A University of Technology Sydney professor has denied sending multiple threatening letters to herself, including one left on her car window at home that said “I know where you live” and another containing red women’s underwear.
Dianne Jolley, 51, the former dean of Science at UTS, has pleaded not guilty to 10 counts of conveying information she knew to be false or misleading to make a person fear for their safety and one count of causing financial advantage by deception.
The jury was on Monday directed to enter not guilty verdicts to nine other charges Ms Jolley had denied relating to allegations she sent letters to other university staff.
Dianne Jolley leaving court last month. She denies sending 10 threatening letters to herself. Credit:Rhett Wyman
She remains accused of sending letters to her work and home.
Under cross-examination on Tuesday, Ms Jolley said she woke one morning in September 2019 to find some of her clothes cut and stolen and thought a note on the window of her car was a flyer.
“I picked it up and read it ... I was horrified and then I was concerned for my son’s safety,” she said.
She told Crown prosecutor Roger Kimbell her son had been sleeping in a bedroom within the nearby garage and she “knocked on the door to see if he was OK”.
“He said he didn’t see anything, he was just as surprised as I was,” Ms Jolley said. “Someone came to my home and vandalised my clothes whilst my son was asleep less than 10 metres away.”
Mr Kimbell suggested Ms Jolley was the person who had cut up the clothes and she “never had any property stolen at all”, to which she replied: “No.”
Asked whether she “made that up to police” and had put the note on her car, she said: “No, I didn’t.”
She also denied stamping an envelope containing a card and a pair of red underwear, which she told the court looked “similar” to what had been stolen.
Mr Kimbell alleged Ms Jolley sent the letter because she “wanted the support from UTS” and wanted to maintain the security detail she was receiving from the university, at a total cost of $127,586.93.
“That’s not correct,” she said.
She denied the prosecutor’s allegation she had “wanted to mislead UTS in providing security measures”.
On Monday, she told the court she was experiencing stress because of a harassment campaign related to closing the Traditional Chinese Medicine course and had contemplated resigning, but looked at her contract and decided to commit personal misconduct and send a letter to herself so she would get removed from her job.
“I deliberately typed a letter, so I was piggybacking on the security and the response that I knew that I would get by submitting a threatening letter to myself in the workplace,” Ms Jolley said.
On Tuesday, she added: “It was when my family was under threat and I felt personally attacked. No job is worth that.”
Ms Jolley said she had authored and printed the one letter to herself in November 2019 and handed it to a colleague but denied being responsible for “the whole of the 10 letters”.
Mr Kimbell said Ms Jolley, in text messages to a colleague in the days after her arrest, said she had “cracked under the pressure” and “did things I’m not proud of”.
Asked about a message reading, “I love the job but the weight was too heavy for too long”, Ms Jolley said: “I was talking about the pressure it was putting on my family because no job has a right to impact your safety and protection of your family.”
The court heard under Ms Jolley’s contract, UTS could terminate her employment immediately and without notice for reasons including a serious breach of misconduct but also for abandoning her role by being absent for ten sequential working days.
The prosecutor asked: “You could have done that, couldn’t you?”
“Yes, but I chose not to,” Ms Jolley replied.
The jury will hear closing addresses in the trial from Wednesday.
With Georgina Mitchell
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Sarah McPhee is a breaking news reporter with The Sydney Morning Herald.
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2021-07-13 07:51:30Z
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