Jenny Bill, a counsellor at Australian Catholic social service organization, Centacare, says she was asked to remove two crosses from around her neck while at work. “This is a shameful thing, especially for a Christian organisation,” Ms Bill was cited as saying by the Fraser Coast Chronicle.
Fraser Centacare executive director Peter Selwood said the organization had to strike the right balance between being a church organization and government funded and had to be careful about being overly church focused.
But he acknowledged that it was “certainly inappropriate that Jenny was told to remove her crosses.”
“I refused to take my crosses off because this was blatant religious discrimination, let alone that wearing a cross in 2009 is also considered fashionable,” Ms Bill said.
Ms Bill said she was told within the first few days of employment by one of her superiors, that she was ordered by the organization’s service director, Jo Chorny, to remove her crosses. In a later meeting with Ms Chorny, she was made to understand that if the crossed weren’t removed “I would be risking losing out on future employment there.”
When she made a formal complaint, she says she was “subject to being ignored at work, given seething looks and the silent treatment and overheard conversations among staff loyal to senior management that left me feeling ridiculed, very uncomfortable and intimidated.”
She has since left the organization.
Ms Chorny has sent Ms Bill a written apology for any “unintended consequences” and the order coming off as “intimidatory in nature” or as “reflective of Centacare Community Support Services’ policy.”
But Ms Bill said the letter did not contain an apology for asking her to take off the crosses.
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