When Karen Clemons went into teaching she knew she'd have to deal with bullying — what she didn't realise was that she would be the victim. She told The Royal Gazette how she was left "helpless and hopeless" and why the Government's new Dignity at Work policy to outlaw bullying is so welcome.

Karen Clemons was probably one of the first people in Bermuda to pick up a copy of the Government's Dignity at Work policy when it was released in April.

The 60-page document would hardly be the bedtime reading of choice for most but Karen rushed to the Cabinet Office's Department of Human Resources as soon as it was made publicly available and devoured every word.

Now the 50-year-old public school teacher wants every civil servant in Bermuda to know it exists and to understand how it can protect them if they suffer at the hands of a bullying colleague.

The Dignity at Work policy states that every government employee on the Island has the right to be "treated with respect in the workplace" — a concept which has a deeply personal meaning for Karen.

She was the victim, she says, of a targeted campaign of intimidation in a school; as a result, she lost all confidence, suffered severe depression and became physically ill, resulting in a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Karen, who has taught in state schools here and in Texas, has decided to tell her story to encourage other bullying victims to seek help and to ensure the Dignity at Work policy is tested.

She knows her experience is not unique: 21 percent of civil servants in Bermuda who took part in a 2004 survey believed they had been bullied or harassed in the last year.

"It is encouraging to see that Government has adopted this particular policy," says Karen. "I hope they enforce this, otherwise it's just ink on paper.

"My main goal is to raise awareness about the Dignity at Work policy and who it is supposed to protect. It's good that it's here. It means that people will have some chance to preserve their dignity at work.

"The policy is a good start. What people need to do is press for legislation because then it will have some teeth."

Karen's problems in the workplace began when she raised concerns about how something was being done — a classic catalyst for victimisation, according to the Dignity at Work policy.

She is loath to call herself a whistle-blower. "A whistle-blower shines a giant spotlight on all that has gone wrong," she says. "All I did was kind of turn on a light.

We weren't really properly servicing students like we should have been, not according to our own rules and regulations."

She continues: "I raised an issue and the reaction was: there wasn't any. There was no action whatsoever. The situation continued on for several years and gradually got worse because it was not addressed."

Although the issue was ignored, Karen's highlighting of it had not gone unnoticed, she claims.

What followed was, she believes, a form of punishment for daring to speak out. "I seemed to have come under scrutiny," she says. "A great deal of scrutiny, more than my colleagues."

She says teachers often undergo lesson observation but are always informed beforehand.

Karen, however, suddenly became subject to unannounced visits from a superior who would slip into her classroom and watch her teach.

"When I caught up with that person to say 'what are you doing?' they really couldn't come up with an explanation. I didn't understand the logic in that. It didn't occur to me what was going on then."

The impromptu observations stopped but they had just been the start of the intimidation, according to Karen.

"I started to get called on little petty things," she says. "I would be admonished for things that they would ignore with other colleagues.The things would have a simple explanation, it would be non-issues. I noticed that my colleagues were not receiving the same treatment."

She started to receive e-mails picking her up on every aspect of her work. "They would be very punitive," she says. "I had to spend an inordinate amount of time defending myself, explaining myself.

"It happened so often it starts to wear down on you. If you get a kick in the shins, even if it's a light kick, over time it starts to bother you.

"That's a classic example of what bullies do in the workplace. Pick on a target and find petty issues to use as intimidation."

Karen, who has been teaching since 1994, felt that evaluations of her work had become unfair and started to question the treatment she was receiving.

"I think that's what fuelled the fire," she says. "I questioned why this was happening. I started to see a pattern emerging.

"If you have never experienced it before then you don't see it coming but what you do realise is how you start to feel.

"I got a heightened sense of anxiety whenever I had to go to work. You wonder: what is going to happen today?

"Am I going to be on the defensive again for some minor issue? How much time am I going to have to waste explaining myself instead of doing what I'm hired to do?"

Karen asked to see her personnel file and was shocked at what she found.

Documents containing highly critical commentary about her were included, which she had never seen before.

"Any disparaging information regarding your service record should be copied to you," she says. "Documentation was placed in my file without my knowledge."

The information in the file, which Karen had been given no opportunity to rebut, meant she was placed on a status which froze her pay.

But the worst incident, she says, was when she left her car in a no parking area on school grounds while she carried out a brief work errand and it was towed away.

Her voice rises in distress as she recalls: "I was parked along a curb that's not where the normal parking location.

"In this case I was working on behalf of my employers but suddenly my car went away and it was locked up and clamped and I was told I would have to pay to get it out.

"I refused to do that. No one else's car that day or anyone else's since has been seized in such a manner. I had to enlist the aid of a Police officer and I got it back seven hours later."

The physical effects of the bullying on Karen were dramatic: she suffered chest pains, anxiety attacks, headaches and an increase in her already high blood pressure.

"I told myself 'this is a temporary thing'," she says. "I consider myself a strong person.

"I told myself 'I try to reason, I try to present myself in a manner that shows that I am on your team, trying to work towards the same goals. I have the same expectations for students so why is this happening to me?'."

In her personal life she became a recluse, unable to socialise with friends or take part in the community activities she had once loved.

"The mental toll is incredible," she says. "I would go to bed on a Friday night and get up on a Monday morning to go to school. As a teacher I lost the zest. You have basically lost your mojo."

Karen says that like the majority of workplace bullying victims she was left "helpless and hopeless". She put in a grievance with her employers but the alleged bully was not found guilty.

Karen's situation happened some time ago but the effects have been long lasting.

"I'm diagnosed with PTSD because unfortunately I relive a lot of the issues that have happened to me in the past," she says. "There are certain triggers that cause great anxiety.

"I take additional medication that relaxes my heart as I'd go to sleep and my heart would pound.

"I noticed that it happened when I would think about what happened in the past, that strong sense of injustice, the idea that there is no closure, no resolution. The people that were there to protect you, that had a duty of care, did not protect you."

Karen is no longer at the school where the alleged bullying took place but has continued teaching.

She is currently on sabbatical from her job and has done a great deal of research on workplace bullying, joining online forums to share experiences with other victims.

She knows other Bermudians have suffered and is urging those in the public sector to seek redress now the Dignity at Work policy is in place.

"A lot of people don't realise that some of the anxiety they feel, some of the tension, the ill feelings they may have when they approach their workplace is because they have been victims of bullying or their dignity at work has been compromised," she says.

"No one should ever have to go to a job and feel uncomfortable, demeaned or dehumanised because of what someone is doing to them."

She says Government deserves praise for introducing Dignity at Work and hopes the Island's private sector will follow suit.

"It has been adopted by other countries," she says. "They not only see that it's the right thing to do but also they started to realise that bullying takes an economic toll in the way of sick leave, low productivity, even litigation."

Karen considers herself a survivor, one of the "walking wounded" all over the world who have got through an episode of workplace bullying but still carry the scars.

"This is a phenomenon that's shared by people of different ages, races, genders," she says. "It will pit Bermudians against Bermudians, Bermudians against expats. There is no particular rhyme or reason. It can happen to anyone."

* If you are a civil servant and feel you are the victim of workplace bullying you can pick up a copy of the Dignity at Work policy, which contains a complaint form, from the Department of Human Resources in Global House, call 295 2858 or e-mail hr@gov.bm.

What is a workplace bully?

• A workplace bully is not just someone who is rude. They will engage in repeated aggressive behaviour toward someone less powerful, attempt to take improper control over a person and/or inappropriately assert their authority.

• The bully is likely to be an insecure person with poor to non-existent interpersonal skills and little empathy.

• They will subject victims to unjustified criticism and trivial fault finding. Other tactics include teasing, ridicule, isolating the victim and name calling.

• A bully will often be a superior to the victim but may be someone in a subordinate role.

• They will usually set their target up for failure by setting unrealistic goals or deadlines, humiliating the victim or increasing the workload to an impossible level.

• Bullies are driven by a need to control others.

• Bullying behaviour includes making derogatory remarks, shunning someone due to a disability or disfigurement, playing practical jokes, asking invasive personal questions and deliberately attributing blame.

* Source: Government of Bermuda Dignity at Work Policy and Complaints Procedure.