Preamble
The following document is to accuse Mr Patricius Johannes Robertus Franssen, born March 12th 1955 in Heerlen, The Netherlands, of sexual harassment at the workplace.
Recollection of Events
The incident occurres on October 5th, 2016. The victim, let’s call her Susan, is 21 years old at the time and has been working with The Green Lion since 11 Months.
As she explaines later, an important emotional factor was the distance to her own father. Mr. Franssen had assumed the role of a replacement father figure for her. She is feeling calm and safe in his presence and trusts him strongly.
The incident takes place at the main office of The Green Lion in Singburi, Thailand.
The office is part of Mr. Franssen’s house, staff accommodation surrounds it. The common eating area where food for staff would be served is just outside Mr. Franssen’s house.
At the time of the incident most other colleagues staying in the accommodation are not present.
In the morning of October 5th Mr Franssen calls the victim to his house to discuss her work. He gives her compliments and offers her a raise (which then didn’t happen for months). Later that day he joins her for a meal. This was unusual as he never before nor after had eaten with the team at the accommodation, except for official events. No other people are present at the time.
Mr. Franssen brings along a bottle of wine and encourages the victim to drink. He dares her to down a glass in one. They have a good conversation. When she gets up to wash her dishes, he gets up as well, approaches her, touches her buttocks and attempts to kiss her.
As the victim describes herself later on, she feels emotionally confused. Due to him being a father figure for her, she feels emotionally very close. In the moment it takes her a second to conclude that her attraction to him is not a romantic one. She then withdraws from the kiss and goes to her room where she starts contacting me.
Records of Events
When the incident occurred I was not in Thailand and wouldn’t be back for a few months.
In the night of October 5th, 2016 the victim messaged me and asked for a call. We were on the phone for about 5 hours, again and again talking about what just happened to her.
Given that Mr Franssen was about to retire and I was to be part of management that would take over the company and steer it into a different direction, I asked the victim not to harm the reputation of the company due the behaviour of a single individual. She agreed and refrained from making the case public at the time. Looking back this was wrong of me. Nobody should be allowed to get away with violating other people’s personal sphere and emotional self like that.
During the following weeks we kept talking a lot on chat and on the phone almost every night.
The more the victim thought about the events, the more it affected her that she almost had given in to him. During the upcoming weeks and months that would make her question her choice of sexual partners again and again.
‘Abuse of power’ might be a strong term, yet it describes pretty accurately what had happened. Mr Franssen had intentionally played her emotions by complimenting her work and offering more money, which then did actually not happen for months. He abused the fatherly feelings she had for him and that an individual of his age and maturity should be able to clearly identify as such. He then lowered her resistance with alcohol.
All these steps coming together show that Mr. Franssen had planned the incident and this was far from a casual misreading of the victim’s sexual intentions.
From then on even standard work conversations became awkward. Given that Mr. Franssen never again brought up the incident, never apologized and never cleared the air, this burden kept weighing on the victim.
In the above case we had the opportunity to get a recognized blogger to visit some of our programs if we paid for the flight. The victim didn’t want to approach Mr. Franssen about this though.
About 3 weeks after the incident, rumors started spreading among staff. The victim had supposedly had intercourse with further staff members.
During this time, the victim got more and more isolated. The rumors about her prevented her from seeing other male staff members after work and she increasingly isolated herself in her room. To the point where the housekeeper would come to her room to bring her food.
We spent many hours on the phone during that time while I tried to help her process the events.
Yet, what came back to haunt her again and again was the fact that she herself had almost given in to Mr. Franssen’s attempt.
The promised raise did not happen for another 4 months. The official version was that Mr. Franssen expected the victim to follow up on this, which is an unusual workflow for salary increases and abused the fact that the victim did not feel like talking to Mr. Franssen about this:
And when it finally did happen, it was far from substantial:
While this might have been an honest mistake it rather underlines the suspected intentional emotional manipulation.
When in early 2020 Mr. Franssen came back from retirement to lead the company again and I raised a red flag with colleagues about the incident, on February 4th 2020 I received the following personal threat:
If he knew he was innocent he could have reacted in a more controlled way. Instead threatening to cause problems for me appears like an attempt to silence me. Once I made clear to him that I had complete written account of the incident, he suddenly went from denying the incident and calling it ‘ridiculous and nonsensical stories’ to full-on admitting it while acting as if it was the most normal thing to do.
Read the conversation protocol or my diary chapter in which I have this talk with Patrick.
Susan eventually left The Green Lion in late 2017 when Patrick’s son Emile laid her off with a single day advance and unwilling to pay her severance, which by law would be required. But that’s a whole different story.
The Green Lion Diaries 