How my creepy boss bombarded me with texts and groomed

Lying in her Luxembourg resort room, ready for sleep to fall, Louise Crabtree heard the acquainted ping of a WhatsApp message.

But whereas the sender advised her he beloved her and signed off ‘sleepies tight’, Louise’s coronary heart did not carry as she learn it. It wasn’t from her boyfriend, who was 350 miles away, close to Hampshire, the place single mum Louise, 49, lives along with her three teenage youngsters.

Instead her coronary heart sank, as a result of the message was from her boss, Marc Bandemer, a married businessman, father and grandfather ten years her senior, with whom she was in Europe for work. It could be adopted within the early hours by one other.

‘Seems you are asleep,’ this message learn. ‘I’m leaving the door barely ajar and can sleep on the ground if you want to sleep on the fitting aspect of the mattress to have a greater evening’s relaxation.’ He seemed to be inviting Louise into his resort bed room – certainly, into his mattress – in the midst of the evening.

This incident in February 2022, Louise claims, was the ‘ultimate straw’ in a chronic and annoying marketing campaign of sexual harassment to which she was subjected through the 14 months she labored as an government director for Bandemer’s firm, Integer Wealth Global. 

On that very same journey, she says, he adopted her into outlets, accompanied her swimming and complimented her ‘nice little physique’ in a swimsuit – behaviour that she says made her really feel ‘degraded’ and ‘uncomfortable’.

At no level, she insists, did she encourage or reciprocate it. Bandemer had taken to calling Louise ‘honey’ and ‘woman’ in textual content messages, referred to her as his ‘second spouse’ in enterprise conferences and offered her and her youngsters with costly items, she insists, they felt unable to refuse. 

One of those was a diamond solitaire ring; one other a Hugo Boss coat.

By March 2022, he’d even prompt shopping for a ‘love nest’ in Cyprus collectively, calling it ‘our home’. ‘Looking again, I really feel groomed by him,’ Louise says. ‘It obtained worse and worse, to the purpose the place I used to be utterly overwhelmed and underneath his management.’

Last October, an employment tribunal upheld her criticism, filed after her dismissal from the corporate in June 2022, discovering she had been a sufferer of sexual harassment by the hands of Bandemer. 

Though he refuted Louise’s model of occasions, a considerable physique of proof – comprising WhatsApp messages and video-call recordings – backed her up, with the tribunal discovering Bandemer to be a ‘forceful particular person who expects to get his personal manner’. 

A fortnight in the past, he was ordered to pay Louise almost £100,000 in compensation for her monetary losses, and the psychological and emotional pressure she endured.

When we meet at her indifferent home available in the market city of Romsey, Hampshire, it is clear Louise continues to be feeling the toll of the previous few years. She is teary, typically anxious and does not sleep effectively. 

Her physician thinks she could also be affected by post-traumatic stress dysfunction as she finds herself repeatedly asking the query that will likely be on many readers’ lips: why did she, an articulate businesswoman who does not appear afraid to talk her thoughts, put up with it for thus lengthy?

‘I blame myself,’ she says. ‘I really feel like I ought to have been stronger and I’m offended at myself for not standing as much as him sooner.

‘I lie awake at evening excited about what I ought to have accomplished in a different way. But you possibly can solely perceive it in case you had been in my place at the moment. As a single mum with three youngsters, I used to be relying on my job. I used to be getting paid effectively. 

The menace of dropping that job, of not having the ability to help my household – that was nice sufficient for me to maintain going. There had been a number of occasions once I thought, ‘I’ll suck it up for a couple of extra months, then I’ll stroll.’

Louise joined Integer Wealth Global with loads of expertise. Privately educated in Bristol, with a psychology diploma from Plymouth University, she moved to Tokyo in 1996, the place she taught English for 2 years earlier than shifting into finance. 

She met her husband, from whom she is now legally separated – in Japan and so they had their first youngster there, earlier than shifting to Hong Kong after which Canada, the place that they had two extra youngsters. 

But when her marriage broke down in 2019, Louise determined to uproot her household by returning to the UK to be close to her mum, stepdad and sister.

‘It was the fitting factor to do, but it surely was a really tough and emotional time,’ she says. Determined to rebuild her skilled life, she was put in contact with Bandemer, 59, the founding father of an funding administration firm, by a piece contact – and some on-line messages quickly become a job supply.

She discovered herself having lunch with Bandemer, his spouse Lioni and two buddies, who had been additionally firm administrators, at his dwelling in Basingstoke. 

‘It was all very casual, however I appreciated that,’ she says. ‘He was pleasant, with numerous banter and an ideal sense of humour.

‘He was additionally very spiritual, speaking about God and telling me how a lot he beloved his spouse. I felt like this was somebody I may belief.’

Louise signed two contracts with the corporate in April 2021, one detailing her position as a strategic growth government; the opposite outlining the fee she would earn from bringing in work.

She was, she says, ‘excited’. But issues started to bitter after solely a month. ‘I shortly realised that Marc introduced his ‘banter’ to conferences,’ Louise explains. ‘He’d say utterly inappropriate issues about me in entrance of shoppers, like ‘she’s so naughty, we have to get the whips and chains out’ and ‘do not you suppose she’s beautiful?’ He thought I must be flattered. I felt it detracted from my skillset and undermined my professionalism.

‘I attempted to deal with it [a transcript from a Microsoft Teams meeting in May 2021 attests to this] by asking him to cease the flattery. I mentioned different folks had seen it. ‘He mentioned, ‘I do not care two rocks about what different folks suppose. I’m manner too smug for that.” 

Bandemer’s behaviour continued unabashed. He advised Louise she was ‘straightforward to develop into hooked on’, ‘might be a top-ranking trend mannequin’ and complimented her ‘beautiful ft’ and ‘sweet toes’. In one other message, he advised her: ‘You’re a beautiful lady and any red-blooded single man could be keen on you’.

She claims he took footage of her with out her consent, and as soon as inspired her to hitch a video name whereas carrying her dressing robe. His over-familiarity caught the eye of her associate on the time, who was livid to discover a textual content message from Bandemer addressing Louise as ‘stunner’.

‘I defined that he did not imply it, and by some means discovered myself defending Marc, when actually I agreed that it was inappropriate; I used to be simply making an attempt to get on with my job,’ she explains. ‘It prompted important issues in my relationship. I will not say it ended it, however issues modified for the more severe and we broke up in the summertime of 2021.’

Things then escalated at Louise’s party in July that 12 months. Bandemer, whom she says had had an excessive amount of to drink, tried to drag her on to his lap in entrance of all her family and friends.

‘I felt shocked and humiliated,’ Louise recollects. ‘I pulled and pulled away. I used to be making an attempt to disregard it and snicker it off, however everybody had seen. His spouse was there. The last item I wished my household to suppose was, ‘Well, your boss is hitting on you. Is that why you bought the job?’

Louise advised Bandemer how upset she was and pleaded with him by no means to behave that manner once more.

She says he dismissed her objections, then weeks later issued her with a disciplinary discover, accusing her – wrongly, she insists – of insubordination. ‘He’d determined to reprimand me, as a result of I pulled him up on his behaviour,’ she claims.

By December that 12 months, nevertheless, issues had intensified as soon as once more.

Bandemer started outlining lavish Christmas presents he wished to purchase Louise and her youngsters, now 13, 16 and 18, together with a smartwatch for her son and £200 in money for her daughters.

Louise protested, however admits they did settle for smaller tokens from Bandemer. ‘It appeared applicable to alternate items to one another and the opposite administrators. I gave some to him and his spouse, too.’

In January, Bandemer found Louise was relationship once more. Her present associate, Andy, she says, was totally supportive of her plight, even serving to her compose messages to fend off her boss’s advances.

The information left Bandemer ‘actually upset’, Louise remembers. ‘He wished to query Andy, to speak to him and see if he was worthy of me. It felt possessive and flawed.’

Soon afterwards, he supplied her a promotion with a wage soar from £6,700 to £10,250 a month, plus advantages and fee. Louise says this left her feeling ‘caught’. ‘I knew I needed to put a cease to what he was doing, however I could not afford to say no to that kind of cash.’

The journey to Luxembourg got here shortly afterwards, adopted by an unsettling encounter at Louise’s home, when Bandemer – visiting on the pretence of doing a little work on her laptop – positioned his hand on her knee in entrance of her horrified daughter, then 17.

‘When he left the room she checked out me and mentioned, ‘Mum, what are you doing? Why are you letting him behave like this?’

‘I used to be so pleased with her but additionally mortified she had seen that. I noticed all of it by means of her eyes and every little thing I’d been burying got here out.’

Louise referred to as Bandemer the following day and advised him categorically that his behaviour needed to cease.

‘He was crying, saying he hadn’t meant something by it, and I felt sorry for him, so I began placating him. I believed, in the end, I’d obtained by means of to him.’ 

But it wasn’t to be. Alongside messages about shopping for a home in Cyprus collectively, which Bandemer later claimed was for ‘coaching’ functions, there was a Valentine’s card expressing his love and a number of other lavish items: a designer coat, a vase inscribed with the phrases ‘the flowers herein won’t ever surpass your magnificence’ – and eventually, in March 2022, the ring.

Louise recollects: ‘He got here to my home, sat down and mentioned, ‘I’ve obtained a present for you. I’ve had it for months. This is the final one, I promise. Think of it as a dedication ring, for the corporate.’ I mentioned ‘no’. He obtained upset once more and mentioned, ‘Please. Take the ring. It’s only for work.’

To this present day, the glowing diamond sits in a drawer upstairs, unworn.

‘I do not know why I nonetheless have it,’ she says. ‘I ought to promote it, however I am unable to bear to the touch it.’

Louise says she continued to face as much as Bandemer and refused any additional items from him. His affections for her appeared to chill within the following months. She discovered herself being excluded from conferences and, in her phrases, ‘ostracised’. In May 2022, she acquired a message providing an inferior position and diminished wage.

When she refused, she was dismissed, with out being paid her discover interval, vacation pay or pension contributions. She felt she had no selection however to file a declare towards Bandemer. ‘He turned a job I beloved into one thing terrible, after which he took it from me,’ she says.

Not solely did she should face him in courtroom, however she needed to put herself within the highlight, laying naked the lurid particulars of his round the clock messages, calls and emails.

‘Somebody needed to cease him,’ Louise says. ‘He would possibly go and do it once more to another person.’

To date, Bandemer has made no public assertion in regards to the tribunal determination. He didn’t reply to requests to remark. There are nonetheless footage of, and messages about, Louise on his social media accounts, which this month present him having fun with a visit to South Africa along with his spouse. On his skilled web site, he says he’s ‘simply making an attempt to be a very good dad, husband and grandad, and serving to others get to the place they need to be’. The irony of this isn’t misplaced on Louise.

For now, she is specializing in her psychological well being, constructing her personal fledgling finance firm, and being there for her youngsters.

‘I need to be a very good position mannequin, not solely to different ladies on the market however to my youngsters, particularly my daughters. I need them to see that Mum’s doing OK: she went by means of one thing horrible however she stood as much as that man, she stood up for her rules and he or she received.

‘I could not have spoken up throughout my employment however I’m talking up now. And I hope, in years to return, that can make them proud.’