When Fleur Maidment let her boyfriend take naked pictures of her, she never imagined that they would get her sacked four years later. Diane Taylor reports

Diane Taylor
Society

Monday August 13, 2001

When does your sexual history stop you from doing your job? In social worker Fleur Maidment's case it was when one of the boys at the care home where she worked spotted pictures of her in the porn magazine Escort. When the 15-year-old told staff about his discovery, Maidment was suspended. Following a disciplinary inquiry, she was sacked on October 9 last year for gross misconduct.

Last month Maidment, 31, lost her claim at an employment tribunal that her sacking from Rowans residential care home in Shrewsbury breached her right to a private life under the Human Rights Act. However, her solicitor Keir Hirst says this is an important test case under the new act and is preparing an appeal.

The pictures are certainly not what most people would want their colleagues to see. Three appeared in the "readers' wives" section of the magazine in May last year, and one in a section entitled "contact me". The pictures showed Maidment topless, naked from behind and posing in the open air with a vibrator, the caption making references to lesbian tastes and water sports. The inclusion of her face, along with her first name, made her easily identifiable.

Maidment told the tribunal that her boyfriend of five years, Dean Hawker, had taken photos of her four years before because he thought she was beautiful. She felt uncomfortable about her body, she said, and he wanted to send the pictures to the magazine to prove that he wasn't the only one who thought so.

He specified that her photos could be included in the "contact me" section, so that she would see from the fan mail he was sure she would receive that other readers found her as sexy as he did. "My boyfriend was brought up in Spain where there is a much more liberal attitude to sex," she says. "He thinks I'm beautiful and simply wanted to show that. I think Britain is still far behind Europe in the way it conducts its sex education. We need to change that attitude that bodies are disgusting and sex is disgusting. But the attitude of social services to the whole thing made me feel dirty and seedy. I have no reason to feel dirty, no reason at all. I'm not guilty of committing any criminal offence but was made to feel as if I was."

Maidment vaguely recalls Hawker sending the photos to the magazine with her consent, as long as her name and face were not included. She then forgot all about it, she says. "When the boy said he had seen me in the magazine, I laughed it off and presumed he must mean someone who looked like me, but when I had a chance to check it, I was absolutely horrified.

"At first I was embarrassed, but as I thought about it more and spoke to friends in similar jobs they pointed out that the whole thing would soon be yesterday's news. There was a high turnover of young people in the unit, so the ones who had seen the picture were unlikely to be there for too long."

Maidment argues that appearing in the magazine did not diminish her ability to do her job. "I was the same person after the pictures were discovered as I was before, and if my face had been left out nobody would have known it was me."

Until her suspension, her work record had been unblemished. "At first I was cross with my boyfriend for landing me in trouble, but he didn't send the pictures in with any malicious intent. After a while I began to feel angrier at the way my employers were treating the whole thing."

She was described as promiscuous during the disciplinary investigation, conducted by Shrewsbury social services, because her photo had appeared in the "contact me" section. Maidment says that she wasn't trying to attract multiple sexual partners - but what if she had been? "If I wanted to do that I should be able to without being called promiscuous. As an adult I can make that choice. Does it mean that as a social worker you can't have more than one sexual partner? I'm as responsible now as I was before the pictures were discovered. I thought we were getting somewhere with the fight for sexual liberation, and this case is a real setback."

Her appeal, she says, will focus on the fact that the pictures were taken before she started work at the home. "If the pictures had been taken when I was 18 and had suddenly resurfaced, would I still have lost my job? According to this judgment there are so many ways by which what people do in their private lives can affect their jobs."

Hirst believes it is in the public interest to take the case further. "How far back can employers go into someone's private life? What happens in your private life can have a direct impact on your professional life and on your livelihood. It has serious human rights implications." While the right to a private life is enshrined in the Human Rights Act, Maidment's case is complicated because of the way her private life spilled over into a public arena.

For now the future looks uncertain for Maidment. Social services have referred her to the Department of Health consultancy index, which includes details of people who have comitted sex offences. This means, in effect, that she is unable to do any social work. Her relationship with her boyfriend broke up, as a result, she says, of the stress caused by her suspension and dismissal, although recently they have tentatively started seeing each other again.

Maidment argues that overturning the tribunal decision is important because the grey area between one's professional and private life can adversely affect many people, particularly women. And the experience has not been entirely negative . "A lot of women have expressed admiration for me for appearing in Escort. Prior to the pictures being sent in I felt that the whole world would fall in if I had appeared naked in a magazine, but because of all this I feel much more liberated about my body. I know that I have to keep fighting this one."