Discovery of attempted eavesdropping has repercussions beyond the loss of information. Maintaining a “safe and healthy” workplace environment is important in a corporation. Two officials of the Episcopal Church were fired due to misconduct connected to the discovery of bugging devices at a meeting of their Executive Council. This entailed a four month legal investigation as well as bringing in a human resources company to carry out an audit of the workplace.
Report from “Church Times, the world’s leading Anglican newspaper“, 4/14/2016
TWO of the most senior officials in the Episcopal Church in the United States have been terminated, and a bishop demoted, after an independent investigation into misconduct.
Last December, the Presiding Bishop, the Most Revd Michael Curry, placed the chief operating officer, Bishop Stacy Sauls, the deputy chief operating officer, the director of mission, Samuel McDonald, and the director of public engagement and mission communications, Alex Baumgarten, on administrative leave after many allegations of misconduct.
In a statement on Monday, Presiding Bishop Curry announced that Mr McDonald and Mr Baumgarten had had their employment terminated, as the investigation had found that their behaviour violated “the highest standards of personal and professional conduct embodying the love of God and reflecting the teachings and the way of Jesus”.
The Bishop said: “Sam McDonald and Alex Baumgarten were found to have violated established workplace policies, and to have failed to live up to the Church’s standards of personal conduct in their relationships with employees, which contributed to a workplace environment often inconsistent with the values and expectations of the Episcopal Church. Both are therefore immediately terminated.” …
The four-month investigation was carried out by a New York legal firm that specializes in employment law. It interviewed more than 40 people, and examined thousands of pages of documents.
The nature of the misconduct by the two officials has not been revealed by the Episcopal Church, although there was speculation in blogs that the misconduct was connected to the discovery of bugging devices at a meeting of the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church.
Bishop Curry also announced that a human-resources company, Human Synergistics, would be brought in to carry out an audit of the workplace to ensure that it was “safe and healthy for all”; and also that the whole staff of the Episcopal Church would be retrained at the end of the audit.
The company had already worked with the diocese of Chicago to instill “healthier workplace patterns”, Bishop Curry said, and would carry out the same work with other parts of the Episcopal Church.
The bugging incident occurred last year, as mentioned in this part of an article from (aptly titled) “VirtueOnline.org” No one will give information about the exact nature of the incident. However, VOL and IRD writer Jeff Walton believe it might have something to do with the security tapes that were found by General Convention Executive Officer and Executive Council Secretary Canon Michael Barlowe at the Conference Center at the Maritime Institute in Linthicum Heights, Maryland, where the Executive Council was meeting last month. A tape-recording device had been concealed and was running, Barlowe told a shocked room. Council members were exhorted to look under their tables to see if anything was taped. The hidden tape recorder was found on the floor near the lead table where top church leaders had been seated throughout Executive Council. These leaders included Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and House of Deputies President Gay Jennings. No surveillance cameras that might have recorded someone hiding the recorder were found.