and had a 10-minute conversation to say, ‘I don’t think I need to see a doctor, but a bit of support would be nice.’
After that 10-minute conversation with the owner of Medigold, he wrote this three-page letter saying that I probably had paranoid schizophrenia and that he would speak in confidence to the medical director and that my medical notes should be obtained in confidence. I just discovered this in my personal data. I did not know. (PAC 2014)
Sheldon’s account of her experiences at the hands of a government regulator highlights a number of typical retaliations that may be visited on the whistleblower after they raise their concerns. First is an allegation or vague innuendo that questions the whistleblower’s mental health status (‘mental health problems run in the family’… ‘she was always difficult’…). Second are the shadowy, behind-the-scenes, not quite in daylight, machinations of the organization or government department, aimed at reconstructing the reality the whistleblower speaks out about, thus closing down the disclosures and marginalizing the person making them, before they have been heard. Third are the systemic ‘blind eye’ or ‘deaf ear’ responses (discussed in the following chapter) of other responsible organizations, who turn away from the disclosures, or turn upon the person making them.
RETALIATION AND RETRIBUTION
A whistleblower is well advised to entertain the possibility – indeed the expectation – that their organization, whatever its public proclamations and statutory obligations to whistleblowers, will react harshly to them, the messenger, before turning attention to the message they bring. The nature and extent of retaliation has nothing to do with any personal characteristics of the whistleblower (Near and Miceli 1996), even though ad hominem attacks on their character, honesty and competence are not uncommon.
The more serious the allegation the whistleblower makes, the more likely it is that they will suffer detriment. Kay Sheldon’s experience at the hands of the CQC and Department of Health, recounted above, is testimony to this. The whistleblower is at greater risk of detriment when the wrongdoing they allege is very serious; when the investigation was inconclusive; and when more than one person was implicated in the wrongdoing. Retaliation is more likely if the matter goes outside the organization (external whistleblowing), or when those accused of wrongdoing work at a higher organizational grade than the whistleblower. In these circumstances, vengeance is more likely to be exacted on the whistleblower (Brown 2008).
Retaliation has been described as ‘taking an undesirable action against a whistleblower – in direct response to the whistleblowing – who reported wrongdoing internally or externally, outside the organization’ (Rehg et al. 2008, p.222). Retaliation can be informal, official, overt or covert. Even though legal protection for the whistleblower exists across many jurisdictions internationally, Tsahuridu (2011) observed that retaliation, threats and retribution seem to have increased, even as whistleblowing protection has grown. Retaliatory acts are not minor slights or insignificant trifles. The litany of loss that may be the lot of the whistleblower includes losing their job (being sacked, forced to resign or retire early); being blacklisted; getting a poor performance evaluation after they blew the whistle; increased management surveillance of their work; being criticized or given the cold shoulder by colleagues. The risk profile that the whistleblower establishes is not one that many organizations want to absorb (Rothschild and Miethe 1999). A whistleblower spells trouble.
The severity of the backlash is greater if the whistleblower is not a supervisor or manager, if they go outside the organization to raise their concern, or if they blow the whistle on something serious (Hedin and Månsson 2012; Jos, Tompkins and Hays 1989; Rothschild and Miethe 1999). Referral to a psychiatrist is not uncommon (as in the case of Kay Sheldon discussed above), resulting in the whistleblower being diagnosed with a mental illness (the murky label of ‘personality disorder’ proves popular) that will inevitably scupper any future chance the employee has of resuming, still less progressing in, their profession, sector or job of choice. Official reprisals such as demotion, and legal or quasi-legal retribution such as surveillance, the scouring of historic expense claims for minute discrepancies that were previously passed for payment, are the familiar modi operandi of an organization in witch hunter mode, a far cry from the ‘lessons have been learned’, ‘changes have been made’ pronouncements of those in charge of the organization after a disaster has come to public attention (Ash 2011, 2013).
Organizational management of dissent has many means of silencing in its toolkit. Official channels, such as the use of organizational grievance procedures or the courts, may offer the promise of justice to the employee, but achieving justice is compromised when the vast power resources of the organization are mobilized against the whistleblower, who may find they are in danger of losing their home as a consequence of their whistleblowing. Dissent can effectively be neutralized by, for example, setting up inquiries, reviews and investigations that are prolonged and protracted, exhausting public patience and attention. Tony Blair, past UK Prime Minister and himself no stranger to controversy, offered private (subsequently published) advice on disaster management to Rebekah Brooks, then chief executive of the global media conglomerate News Corporation. At the time, Brooks was under intense public scrutiny for her role in phone-hacking by the Murdoch-owned tabloid press in the UK. In an email to her boss James Murdoch on 11 July 2011, Brooks said Blair gave her this advice to manage the maelstrom she found herself in:
1. Form an independent unit that has a outside junior counsel…a great and good type, a serious forensic criminal barrister, internal counsel, proper fact checkers, etc. in it. Get them to investigate (Brooks) and others and publish a…report. 2. Publish part one of the report at same time as the police closes its inquiry and clear you and accept shortcomings and new solutions and process and part two when any trials are over. (Rebekah Brooks, email on Tony Blair’s advice, The Guardian 2014)
From the point of view of the corporation, Blair’s (presumably pro bono) advice to Brooks was a masterclass in dissent management and blowing out the critical voices. In the event, Brooks and her employers marshalled many million pounds’ worth of top-end legal counsel; Brooks was acquitted of five charges of phone-hacking, conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office, and to pervert the course of justice, relating to her time as editor of two UK tabloids and as head of the Murdoch-owned company (Davies 2014). People making allegations prior to this case, including many in the public eye, had been subjected to sustained intrusion and vitriol in critical media coverage of their lives, sustained over many years. This is, of course, the type of retaliation that some people raising concerns about the NHS have suffered and where, again, millions of pounds (of public money) have been spent on legal fees to manage dissent, by silencing it (Campbell 2014).
FACING INTO FEAR
Using fear as a weapon to silence is very effective. In the public inquiry into the failings of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust in England, one of the people to speak out at Stafford Hospital was Nurse Donnelly, who was referred to above. Described as ‘a most impressive and courageous witness’ by Robert Francis, the chair of the public inquiry, Nurse Donnelly had at first been reluctant to complain about fabricated patient records, for fear of repercussions (Francis 2013a, p.235). Her fears were well-founded. In her evidence to the inquiry, Nurse Donnelly described being harassed by colleagues, being threatened, and:
…people were saying, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have done this, you shouldn’t have spoken out.’ And then physical threats were made in terms of people saying that I needed to – again, watch myself while I was walking to my car at the end of a shift. People saying that they know where I live, and basically threats to, sort of, my physical safety were made, to the point where…at the end of a shift…at night I would have to have either my mum or my dad or my husband come and collect me from work because I was too afraid to walk to my car in the dark on my own.
Nurse Donnelly described how this threatening behaviour continued after she had reported her concerns:
It was slightly more subversive and I think people were slightly more guarded in
