It has been nearly three and a half years since I brought a claim against Stephen Derwent Griffiths and Melanie Mareuge-Lejeune-Lejeune. It was a short claim I filed myself and evidently it was not well written. The judgment that corresponds to that claim is here:
There are three more judgments under this claim. Their multiple reconsideration applications have not been published by the Tribunal presumably because the contents of them are embarrassing for these people.
None of these judgments or the later ones have much to do with the applications, what happened at the hearings or the facts of the litigation. They have been omitted and changed so much that a lot of the comments are not recognisable to me. But very consistently all of them protect these people from their own unreasonable conduct, illegal actions or outright lies. They also protect the professionals involved in these matters ie the representatives and the judges. Lastly the judgments protect the tribunals themselves. So everything is apparently either my fault or unexplainable. I have tried to appeal against these decisions and tried to correct them but it seems no one really cares about the rule of law while I have to live with all these insulting judgments, work and have a life. And instead of correcting them, each judge either repeated or built on the errors of the ones before them. Instead of correcting the mistakes made before they did more favours to these people who engaged with the judiciary behind the scenes while making more allegations against me in their booklet length emails.. They used the family proceedings of another former employer of mine who are extremely dishonest and have fraudulent practices too. They kept talking about my other claims as if they themselves are not the reason for all this mess.
This claim and the costs one for it are at the Court of Appeal stage. I am asking for permission to appeal against them. I am also appealing against the judgment which was the result of their applications. The lower courts lacked logic and accuracy despite my best efforts and I don't know if the Court of Appeal will see the extreme discrimination I suffered and if it will allow me to appeal or if it will be too concerned about my lay person application not using the legal language. That remains to be seen but I will start correcting and filling in the blanks myself to minimise the harm these judgments are causing me. The judgments are also misleading the public. Justice starts with facts.
I brought this claim on 29th of May 2018 after Mr Griffiths emailed me my revised payslips. He had not paid any income tax on my pay which had brought my gross below what we had agreed. During my employment he kept saying the payslips were wrong and had to be corrected. When he emailed them he had only corrected the first payslip to include the tax refund he had attempted to steal from me and had paid back later. I worked for these people for only five months and the first four months they did not pay any income tax on my salary. Mr Griffiths is a tax adviser and he had withdrawn my paid tax from my employment before them and paid me with that money. Yes, these people paid me with my own money. I talked to him and he paid it back and later he kept saying the following payslips were wrong because of this first mistake and would be corrected. They did not correct the pay or pay the income tax which meant I ended up owing the tax office. Yes, these people not only underpaid me, they left me with a tax debt. There are a lot of details and evidence around this matter but would be too long to recite them here. I will likely mention them later.
After he emailed me the revised payslips I checked the employment contract and I was shocked that the salary was wrong on it. On the day we signed it there was a lot of rushing around by them and switching papers. I had read the contract which Ms Mareuge-Lejeune had spent a whole month writing. It was similar to the draft she had sent me but stated the salary in yearly gross terms and had her name as Melanie Mareuge-Lejeune and his name was Steve Griffiths on it. I read it carefully despite the onerous nature of it and left it in the kitchen before going away for the weekend. Just before we signed it she went upstairs and came back with what I assumed were more copies. She wanted to backdate it to the date I started although I had been working for over a month by then. The contract I found in my possession before filing this claim is not what I read or thought was signing. It has the wrong salary and this amount is neither what was on the original contract, not the amount mentioned in emails or the corresponding amount of gross to net. It was even lower than the net they actually paid and they claimed they had paid me above this ridiculous amount that was on the contract. So not only they stole my wages to below Minimum Wage and left me with a tax debt, they claimed they had been generous because the signed contract contained an amount which was below all of these calculations. They didn't care a bit about the contract not abiding with the legislation.
Well, you see apparently these people signed a form for their payroll company saying they didn't have to pay me Minimum Wage because I was to be treated as part of their family. I find this whole thing to be an insult for many reasons. First of all , I was not looking for a family. I am very professional and do not confuse between my private life and work. They head hunted me on a website. Secondly, they were extremely unpleasant to put it mildly. If you read the contract mentioned in the judgment you will see that it's a slavery contract. The original contract was only slightly better than this one. I worked to this contract for five months mostly for the sake of their children and a few more reasons I may mention later on. What these people did was to offer a higher salary, free accommodation and some other expenses and give this contract you have to fullfil only to slash it all behind your back by not paying income tax. And to cover themselves they sign a form to claim they are treating you as family without you even knowing about it. Mr Griffiths even used his full legal name on this form. So they used their legal name when it's to protect them from a legal requirement but a made up name when it's a liability, ie in the contract. I knew her name was always Melanie Mareuge-Lejeune but didn't know what his real name was until the hearing on 28th of November 2018. He speed spelled his first name as Steve three times at that hearing. I was puzzled and I am sure the Judge noticed the discrepancies well before I did. I do believe they changed the names on the contract to confuse me if and when I took them to Tribunal and also to use it as a method of anonymising themselves as these are simply not what their legal names are. The names Steve and Melanie Griffiths are very common names and after her legal name was mentioned in a costs reconsideration judgment they have complained many times that their legal names are rare in comparison.
Soon after they received the claim notification they applied for a strike out of my claim and sent in a medical report for Ms Mareuge-Lejeune. This report had been obtained on the morning of 7th of August 2018 which was the day they received the notification. The report mentioned her pregnancy therefore I assume it was a coincidental routine appointment. It was printed at 11:00 am but made claims that her long term health had been affected by this claim. I am assuming the professional who wrote it only repeated what they were told. Some of the claims mentioned in the report were about others who have nothing to do with this litigation. The details were such that they would have been included in such a letter only to elicit pity and kindness. I happen to think it was distasteful to try to make allegations about the health of others in a report that she later sent to the Tribunal. I will not mention those people or what she claimed about them. The purpose of the medical report was to strike out my claim based on the employer's pregnancy. The Tribunal wrote soon after and said it was listing my claim as a "wage only" claim. You will see from the details of the later judgments that it should have been listed as many more things.
On this first day Ms Mareuge-Lejeune apparently also reported me to the Police. They apparently reported me many more times and sometimes with another former employer of mine whom I had called a children's charity to discuss their children's predicament. They have collaborated and helped this set of employers since and there is a judgment for my claim against them too. That judgment also leaves out facts therefore is extremely misleading. Nevertheless Ms Mareuge-Lejeune and they lied for each other regarding my claims and also in family court. The Tribunals protected both these sets of employers to the degree that they caused more harassment and victimisation to me. I will explain these matters another time. For now the relevant bit is that these two sets of employers reported me to the Police for bringing claims against them or because they claimed they were offended by my efforts to particularise my claims. Apparently they reported me many times, at the same time to be more believable and even in the morning when I had a preliminary hearing. Imagine having to deal with this kind of behaviour for bringing a claim after they deceived you, lied to you and treated you badly. That's what I have been dealing with while trying to continue a private and professional life.
On the following day, 8th of August 2018 Ms Mareuge-Lejeune started contacting all former employers on my CV. I am so glad I didn't include all of my former employers on that CV. I found out that she called and emailed five of the employers asking for anything negative about me. She told them that I was applying for a job. Later she tried to argue those lies were a Freedom of Information request or that the other employers were to blame for giving her any information. I don't know how she contacted the above employer as they are both not explaining it. Their names were not on my CV but she admitted to have traced them from the information that was on my P45. The other employer had put me on the payroll as a personal assistant but I was in fact a nanny. They have a lot in common with the Griffiths/Lejeune but also some differences. Their children, some of whom I looked after are precious and I did not mention their names to the Griffiths/Lejeune or put on anything. These people seem to think I was hiding something when it was only respecting the rights of children. Ms Mareuge-Lejeune made many allegations against me because I didn't tell her confidential information about the other employer. She even had the cheek to say I misrepresented myself whilst she was relying on the lies from the other employer. Luckily there are emails in which she is trying to elicit information out of me and later claims things happen when she realises I was not going to tell her. Both sets of employers used my respect for boundaries and confidentiality against me openly and behind the scenes. I cannot even use the available evidence for my new claim because obviously Ms Mareuge-Lejeune misuses information for her benefit as demonstrated by her behaviour so far.
Anyway, going back to the details of this claim that should have been in the judgment: After the strike out and costs threats I wrote to the Tribunal challenging what was in the medical report and drew attention to the date and sent some emails trying to detail my claim. Griffiths/Lejeune's then representatives DWF emailed and demanded I should not say anything that may offend them and that my emails should be struck out. We had lost a family member at that time and I didn't get any advice regarding the claim. A trainee solicitor told me that I could apply for a postponement and I followed this advice. Ms Mareuge-Lejeune sent another medical report to oppose the postponement. The Tribunal turned the hearing into a case management hearing instead to which both of these people attended booted, suited and heavily pregnant. Ms Lejeune was angry and pulled their representative to the back of the room to instruct him. Mr Griffiths lied about the amount they had already paid me and Mr Parmar who was representing them was rude when talking about our funeral. They made all possible costs applications against me and asked for an 'unless order' and made a deposit application. The claim had been reduced to a wage only claim by then which meant they owed me about £700-£900. Their stance and hatred was simply so disproportionate, I did not understand it. I did not know she had done all those above acts either. I did not know they had lied to their payroll company either. They also pretended all along that they were paying their own legal expenses which didn't make sense. She also got angrier when Judge Welch appointed them to prepare the hearing bundle. They later misused this duty by leaving out my evidence whilst involving pages off the internet which I believe was environmental abuse. Apparently they were trying to smother the important evidence among those stupid pages.
They were so openly antagonistic I ended up hiring a solicitor who not only didn't help but was actively harmful to my claim. I think like many others his priority also was to help DWF to keep the legal fees which was paid by a 'high net' insurance. The legal fees paid to DWF, which these people wanted me to pay them later on amounted to nearly £40 000. It is clear that they should never have accepted this claim considering the facts. But once paid many legal professionals made it their duty to help DWF keep it at my expense. DWF apparently paid the Griffiths/Lejeune compensation for the mistakes they made. So everyone made money from this insurance and they came to the Tribunal later on asking me to pay another £40 000 for bringing a Minimum Wage claim they had lost, while acting illicitly repeatedly, while harassing me and victimising me. They claimed they had been too offended by my emails which they wanted to strike out, which led Judge Welch to ask me to limit what I said. They were very upset that there was a £20000 cap as they wanted the full amount. In terms of those comments and emails: I later found out she had used them to help my other employer. So these people limited my claim by being offended, went elsewhere and apparently alleged that I had withdrawn some of my claims. Obviously they argued that if the Judge limited my comments that was an acknowledgment that I had been very very bad and wanted everyone to believe and accept that my comments were 'unfounded'. My comments were all true and are provable. But by all this twisted method they benefited from them and wanted to milk them further. The Tribunal allowed these people to behave in this manner for over three years, initially out of kindness, later because of their numerous complaints and later again because they used the other employers' family proceedings against me. The Judgement in question leaves out what happened, the details of the claim and wants the reader to believe it was a difficult decision to make. I believe she wrote it in this way to protect DWF because they had truly been very unprofessional and obviously had lied to the insurance company about the details of the claim. She thought she was gifting the Griffiths/Lejeune by shielding their legal names and also deducted my wages further by applying accommodation offset despite the fact she was going to award me the gross amount. She was worried about their complaints but thought they would understand the gifts and go away. She mentioned the 'other consequences of not paying Minimum Wage' to their barrister. What she meant was that they could be referred for prosecution, fined and also their names would be put on a 'name and shame' list. Of course Griffiths/Lejeune did not care about any of this and proceeded to make reconsideration applications which most people would find embarrassing. Not only what they said was contrary to their own evidence and witness statements, they were asking me to pay them for the food their children ate, the stamps I put on their letters, the meat they ate.
At the same time a lot of what I said also was left out of the judgments or twisted to make me look silly or unreasonable. She says I found it difficult to accept the deduction of accommodation offset. My argument was that the accommodation was offered free and that I was not staying in their house on weekends. Also the house was in a terrible state and I had never changed my address to theirs. I had evidence showing that during this employment I had another address. I argued I should not have to pay accommodation offset which is in effect rent. This was in fact a reconsideration application to which she said the daily deduction was a small amount. It needs to be remembered that these people had deceived me into this employment by the promise of a higher salary and free accommodation, had unlawfully deducted my wages which led to all this ordeal but the Judge was saying the deduction was a small amount. She was overriding my contract to make me pay rent to wealthy people for staying in their building site of a horrible house to look after their children. I even paid rent to these people on weekends and when I was on holiday and this Judge thought it was a small amount. She did not explain how she calculated the amount either. How can you affectively appeal against a decision when the Judge doesn't explain how she reached the decision?
I went to this hearing with my niece but the Judge sent her back to work by saying her evidence was not needed. She also tried to get Ms Mareuge-Lejeune out by claiming she didn't need to be there with a ten day old baby hanging on her chest. Ms Lejeune of course did not leave. So there I was on my own dealing with Mr Griffiths, Lejeune/baby and their barrister Mr Dawson. Ms Lejeune hopped around the room with the baby on her chest and bundle in hand showing them pages and being very intense. She was staring at me with hatred and enjoyed it very much when I tried to drink some water that was on the table but couldn't because the glass was dirty. Mr Dawson asked me questions about my emails despite the fact they forbade the Judge to read them and me to mention them. And he claimed Ms Lejeuene had been 'friendly' when she asked me to call Which? and pretend to be her during my employment. Apart from suggesting that trying to get me to misrepresent myself is a sign of friendliness he talked like a machine gun, suggested feeding the children was a social activity. He made many other remarks that were petty and should be embarrassing for these people. After the hearing I wrote to the Tribunal and asked for the transcript of the hearing. That's when I found out hearings are not recorded and some of my friends from abroad still find it hard to believe that is the case. Anyway, I also wrote to DWF and challenged them with many matters including Mr Dawson's suggestions and asked questions about their support for Griffiths' and Mareuge-Lejeune's illicit behaviour. The hearing was in November 2018 but the Judge read out her judgment on 10th January 2019. In the time between these two dates apparently these people made new complaints which this Judge was very worried about. I believe these complaints had details of my email to DWF if not the complete copy of it. These people terrorised me at the hearing.
Also of course another important matter in all this is the racism it entails. A British Judge Peter Herbert brought a claim against the Ministry of Justice itself. He says he was described as 'aggressive' and that this is "a common stereotype unfairly levelled at Black men and women''. Imagine a system that is so institutionally racist that it's own judges bring claims against it. His claim was in the news only a few months ago. And again there was another piece of news in Guardian in June about judges joining trade unions because of 'alleged failures by the senior judiciary to address complaints about bullying, racism...' Discrimination is nothing new to me and I created my own ways of dealing with it like many people do. I had not been able to take London Borough of Islington to Tribunal when they dismissed me for making a complaint but Ms Mareuge-Lejeune got them involved again after all these years. The evidence against London Borough of Islington is very strong and I believe the judge struck out my claim partly because of that reason. I have seen other judgments of the same judge and she does tend to accept weak claims. I guess that way they can pretend that they accept race discrimination claims but that they fail, while getting rid of the strong claims.
The Police are also the worst offenders of racism and Ms Lejeune aimed to mobilise them against me by repeated reports. My other former employer lied to the Police as well and together they managed to get the Police to harass me twice. A Police officer was so docile she called me to give me a message from Ms Mareuge-Lejeune in the morning I had a preliminary hearing for the harassment and victimisation she caused by collaborating with my other former employer. I had told Griffiths/Lejeune not to contact me directly and they had a solicitor representing them at the time. The Police have been ordered to provide the details of what she said but they are not responding to this court order. I am assuming they are trying to create ways to hide their own misconduct. The malice in employers calling the Police like a counselling service is related to the fact that the London Police are acknowledged to be institutionally racist. They have recently been acknowledged to be institutionally corrupt. Lying to the Police to mobilise them against an ethnic minority employee is pure malice. Not that it is something that happens rarely. Someone I met on social media was even arrested because her employer made allegations of theft against her after she resigned. Luckily the Insurance company found the diamond rings in question at the house of the employer and now the employer is being prosecuted for insurance fraud. If it was not for the insurance company this woman would have been marred for life.
After the hearing these people kept saying I had changed my claim. It is true that Minimum Wage was not on my claim form but was mentioned soon after only because the salary mentioned on the contract was wrong and in terms of pay Minimum Wage is bottom of rights. Their former representatives DWF lied to a volunteer that was helping me about the legislation in a email and also threatened him with complaints. The lies are even mentioned in the costs judgment. The gross part of the claim which these people keep calling a 'tax claim' was withdrawn by him. I won't get into details as even I am unclear about how things happened but I assume his supervisor did something to please either or both to please DWF and these people. I did tell the the Judge about these matters and despite knowing I was not represented by them anymore she told me to go back to the same organisation. That organisation was terrified of these people and had put pressure on me to withdraw all of my claims while telling me I off course had a strong claim and would win. DWF case notes confirm that it was the Judge who confirmed the claim was going to be heard as a Minimum Wage claim. I did not know the implications of that and the gross amount was only a little bit higher than the Minimum Wage calculations before the Accommodation offset was applied and I certainly do not think I should have been forced to pay rent to these people. DWF or them did not apply for Accommodation Offset either, it was the judge who said right at the beginning of the hearing that it was obvious that I was to get Minimum Wage and gave me a page about the legislation. She said as everyone is entitled to Minimum Wage they were making an application on it against me. So this late Minimum Wage application was theirs, not mine and the Judge decided this in the last minute on that day. Yet these people later complained that the Judge had given me a page that explained the legislation so I could defend myself against their application. So get this: they made my representative to withdraw the gross part of my claim, got the judge to make a decision that favoured them the last minute, and complain that I was even given a mere page a few minutes before the hearing to defend myself.
Going back to the Judgment, there are so many spelling mistakes I believe it's just quite embarrassing for the Ministry of Justice. In time and with the accumulation of judgments under my name I came to realise that proper language or facts cannot be expected of these online judgments. They don't even portray the law correctly at times and would potentiality cause misleading opinions in the public as to what the law is. The spelling mistakes, as annoying as they are, can be noticed by most people but the content they claim as facts are like personal attacks. Considering these judgments are posted online they obviously affect one's life and would cause other events. The least they should be is to be correct. Apparently confidentiality and respect to private life cannot be expected of Ministry of Justice. Anyway, as much as I don't enjoy reading them even myself I will try to go thorough the misleading information contained in them.
In paragraph 6 Judge makes it sound as if she didn't read the letter from me. She did read it and specifically said that she had. I don't know why the employers' barrister had not been given a copy of it but they didn't say anything about it. I had said that I was not giving up on my other claims and the judge told me to go back to the Representatives who had already harmed my claim. She made the decision to go ahead with the Minimum Wage and knew very well that I did not know anything about the implications of that. Even these employers didn't understand it despite having a barrister and made many complaints about these issues later on. She also says she did not put the letter on the file on 28th of November 2018 but as you read on in paragraph 7 she acknowledges that it is on file and it is discussed again. Yet, these people still made many complaints and apparently tried to get a copy of it. It is clear that how the Judge dealt with this letter is because it contained information that amounted to serious claims and she wanted to make it disappear without telling me. In fact no-one told me what the actions of these people meant and that they were bases for serious claims against them until I found out by reading myself. I still don't claim to understand the legal side of it but the important point is that their abusive actions happened right in front of judges and they simply changed the details in judgements to protect these people, only to be met with more complaints and more abusive language towards me. If this Judge had dealt with matters justly and professionally perhaps these people would not have felt more empowered to do what they did later on. They probably would not have divulged some of their harmful actions either.
Paragraph 14 does not mention that the salary in that contract is incorrect and that is why this hearing was taking place at all. I had said many times that the contract had been switched after I read it and said it again at the hearing. In paragraph 16 she repeats the clause that provides the accommodation as free, yet she allowed these people to apply for accommodation offset. Yet she doesn't explain how she reached the amount of £296.
In paragraph 30 the Judge says she didn't believe I didn't want to talk to Mrs Griffiths after work hours. She leaves out that I had to stay on extra when Mr Griffiths was late to look after the children. Having to listen to her was part of having to stay extra to help with the children until the other parent came home. She so strongly doesn't find my desire to not want to talk to this person 'plausible or credible' that Mrs Griffiths aka Mareuge-Lejeune used this as a basis for many allegations and a reason for reconsiderations. Apparently because this judge finds it possible to walk away from unwanted conversations I should be able to do so too. Besides these were not 'chats' but monologues from her. This opinion was not necessary to state in the judgment either. So much of the actual evidence was ignored to protect these people yet I am being challenged on not wanting to talk to someone who was unpleasant and unreasonable.
In paragraph 31 the Judge makes excuses for why they wouldn't have been able invite me to holidays soon after I started work. They didn't say those things, they are assumptions made by the Judge. I believe the excuses she presents are examples of how the judge would explain those occasions if she was representing these employers.
In paragraph 40 the Judge claims a message from Mareuge-Lejeune proves that there was a friendly relationship. That message was sent by Mareuge-Lejeune before they emailed me the revised payslips and they were trying to stop me bring a claim against them. The evidence that shows how not nice she was to me was not in that bundle. As I said before they misused the task of preparing a bundle and also the claim had been limited to nothing and another judge had limited what I could say. I was simply not allowed to express myself or my claim because these people claimed to be offended yet I am being made to look as if I am not credible in some ways. "Certainly, the relationship which was created for the benefit of the children was one in which the children would feel that they were in a happy home.'' is the last sentence of this paragraph and it was different when he judge read it out on 10th of January 2019. It is actually related to what I said about just keeping a professional relationship with these people for the benefit of the children until I resigned.
In paragraph 41 the judge says the 'noo noo' they referred to me as was 'I understand that the Respondents were trying to create a degree of continuity and chose to use that name to try to make the children less conscious of individual changes of nanny.' Imagine, these people were there claiming they treated me as family so they could stop their insurance pay me the wages they owed me after they deceived me into an employment but they are being handed a sort of compliment for creating a 'degree of continuity' by not even calling me by my proper name. Yet at the same time they claimed I was the children's aunt. These concepts are so contradictory and exploitative of relationships I feel insulted by the whole thing. They wanted to ruin my life for bringing a simple claim and lied to my former employers, complained to the Police, made disgraceful allegations after I had tried to keep professional during my employment. So I am one of the nameless temporary aunts who they deceived and should be stopped getting even minimum wage at all costs?
In paragraph 49 there is a mention of the cleaner and the dishwasher. That WhatsApp message mentioned belonged to a date after I left and had to return for two days. The incident was strange and seemed staged which makes me think that a lot of the things they did and say were designed to be used as evidence because they very well knew that they did not intend to correct the payslips and that I would bring a claim. I had already talked to them each and every month about this issue.
In the conclusion paragraphs the Judge justifies her decisions as to why she doesn't believe they treated me as part of their family. I find the whole thing insulting. This bit ignores my consent completely. It ignores the fact that these people lured me into the employment by a higher wage and it was all evidenced. It attempts to legitimise deception. The fact is that Minimum Wage is just the bottom net and it should not have been used in this offensive manner. It treats me as if I am a slave and do not have any say in these matters. Indeed they launched the following reconsideration applications in a way I found to be disgraceful arguing that I had "talked' to them and claimed I had a set of keys. I don't know how you can not 'talk' at all while looking after their children for five months but that was one of the big arguments that they banged on and on while demanding I paid for the bananas their children ate. That went on for half a year while Ms Mareuge-lejeune submitted two more medical reports in support of their applications. Not that I wouldn't gift some bananas to their children but the whole thing is an insult to me.
Three and a half years later I am being told that I could have brought many more claims against them. Their own barrister and the judges do accept those claims sould have been brought then while the Tribunal was limiting my claims and what I could say. Those claims include breach of contract, race discrimination, constructive unfair dismissal for having to resign as they were not paying me correctly etc etc. All those are correct but the most relevant I still believe is a slavery claim which the Tribunal keeps ignoring. According to the Modern Slavery legislation deception is part of exploitation. Offering a salary which they did not intend to pay and charging for accommodation after the employment came to an end is deception with the intention of exploitation. The Tribunal has legitimised it and glossed it over by all these lengthy incorrect judgments, by leaving out the facts and by limiting me to a degree which made it not possible to bring my full claims. At the same time we all had to put up with the demands and complaints from these wealthy people who will do anything to avoid what they promised or what is required by law. They have done anything to prolong the proceedings with the intention of making money out of the proceedings and succeeded quite a bit so far while being a burden on me and on the public services.