The head of a law firm in north London who told a job candidate he was interviewing ‘mmmm, I like that I see’ has been ordered to pay almost £45,000.
Victor Nwosu, 48, informed the 22-year-old ‘I only employ beautiful women’ and asked whether she had a boyfriend, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal was told.
The candidate, who has a first-class degree and a masters, had applied to be a paralegal but was left sobbing after the traumatic interview. She said Nwosu ‘undressed me with his eyes’ and she ‘felt like a piece of meat’. She messaged friends afterwards:
He said I was beautiful. He told me that I have to wear skirts when I come into work, he doesn’t like it when women wear trousers.
The woman rejected his offer of a job at DCK Solicitors in north London and reported him to prevent other women being in a ‘similar position’. She told the tribunal:
The interview was quite traumatic for me, it was the first paralegal role that I had ever applied for. I felt so violated as he was in a position of power as I was in an interview… I went home and cried.
I felt that I could not go into the profession, I built up my hopes of what it would be like and it was crushing. I was not going to make a complaint as I thought he was in a position of power and no one would believe me. I was so horrified by how he behaved I felt I would be trading in my dignity to work there.
Nwosu, who denied all the claims, said he was happily married and called the case ‘female activism gone wrong’. Lol. He said (via Metro):
She has the power, that’s why I am here [because] she’s applied overt activism [and] I am the victim. She’s embarrassed me and brought me here, she has the power.
He said it would be ‘rude’ for the tribunal to believe the woman over him, ‘a solicitor of the Supreme Court’. Unfortunately for him, that’s exactly what happened and the SDT fined him £20,000 for his conduct and ordered him to pay £23,550 costs.
Obviously Nwosu’s behaviour wasn’t just gross and unprofessional, but seriously dumb as well. A lawyer who doesn’t realise that what he’s doing is illegal? A lawyer who didn’t consider this lady would immediately go to the employment tribunal after he was done ‘interviewing’ her? I guess he was just that arrogant that he thought he’d get away with it. Lesson learned!
For the time a guy tried to sue his Tinder date for refusing to have sex with him, click HERE. How do you think that one turned out?
