What is happening at the BBC?

No doubt you've seen the headlines... an anonymous presenter at the BBC has been accused of spending ￡35,000 on explicit images from a young person.

This information was made public by the young person's mother, who had already complained to the BBC in May.

In a previous life, I was responsible for internal and external complaints about employees. I investigated malpractice harassment, bullying, and illegal activity.

The complaints would be about high-profile individuals in the organisation and us regular folk.

One thing struck me every time I got a call.

There were two camps. One camp called me every few days asking for an update, demanding I throw the kitchen sink at my investigation. The other camp was paralysed by fear and wanted me to "make it go away." I understood this; it was a headache, a potential waste of resources, it could end up in the papers, and it wasn't worth the time and effort. The individual was too high profile, too senior, too valuable.

The only way I could rid myself of the noise in both camps was to set some guiding principles for myself and my team:

• We were independent ?
• Our job was to find out the truth, regardless of how difficult that might be?
• We would always do the right thing
• ?We would never be swayed by outside opinion
• We would act fast and;
• We would be thorough; we owed that to everyone involved

These situations were unpleasant and challenging, but it was part and parcel of the job. So why has the BBC taken so long to act?

Do they have the right skills and capability to handle a complaint of this nature?

An initial risk assessment should have given them all the information they needed to consider suspending the subject at the start of the process back in May.

But what if it’s not true?

It’s a common misconception that suspension = guilty. Suspensions are as much about the protection of the subject of the complaint.

Furthermore, I would have considered two further courses of action as part of an initial assessment:

• The requirement for a police referral
• ?Assigning a complaint liaison officer – regular contact on a serious complaint is critical; in this case, it may not have ended up in the papers if the complainant had been kept informed of the progress of the investigation.

Being responsible for investigating a complaint of this nature is tough. So having the right capability and personality to deal with these situations without fear is crucial.

Is this what happened at the BBC? Was someone shouting, “We don’t know what to do”? or “We need to make this go away”? I don’t know.

What I do know is this story did not need to make the papers. Countless BBC employees did not need to publicly deny their involvement, and numerous defamation cases will be fought in court. All because the BBC failed to act promptly to protect everyone involved.?