I wasn't "turned against" anyone. That is exactly the problem... a cultish delusion that there must have been shared affection and friendship because R wanted it. The friendship and the affection were the delusion, but the additional problem of a "cult" arose from the way in which some of my staff members—as well as his own friends and colleagues—tended to hero worship him because, of course, with them his kindness wasn't possessive.
On my side, there was an initial openness to mentorship followed by a reluctant acknowledgement of career and employment dependency and, much later, utter horror as I began to realise that his "affection" was a workplace noose that would continue to tighten and control/humiliate me no matter what. He was not only the most powerful figure in my two main roles but also worked hard to imply a connection to every other role I was offered (cf "but how much would you need to earn there, Jo?"—I believe it was a connection that was not just implied but contrived). He also offering "help" with any problems I mentioned: drafting company articles, family members, banking arrangements... until there was nothing left that I was doing in my life that he did not have influence over. I did not offer to introduce him to my son, please remember, he asked... and then turned up, later on, with toys and an oddly paternalistic line in disciplinary irritation. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.
He cannot possibly claim that I was "okay" until GG (or anyone else) acquired some influence. There was a whole series of events that horrified and frightened me but what was I to do? What exactly? I made it clear as I could when I resigned but, of course, the board blanked me again.
There was the time I ended up crying about my tax bill as early as 2011 or 2012 and got the odd sense—a vibe—that he enjoyed both my tears and my dependency... that was my first wake up call. He offered to lend me some money and then seemed disappointed when I repaid the loan two days later. That was the second warning signal but I put it swiftly out of mind, I'll admit. And I tried not to visit my disquiet, even when he asked if he could introduce me to his bank. Much later on, I found the banking relationship oddly, well, non-algorithmic—personal if you will—and I'll confess I wondered if even that was part of his squeeze.
He called me "Princess" and gave me gifts in front of MY OWN clients. That was the third and, by then, I knew enough to be worried.
He "passed on" B's concern that I was not sufficiently chirpy in panel meetings, seemingly as a criticism, as if it was a matter for him. That was a fourth. Then he was visibly cross when I mentioned a sexual assault but made no offer of advice or help—he just blanked it as if it was a matter for him, not me, to deal with. That was a fifth.
He repeatedly called me "Jo" when everyone else called me "Joanna"—I winced inside. Every. Single. Time. That was a sixth. And he glazed me in plenary sessions in an oddly humiliating way that I eventually complained about to D. That was a seventh.
There was the period when he turned up at my office every Saturday week after week and got to talking about his brother's wedding in terms that seemed emphatic and... aspirational. I worried and threw out that I was seeing GG. I thought it was fine at the time but a few days or weeks later he walked in unannounced when I was speaking to GG on the phone and was visibly angered by something or other... That was an eighth and I felt a chill that made me shiver at the time.
There was a dinner Ă deux at the Bleeding Heart. That was an ninth.
And bringing flowers to my house. That was a tenth.
There was the time he said, with a side eye "You've been held back, Jo..." and left a sinister pause that I refused to play into. That was an eleventh.
There was the dinner at the Atheneum and multiple dinner invitations via B that I haven't even bothered to list but often resisted. That was a dozen. (There were also invitations to Qatar.) Did it make it better that B, or even other colleagues, would be at those dinners? Not really.
He randomly interacted with and "borrowed" my staff for his "ethics" projects without my permission, establishing back channels of communication that reinforced the cult and effectively prevented any free discussion of the issues in my office. That makes a baker's dozen.
He repeatedly refused to countenance a rollover of directors so that I came to believe that I would have to endure this close proximity in perpetuity.
There was the sudden offer of a "remuneration committee" comprising R and K in 2017 that took me completely by surprise and then the interminable, non-transparent, eccentric, incomprehensible, obsessive discussions around putative sick leave coupled with acres of reputational boilerplate that was never discussed but always present. And the odd little stares and nods at the staff member present at those discussions, not to mention the insistence on confidential discussions with our company lawyers—back channels again. Control. Again. That makes fourteen.
There was the time that he offered to take our company's "leasehold" termination notice to an offline, bilateral discussion with SB—a kind of strategy he used again and again—and then came back months later with absolutely nothing but his own soup of jargon to report (an entirely foreseeable result). He effectively buried and sidelined any possibility of impactful response we might have had and my role in the matter became harder and harder to navigate.
There were those times when literally one chairman after another said "You're such good friends with R, we should promote/involve/rely on him to help you out" and/or "But I thought he'd been assigned a role as special liaison..." and I literally thought, with shock, "you certainly never heard that from me".
Then there was that time when he looked round at the other Board Members and said, in effect "Maybe if Jo and I were to spend some more time together....[we could find a solution]." They fell right in and smiled and nodded as if I were just livestock to be farmed out to the next customer. And I nearly threw up, right there and then.
And so. much. more. So. much. more. (Did I mention that he wanted me to apply for a judgeship? Or the time I copied in to a work email and he replied, signing off "with so much love" or somesuch?)
I worry that I haven't described the relentlessness of it, the emerging pattern, the broader concern. A difficult situation would arise, mostly exogenously—but not always, and he would be in a position to know about it, of course, given that he was both my director and my senior in practice. He would put himself in charge of a "solution" that would make me—or us--more dependent in the short term but invariably it would prove to be no solution at all in the long term and things would continue to get worse. Meanwhile, he was glazing me in public but in private it was a discombobulating switch between showing irritation and showing unlooked-for affection. I know perhaps you read this and think that really nothing so very sinister is revealed in it but you must admit that it is difficult to describe a kind of coercive control—which is not even a recognised thing, outside domestic relationships--in a series of anecdotal posts, especially when the real point is the volume, not the individual horror, of controlling things that were happening. And, of course, I have not really mentioned B here but my fundamental point has always been that they were undoubtedly a unit as far as we all were concerned and they seemed to have appointed themselves as supervisors of my career choices. That is, to the extent that, when I asked P for help in getting a job and getting out, he said "Oh, but B said..." and then clammed up and refused to say more. If that is not control, I do not know what is.
