Taunted by a customer and a contractor, and both had to pay

Samuel Eklom started at a self-storage business in September 2023 as a storage consultant, and his job grew into running the whole site. Jacob Marshall was the site’s first customer and later a cleaning and maintenance contractor. Troy Mitchell became a regular customer, in effect the site’s biggest.

Mr Eklom’s evidence was that from late 2024 or early 2025 the two men targeted him with crude, homophobic remarks, often feeding off each other. He said he felt degraded, isolated and outnumbered. When he complained, he was not listened to; when he played a recording of what was said, he was told he had broken Queensland’s privacy law. A doctor diagnosed anxiety, stress and a depressive disorder. He was later dismissed after taking personal leave.

He sued the two men in court under the Fair Work Act, which since March 2023 has prohibited sexually harassing a worker in connection with their work. His claim against his employer was dropped once it emerged the men had never been its employees. Neither man took part in the case, and in December 2025 the court declared that each had sexually harassed him.

Judge Vasta explained that it does not matter who the harasser is, so long as the person harassed is a worker. Mr Eklom’s sexual orientation was irrelevant. Because the men had no power over him, it lacked that aggravating feature, but it was still “a very serious example of sexual harassment at work”. The two men were ordered to pay $90,000 compensation between them, and each was penalised $13,000, more than Mr Eklom had asked for, with the penalties paid to him. The court refused aggravated damages and costs, and awarded nothing for lost pay: losing his job was his employer’s doing, not theirs.