My good friend at work is dating a guy that is also a coworker and at first I thought this guy was pretty cool.
As it turns out, he’s batshit insane and a horrible human being.
It has come to my attention recently that he had been spreading rumors and information about me and sexual identity (Bi), outing me in order to manipulate the work place into being “against me”. Including outing me to close work friends of mine that I was keeping that part of my life private from out of fear of losing their friendship.
I have already gone through HR, and that employee is currently being investigated, but the more I find out, the worse it gets.
This guy has been threatened by my friendship with his girlfriend, my close friend who I have known longer than him, and without either of our knowledge, he installed a spy app on her phone which gave him access to every text, snap, instagram, Facebook, phone calls, and even what she does online. I know this because she came to me saying her phone was acting up, and me being ex-IT, found the app he installed on her phone.
Recently I just heard from another coworker that he has been telling people of my gay sexual relationships which I do not recall ever telling him. He has also told coworkers about things I have texted her verbatim, so I am starting to think that he may have possibly gathered information about my sex life through text messages to her, without either of us knowing he could read them, and has been telling my other work colleagues.
I know this guy isn’t coming back to the work place, but I feel so crossed that I’m not sure even that’s enough. I want to know if, because he obtained that information illegally, I could file a lawsuit against him as well.
I have felt so violated all this week because of this guy, someone who I thought I was friends with and even defended at times, stabbed me in the back and did this horrible thing to me.
Obviously this is lemmy and I don’t expect there to be any lawyers here, but do you think I may have a case?
You’re describing felony wiretapping. Go to the police.
Can you demonstrate a sound reasoning for having suffered damages in a quantifiable, monetary way? This isn’t always strictly necessary, but it sure is helpful. Hurt feelings are great and all, but they generally aren’t worth monetary compensation on their own.
This also, of course, depends on the local laws wherever you live, and can vary considerably.
I don’t really want money or compensation, I just want to make him regret everything he’s been doing to not only me, but also his girlfriend. I know that may sound immature, or silly, but it’s personal for me now. But I understand if I can’t sue for monetary reasons. I just can’t live with letting someone using personal information that I shared with someone else as a weapon against me. Especially something I try to keep private.
I believe the person commenting is trying to establish if you have “standing” by the legal definition. If no harm/damages or potential harm/damages can be proven, most judges will not hear a case per lack of standing.
Gotcha that makes sense
Unless, of course, you’re the state of Missouri suing the white house
In which case the laws no longer apply. Thanks Supreme Court!
That’s difficult, as that’s the job of the criminal justice system as opposed to the civil, which is more for rectifying wrongs with money. You could potentially file charges if what he did is illegal in your jurisdiction.
Just to re-iterate, laws are different in different places, as well, which limits any advice we can give. Not just a little different, but very different. While I understand not wanting to divulge personal details online, this is as far as we can go.
Gotcha thank you I will try and see if I pressing charges are even an option.
np. If what he did was genuinely illegal under some law of your land, whether country or state/province, you would simply go to the police and file the charges. Taking it from there becomes their job. Which they don’t always do, but that’s a different topic entirely.
Good luck.
Don’t ask police or friends or even an attorney. Ask your local version of legal aide. This is basically what they do.
Wait, your friend is still dating them? Wtf?
Yes. They live with them and has her kid living there so she’s scared to do anything.
If you take action against him, is he likely to take it out on your friend? If she can’t leave him, that might inform your decision.
Why doesn’t your “friend” stick up for you to this asshole? If legal routes don’t work, you can always find some sort of petty revenge to make his life a living hell. If you’re into that kind of thing.
It seems pretty clear the friend is in an abusive relationship, so it really isn’t that simple. The comment you’re replying to literally described how their friend felt unsafe taking any action, especially with her child living there, so I think that’s your answer.
You are correct. Thank you for holding me accountable. Sometimes I can be shortsighted, as it is human nature, and not consider the whole story. Sorry OP for coming off as a dick. I am empathetic to your situation and I hope you find some justice and your friend and her child can find a way to leave safely.
You don’t know the home situation, they literally just said their friend was scared.
The only thing you can do in court is file a lawsuit against him. The courts are split into two halves: Civil court, which is where you sue people, settle divorces, file evictions, etc… And criminal court, which is where the state files criminal charges against people. Any kind of criminal court action would need to be filed by the state. Or more specifically, it’s filed by the attorney general on behalf of the state. Regular citizens can’t file in criminal court.
You could potentially a restraining order or order of protection against him if you can prove that he’s harassing you. In fact, a lawyer may suggest you do exactly that simply to get him to chill out while the civil case proceeds. But that will need to be backed up by actual proof, and hurt feelings aren’t enough to justify it. You’ll need to prove a repeated pattern of harassing behavior, that you’ve asked him to stop, and that the behavior is negatively impacting your day-to-day life in a meaningful way.
you want a publicly funded entity to enforce a personal grudge? yes this definitely does sound immature.
Or they want a publicly funded entity to enforce stalking laws against somebody who may have committed an actual crime and invasion of privacy.
This sounds like stalking tbh. Maybe you can report this to the police?
This. People this controlling and with this little regard for other people’s rights and boundaries tend to react extremely poorly to having their control challenged. The most dangerous time in any abusive relationship is when the victim leaves-- and make no mistake, OP, that’s what’s happening to your friend. Escalation to physical violence in these circumstances would not be out of the ordinary.
Please be careful, and make sure your friend has a plan to make sure she’s in a safe place where her soon-to-be-ex can’t get to her before she breaks up with him. And I would strongly recommend you both get a restraining order if that’s something you feel comfortable doing.
I know this may sound paranoid, but it’s always best to err on the side of caution in potentially dangerous situations like these.
I have been someone affected by a situation like this in my childhood. My dear friend was kidnapped and murdered by her mothers controlling ex boyfriend, so this type of situation hits me personally. I have decided I am going to talk to a lawyer and contact the local police. I may also ask my friend if she would like me to file a restraining order for her to get him out of the house if she wishes. But no. With my history, if anything were to happen to her or her son and me knowing I had the chance to possibly stop it, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. Thank you everyone for all the help and advice. I honestly didn’t have anyone else to go to with this situation.
That should absolutely constitute a stalking charge at the very least. But I recommend talking to a lawyer to be sure about what you can or can’t do legally.
Pull android logs (logcat tools/android debugging)
Find the date and time of the package being installed
Correlate the install time with where they were at that time
Use that information to get an anti stalking order
Contact your local District Attorney to see if they can assist with a wiretapping filing
It’s also wiretapping, and possibly hacking. Big big felonies. The latter being against federal law. Might want to talk to the FBI
I doubt they will find anything in the logs. It is overwritten over time, and it is also lost when the phone is rebooted. Might still be worth checking, but yeah… check the date of the oldest message.
Finding when was that app installed would be a good idea, as that is stored persisently (e.g. you can check it with App Manager), but not after it has been uninstalled.
I’m not a lawyer and you should go talk to several. Most states have several ways to find lawyers. If you have any friends who are lawyers, describe this to them and ask if they can refer you to anyone. Every state in the US has a bar association. Their websites have search engines for all the lawyers licensed to practice in their state. Make appointments with a few of them. You don’t have to pay for the initial consultation. You explain the circumstances and they tell you what your legal options are and what it will cost you. Pick which ever one you want to work with (if any).
Talk to them about this but here’s my basic understanding of how it breaks down.
There are basically two avenues; criminal and civil.
In order for there to be a criminal prosecution, they would need to have broken some law and it needs to be bad enough that a government attorney is willing to spend their time going after it. There are a whole bunch of federal laws around phones and telecommunications. You’re probably familiar with a bunch of them from your IT work. Chances are pretty good that they broke some law. If you give the police your evidence they may care enough to go after it.
In order for there to be a civil suit, they need to have done something that harmed you, in a quantifiable way and they need to have done it in an illegal way. This does seem like their methods met the threshold. The harder part might be establishing harm. Feeling violated is hard to quantify, unless there’s some statutory compensation. If you can point at something like lost wages or lost economic opportunities it’s probably stronger.
You didn’t say where you’re from? Is this the Great Britain? Norway? Maybe the US?
That reminds me of the time a young lady asked, in a very US centric sub, about how to get away from her abusive parents and how to legally keep them out of her life.
The only problem was she forgot to mention she lives in like Iran… So yeah when that piece of information came out the advices change quite quickly.
Yeah, it can get confusing at time. I was hoping we’d get rid of some of the US-defaultism that used to roam Reddit :P
US
Talk to your union representative, but looks like you’re being harrassed by a coworker, so yes you can press criminal charges and/or sue them civilly
That is some crazy f’d up stuff. Hopefully your friend steers clear, this is the largest red flag ever.
You can sue over anything, sure, but if you’re really considering it, you’re better off waiting for HR to finish its investigation. If it comes out in your favor, you can use that to bolster your position; if it doesn’t, then you may want to rethink filing. Let somebody else’s money do your litmus test.
Fuck yeah, you can sue anybody for anything in the US. Doesn’t mean it’ll work out well for you though. Talk to a lawyer.
Are you in the U.S.? If so, I would seek legal counsel. Creating a hostile work environment is illegal: https://www.eeoc.gov/harassment
Looks like the best answer is to seek legal counsel, talk to an actual lawyer. Also, grab as much evidence as you can of those wrongdoings, as they always make a stronger case than witness testimony.
If I were you, I’d just write them off as absolutely crazy and move on. Not worth your mental energy anymore.
edit: to answer the question, gotta find a way to quantify your pain in monetary impact, but I don’t think it would go far.
