Sara Morrison has brought a case against her former employers, the Belfast Film Festival, alleging she was discriminated against due to her beliefs on sex and gender.placeholder image
Sara Morrison has brought a case against her former employers, the Belfast Film Festival, alleging she was discriminated against due to her beliefs on sex and gender.
Senior figures from the Belfast Film Festival have denied there was a scheme to push a gender-critical woman out of her job over her beliefs.
A lawyer representing former festival employee Sara Morrison suggested during a tribunal today that high-ups concocted a plan to get her out of her role as inclusion and audience development coordinator, after she made a speech at a political rally run by a prominent critic of trans rights.
Senior figures said that wasn’t the case, also denying there had been a “cynically cruel” campaign of harassment around blocking access to her emails while she was on sick leave.
Both festival director Michele Devlin and co-chair Marie-Therese McGivern stated the organisation launched an investigation into Ms Morrison after complaints followed her appearance at a Let Women Speak event in Belfast in April 2023, run by English activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull.
Belfast Film Festival director Michele Devlin said her staff were being 'tortured by all sorts of headcases' in 2023.placeholder image
Belfast Film Festival director Michele Devlin said her staff were being 'tortured by all sorts of headcases' in 2023.
After the investigation began in summer 2023, Ms Morrison left work citing stress. She subsequently resigned, and alleges she was discriminated against due to her beliefs on sex and gender.
During the rally, which the former festival employee says she attended in a personal capacity to make a speech about women’s rights, Ms Morrison criticised several Belfast-based activist bodies in the women’s rights sector. The event was protested by LGBT groups, some of whom complained they could no longer work with her.
Her barrister, Naomi Cunningham KC, raised the idea that festival high-ups subsequently wanted rid of Ms Morrison; when putting together an event linked to LGBT Pride, the lawyer suggested, they’d deliberately made her email organisations she’d either criticised by name or were likely to be upset with her appearance at the rally.
Ms Cunningham proposed the festival did so to spur more complaints they could use “as a pretext for a disciplinary process”, describing the move as to “dream up a Pride [event] and use that to poke the hornet’s nest against her”.
The employment tribunal is being heard in Killymeal House, Belfast.placeholder image
The employment tribunal is being heard in Killymeal House, Belfast.
That was denied by Ms McGivern, who told the KC: “I reject your concept that we had some kind of plan for this.”
She added: “My view was that [the case] needed to proceed to an investigation.”
During her time on sick leave, said the barrister, Ms Morrison emailed Ms Devlin asking for her email password to be reset as she’d lost access; the festival director did so, but sent the new password to her work email instead of a personal one, so Ms Morrison didn’t get it.
Ms Cunningham suggested that was part of a deliberate harassment campaign leaving Ms Morrison in the dark about messages either opposing or supporting her that may have been sent to her work email, as well as preventing her from setting up an ‘out of office’ notice which left emails to her unanswered without explanation. The KC also posited that a decision to remove a webpage containing details of festival staff was an attempt to scrub her from the organisation’s public profile.
The director denied all that, stating the email issue was a genuine mistake on her part and maintaining the webpage was taken down to protect employees while feelings ran high.
“Our staff were getting tortured by all sorts of headcases,” she said. “They were being stopped in the street, harassed online.”
The tribunal continues.