A civil servant who was awarded £250,000 after winning a legal dispute after being branded racist has said she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Anne Giwa-Amu, 59, was bullied by colleagues at the Department for Work and Pensions after she said it always rains in Wales.
Ms Giwa-Amu, who is mixed Nigerian and Welsh, joined the department as a full-time administrative officer in Caerphilly in 2017.
She won a won a race and age discrimination case this week after co-worker Daisy Cartwright abused her, and said she wants to leave home to escape more bigotry.
Anne Giwa-Amu, pictured, won her race discrimination case after being mocked for her daily ‘weather reports’, accused of stealing ice cream and criticised by colleagues for complaining about the cold, wet weather
Ms Giwa-Amu said she was ‘targeted’ as the only non-white recruit and trainee over the age of 50 in her team.
She said: ‘For me to be targeted because of the colour of my skin was quite a shock.
‘There’s a lot of ignorance about people of colour and it’s assumed they’ve come from somewhere else.
‘I’m Welsh and my mother is Welsh, my mother lives here and my grandparents are from here and as far as I’m concerned I’ve got every right to be here.
‘But I would like to move away,’ she told The Mirror.
An employment tribunal held in Cardiff found she suffered ‘deliberate and humiliating harassment’ and that other staff had deliberately created a ‘hostile environment’.
Daisy Cartwright, who was also a newly appointed administrative officer, told Ms Giwa-Amu – who graduated from the London School of Economics – that it was ‘racist’ to say it always rained in Wales.
She attacked Ms Giwa-Amu for always moaning about the weather and whenever she mentioned it would mock her by saying ‘[Anne] is giving her usual weather report.’
The tribunal heard Ms Giwa-Amu felt Ms Cartwright was trivialising discrimination by calling her ‘racist’ for moaning about the weather.
In front of colleagues, Ms Cartwright also repeatedly accused the her of stealing ice-cream.
During her time at the DWP office in Caerphilly, pictured, the 59-year-old, a qualified solicitor, was the only non-white recruit and the only trainee over the age of 50 in her team
The tribunal found that while this might have started as a joke, Ms Cartwright carried on ‘bullying’ Ms Giwa-Amu even after others asked her to stop.
In other peculiar antics, Ms Cartwright sprayed deodorant near Ms Giwa-Amu, knowing she hated it, and span around on a chair while sat next to her to try to make her feel sick.
Another co-worker, Robert Lewis, ‘humiliated’ Ms Giwa-Amu, described as a ‘quiet individual’, after he accidentally touched her bottom.
He said, in front of a large group: ‘I touched [Anne]’s bum. I touched her bum.’
Ms Giwa-Amu said the experience was ‘horrible’ and felt Mr Lewis was laughing about how ‘unpleasant’ it was to have touched her.
The tribunal found senior staff breached her confidence after she reported feeling ‘bullied’ by Ms Cartwright over her appearance.
Ms Giwa-Amu went on sick leave in March 2017 and was unlawfully dismissed in October that year for being unable to return to work.
She had been living on just £55 a week and had no money for food after her final pay cheque from the DWP was withheld.
Mr Lewis continues to be employed as an administrative officer at the Caerphilly Office while Ms Cartwright was promoted to a job in another part of the civil service.
After the ruling in November, a corrected judgement was made on Wednesday, which states that the DWP must pay £243,635 in compensation.
The tribunal concluded: ‘Ms Cartwright’s and Mr Lewis’s acts were undertaken in an insulting way deliberately intended to humiliate the claimant and create a hostile environment for her.’