The Report of the Equal Education-appointed Panel of Enquiry to investigate allegations against Doron Isaacs and others and review the proceedings and outcome of an investigation in 2011 has published its report.

The Report is authored by Judge Kathy Satchwell and concurred in by Dr Malose Langa.

What were the findings?

Extracting from paragraphs 412 and 413 of the Final Report:

412. On a conspectus of all the evidence received by this Panel, I find:

… No evidence has been produced to support the existence of any of the allegations regarding an incident in 2009 involving Mr Doron Isaacs which allegation was reported in the Mail & Guardian newspaper of 18th May 2018 and all evidence available to this Panel exonerates Mr Doron Isaacs of any wrongdoing with regard to such allegations.

… No complaints or evidence have been produced to support the existence of any complaints of sexual harassment or related misconduct on the part of Mr Doron Isaacs. In the absence of any such complaint or evidence against him, there is nothing before this Panel of which Mr Isaacs needs to be exonerated.

… No evidence has been produced to support the existence of any allegation against Mr Achmat that he has silenced or intimidated or attempted to silence or intimidate any potential complainant against Isaacs as was reported in the Mail & Guardian newspaper of 18th May 2018 and all140 evidence available to this Panel exonerates Mr Achmat of any wrongdoing with regard to such allegations.

… No evidence has been produced to support the existence of any allegations against Mr Isaacs that he has silenced or intimidated or attempted to silence any potential complainant against himself as was reported in the Mail & Guardian newspaper of 18th May 2018 and all evidence available to this Panel exonerates Mr Isaacs of any wrongdoing with regard to such allegations.

… There are no other complaints of attempted or completed acts of intimidation or silencing on the part of either Mr Isaacs or Mr Achmat in regard to any potential complainant against Mr Isaacs. Absent any such complaints, there is nothing before this Panel of which Mr Isaacs or Mr Achmat needs to be exonerated.

… The process followed by the Human Resources Subcommittee, the Chair of the Board and the Board itself in the 2011 investigation was fair and appropriate in all the circumstances and met the requirements of natural justice and proper procedure.

… The findings of the Human Resources Subcommittee as endorsed by the then Board was considered, rational and correctly reflected the absence of evidence before them.

… No member of the Human Resources Subcommittee or the Board allowed any personal knowledge of or connection to or with Mr Isaacs or any other person to compete against or overwhelm their duty to conduct an independent and impartial investigation in his or her capacity as a member of the Human Resources Subcommittee or the Board and thus no person can be found to have subordinated their duty to Equal Education to their personal interests. No conflict of interests was entertained or indulged.

What about the most serious allegation the Mail & Guardian made about a woman named ‘Jane’ in Kalk Bay?

The Report states that “all evidence available to this Panel exonerates Mr Doron Isaacs of any wrongdoing with regard to such allegations.” It further states at paragraph 50:

“Isaacs version is highly plausible… Events in 2010 concerning the failure by ‘Jane’ to produce the video and refund money from donors, coupled with Isaacs’ accusation made to her that this constituted ‘corruption’ could have motivated this allegation in the Mail & Guardian… Achmat also gave evidence and relied upon exchange of Facebook messages between ‘Jane’ and himself. Those documents speak for themselves. They do not support any suggestion of an unwelcome sexual interaction between Isaacs and ‘Jane’, report by ‘Jane’ to Achmat, harsh rejection by Achmat to ‘Jane’…”

What happened at the Inquiry?

On 12 July 2018 a public announcement was made calling for complaints. Cheadle Thomson & Haysom was identified as being available to support complainants; later a legal NGO took on this role.

After four months no complaint had been received by the Panel. No complaint was put to any accused person.

The legal NGO gave the Panel submissions, apparently by 19 individuals, on the following conditions:

- None of the submissions could be shown to any of the accused in any form;

- The contents of the submissions could not be conveyed to the accused in any form;

- The identity of the authors had to be kept secret from the accused in every case;

- The identity of the authors were, the Panel wrote to us, kept secret even from the Panel in about half the cases;

- The authors refused to be questioned by the accused, even in a mediated or attenuated manner, on their submissions;

- The authors were not even prepared to be interviewed by the Panel;

- The Panel informed us in writing that some of the authors would not engage questions of clarity from the Panel even if those questions were in writing;

Was there any reason that you know of for the need for authors or the legal NGO to have insisted upon these restrictions?

The Report states that there is no evidence of intimidation or threats of victimisation and in fact found a number of claims in that regard to be false.

What did the Terms of Reference say about anonymous complaints?

The Terms of Reference state at clause 13:

"Any information and complaints received by the panel shall be furnished to Isaacs."

"The Panel shall have the power to direct, amongst other things, that –

19.1.  a summary of its report be released;

19.2.  its detailed written report be released or be kept confidential;

19.3.  the evidence of some or all of the witnesses or complainants be kept confidential;

19.4.  the identity of a complainant or witness shall be kept confidential;

19.5.  the report referred to in clause 19.2, and the information referred to in clauses 19.3 and 19.4 be disclosed to Isaacs and his representative(s), if any, subject to aconfidentiality undertaking."

The Terms of Reference are therefore clear that complaints and complainants can be kept confidential from the public but must be put to the person who is accused.

What were the content of the 19 submissions?

We don’t know. All we can do is quote from paragraphs 24 and 25 of the Report. It must be remembered though that these submissions were anonymous and never tested. They may therefore be false.

Paragraphs 24 and 25 of the Report make clear that a majority of the 19 submissions did not concern sexual harassment.

“The complaints covered a range of issues – some of which pertained to perceived racial or class bias within EE while others dealt with their hearsay knowledge in later years as to events which occurred in 2011.”

In many case these submission were not from Equal Education people. Paragraph 24 also states: “[I]t must not be thought that all 19 … had ever volunteered, interned, worked for or been members of EE.”

The most serious allegations in these secret, anonymous, untested submissions are “three submissions to the effect that those persons felt that they had been manipulated into participating in and exchanging sexual texting over the internet” and “three submissions by persons who had a consensual, intimate sexual relationship which they subsequently considered to have been manipulative in both design and content”. Nowhere does the Report state that these were people employed at Equal Education.

The Report also notes that three submissions alleged that “persons within EE had attempted to stifle exposure of the true state of activities or organisational culture”. Paragraph 25 makes explicit that there was overlap in the above, i.e. it was not three separate submissions in each category.

“The balance did not concern matters within our Terms of Reference but issues ranging from differential treatment between staff and ‘Equalisers’ through to reception given by management to proposed community interventions.”

Any suggestion that there were 19 allegations concerning sexual harassment is therefore patently dishonest.

The fact that the Report summarises and includes these untested, defamatory allegations that were never put to the accused, even in the summarised version they appear in the Report, shows how far the Panel went to try to accommodate the demands of the legal NGO.

The issue was not in fact anonymity, as is now being claimed. Mr Isaacs actually waived his right to know his accusers' identity -- he agreed that complaints could be redacted and have names removed. The issue was the impossibility of knowing anything of the substance of the complaints and therefore responding to them.