Ex diplomat had breakdown over bogus claim he touched woman’s bottom

 
Payout: Ex Diplomat John Yapp and his wife Anne
Emer Martin5 June 2013

A former UK diplomat awarded £320,000 after he lost his post over false claims that he touched a woman’s bottom told today how the Foreign Office’s failure to back him triggered a breakdown.

John Yapp was “our man in Belize” until he was suspended in 2008 after his superiors confronted him with the allegation that he had touched the wife of a senior Belize politician inappropriately at a social gathering.

The claims were dropped but the 61-year-old then faced claims he had bullied staff, ultimately costing him his ambassadorial role.

This week the High Court ordered Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to pay Mr Yapp the six-figure sum and £150,000 up front towards his legal bills after ruling that it was wrong to suspend him from his post as High Commissioner with immediate effect.

Today Mr Yapp hit out at the FCO for using public money “to bully and persecute” staff and urged them to drop plans to challenge the judge’s ruling.

Mr Yapp said: “I am delighted at the compensation ruling. I believe that most British taxpayers expect the FCO to use the public funds they are provided with to pursue foreign policies in the interest of this country instead of wasting it to bully and even persecute employees such as I who have been shown by a High Court judgement to have been so seriously wronged by them already.

“Someone in the FCO really needs to get a grip on this.”

Mr Yapp said the FCO’s failure to back him triggered a major mental breakdown, leaving him depressed and unable to work.

He argued that superiors failed to “hear his side of the story” before imposing the suspension, despite his 40 years’ service as a diplomat, including previous tenure at the High Commissioner in the Seychelles.

A source close to the former diplomat said: “The case has offered him closure after five years of poor health. He had to moved away from his home town of Tunbridge Wells to Eastbourne because people knew about the case and he felt surrounded by gossip - it knocked him back when his career was going extremely well and everything changed.”

During the hearing, the judge said the grounds for appealing the decision were weak, stating that the FCO could not appeal on a point of law, it was not in the public interest, and that the chance of overturning the decision were low.

The source added: “I think it is a question of whoever started this in the FCO not losing face, they will fight until the bitter end.”

Last month, Mr Justice Cranston ruled that the FCO “acted in breach of contract and in breach of its duty of care in withdrawing Mr Yapp from his post without affording him fair treatment” and that the ex-diplomat was entitled to compensation for his resulting losses.

During the hearing the court heard Mr Yapp was summoned before an FCO mandarin while on leave in June 2008 and hit with accusations that he had a “bullying” management style and “displayed inappropriate behaviour towards women at social functions”.

It emerged that the claims of inappropriate behaviour arose from a Belize politician who claimed that Mr Yapp touched his wife’s rear at a social gathering.

The accusation - branded “unfounded and scurrilous” by Mr Yapp’s QC, Jane McNeill - was ultimately rejected after an FCO disciplinary probe.

But, by then, it was too late to reinstate Mr Yapp in the Central American state and in subsequent years he found himself increasingly sidelined in professional terms.

Alan Payne, for the FCO, said it planned to challenge the judge’s ruling in the Court of Appeal.

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