OK, grab a cup of coffee and take a trip over to @highline...
We are LIVE with the story of Mike Picarella, a banker at HSBC who witnessed a woman being sexually harassed, reported it, and then had his life destroyed in the process highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/hs…
So this is a #MeToo story, but I started it well before Weinstein. It's also an unusual story. First of all, the harasser is a woman.
This senior manager at HSBC was using a female subordinate as flypaper to get clients and executives into social settings, offering her up sexually to them, and then spreading rumors about her sexual exploits around the office the next day.
Mike Picarella sat in between this senior manager and junior analyst, saw everything, and decided he had to do something.
So he reported the harassment. Within 2 hours the senior manager had heard about the reporting. Within 6 weeks the junior analyst was fired. For the next 3 years Picarella's life was made miserable.
He was assigned to a junior colleague as his new boss, gradually had all his work responsibilities stripped, was ostracized at the office, had people daily trying to catfish him (accusing him of tripping, stealing from their desk drawer!)...
Conveniently, this also sidelines Mike from his persistence in finding and trying to fix compliance errors at the bank, which he was always told not to escalate to senior executives.
Picarella sues HSBC for retaliation. He is terminated and can't get another job in the industry. He has a nervous breakdown. The litigation takes years.
Everything Mike believed was evidence of mistreatment, HSBC recast as proof of his cravenness. He didn't do any work because he was lazy. He reported sexual harassment because he was greedy.
The jury came back in two hours. They agreed Mike reported harassment and that he suffered a "material adverse employment action." But they bought HSBC's rap. They found the bank not guilty of retaliation.
The story is about what happens to a whistleblower, whether they report fraud or sexual misconduct, and how the system is set up to protect the firm at all costs.
It's quite a long story! But I hope you can check it out. highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/hs…
