Source : Perth Now news
A trio of workers at a government-owned power company, who were sacked for writing character references for their rapist boss, will likely have grounds to sue the state for losing their jobs, a prominent lawyer says.
The three workers, who all worked at Western Power in Western Australia, were fired after writing the references for their manager, Jeffrey David Spinner.
Spinner, 59, was sentenced to five years’ jail in the Western Australia District Court after a jury found him guilty of four counts of sexual penetration without consent, over a 2024 workplace incident.
Uproar over the positive character references sped up and widened the WA government’s moves to dial back the use of character references in court.
The three Western Power employees have lost their jobs, the utility company confirmed on Thursday.
Speaking to Perth’s 6PR on Friday, prominent WA lawyer Tom Percy KC said the three sacked workers likely had grounds to sue for wrongful termination.
“I think they’ll overturn it in court pretty shortly, because it’s just not fair … it’s a human right to be able to offer someone a character reference if they ask you to do so and you think it’s appropriate,” Mr Percy said.
“I don’t think your employer is entitled to sack you.
“You’re not justifying what they did or ameliorating it in any sense. You’re saying ‘before this offence, was he a good person?’. And I think the judge is entitled to know that otherwise we’re sentencing people in the dark.”
Legally, character references had use for gauging rehabilitation and parole, and the Court of Appeal repeatedly found only nominal amounts could be knocked off a sentence for prior good character, Mr Percy said.
“I think that writing someone a character reference is not a justification of the offence … You’re not justifying the offence. You’re saying that the person was, prior to committing the offence, a person of good character.”
In a statement, a Western Power spokesperson said “careful consideration” and an internal investigation led to the three staff “no longer work(ing) for the business”.
“The investigation found conduct that was inconsistent with our values, Code of Conduct and the standards we expect of everyone at Western Power,” the spokesperson said. The organisation had also commissioned an independent cultural review.
The jury was told Spinner had been mentoring the female victim at work, they were out drinking, and the 59-year-old saw her vomit outside a hospitality venue before the assault in his hotel room.
At sentencing, Judge Gary Massey told the court he had received eight positive character references from colleagues and friends of Spinner. Variously, the colleague referees said Spinner always acted “respectfully and appropriately”, had a “strong moral compass” and was a “dedicated family person”; the references allowed the Judge to lower Spinner’s ultimate sentence to five years.
Submission of those three supporting documents prompted the state Energy Minister and Western Power chief executive to initiate reviews and stand the staff down, before news of their dismissals emerged this week.
The WA government was already writing draft legislation to ban the use of character references in child abuse cases, but controversy over the Western Power case expedited a ban on all such supporting statements used to reduce sentences.
