Bisexual man evicted

Bisexual man evicted

Wednesday, 04 June 2008

Rachel Cook - MCV Mansfield football trainer, Ken Campagnolo, who has been unable to gain employment since being outed, has now been evicted from his family home. “I am not able to go to my home and I can be charged with trespass,” Campagnolo told MCV. “I asked the local shire for help but they have no emergency housing in Mansfield.” Campagnolo was outed as bisexual by a work colleague while working as a forest contractor for the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE). He has consequently suffered homophobic harassment, including being stood down as a volunteer trainer with the Bonnie Doon Football Club due to fears of a backlash from the parents of children playing at the club, despite there being no suggestion he was a sexual predator. Campagnolo claims he has suffered years of verbal abuse from fellow DSE workers. He also alleges a DSE Manager told him: “You can fight the fires for free but you will never get a job with DSE because you are a poof.” His case of discrimination on the basis of sexuality against the DSE has been dismissed twice by the Victorian Civil Administrate Tribunal (VCAT), but is now due to be heard a third time. “DSE have launched another strike out application, their third,” said Rob Mitchell, of the RJM Trust, a philanthropic organisation set up assist people who have suffered sexuality-motivated discrimination. “Why keep trying to strike the case out? Because they can. When you are a government department with, to all intents and purposes, unlimited financial power and legal resources why wouldn’t you?”