behaviour during my one to one with her.’
The tribunal said the matters raised by Ms Stoter in the meeting ‘involved a specific report of sexual misconduct, directed at a junior female employee by a male with senior status at work’.
They said the business deals with vulnerable clients and has ‘significant safeguarding responsibilities’.
It saw the judge uphold the employee’s claims of unfair dismissal on grounds of protected disclosures – and she also won a claim of victimisation.
Employment Judge Colin Baran said: ‘Overall, the Tribunal concludes that the principal reason for [Ms Stoter’s] dismissal by Mrs Chapel-Nkomo was the making of the protected disclosure about Mr Nkomo…
‘The Tribunal concludes that at the time of dismissal, Mrs Chapel-Nkomo knew of the fact and nature of the disclosure – reports of sexually inappropriate conduct by her husband Mr Nkomo towards [Ms Stoter], a new member of staff.
‘Such a disclosure, if properly acted upon, would have been problematic not just for [Gain Healthcare] but also for Mr Chapel-Nkomo personally.
‘The Tribunal finds that the reason given for dismissal was unsupported by other evidence and that serious matters reported in the disclosure were not looked into or addressed by [Gain Healthcare] once [Ms Stoter] was dismissed.’
The judge ruled Mrs Chapel-Nkomo sacked Ms Stoter ‘as a response’ to the reports she made about her husband.
He added she provided several ‘inconsistent’ explanations as to when she made the decision to dismiss the employee.
The tribunal said she did this in an attempt to ‘divert from the reality that [Ms Stoter’s] protected disclosure was at play when the dismissal meeting was convened’.
Ms Stoter previously told the Daily Mail the tribunal experience had been ‘stressful’ and she had struggled to find work since being sacked.
She said: ‘I represented myself at the hearing and it was difficult, but I had to stand up for myself. Maintaining one’s integrity is the best way.’
