Restaurant owner in UK asked to pay £120,000 as compensation for bullying gay couple

A gay couple who worked at a restaurant in the UK has been awarded 120,000 pounds in damages after suffering two years of homophobic harassment and taunts.

Tim Jeurninck and his spouse Marco Scatena were "bullied for months on end" at their place of work in London, and the boss of the restaurant even referred to him as a "waitress," reported Metro.

Restaurant owner asked to pay 120,000 pounds as compensation for bullying gay couple

According to the Metro, the director of the restaurant also indulged in sending "offensive messages" to restaurant manager Scatena, who part-owned the business. After resigning from the job, the couple sued London eatery Piatto for sexual orientation discrimination. Employment Judge Alexander Green ruled in favour of the employees, saying that the director of the gay restaurant had tried to force Scatena out of the business with evidence suggesting that he was sexually discriminated.

Jeurninck and Scatena were awarded £41,732 and £83,102 in compensation, respectively. The tribunal held in South London was previously informed that Scatena had subsequently invested all of his personal money and also taken a bank loan and a loan from his husband’s parents to contribute to the business. He was a 30 percent shareholder in the restaurant, which opened in January 2018 on Battersea Park Road. However, the fellow directors did not even return the dividend payment to Scatena.

The couple had joined that Piatto in January 2018, but between June and September, they received massive harassment, including homophobic "name calling." The tribunal was also informed that Fabio Corona, another director of the business, called Jeurninck a "waitress" and laughed loudly while doing so.

Even when Jeurninck asked not to call him waitress, one of Corona's friends continued abusing him in Italian, saying, "Your waitress is very rude." He was also threatened that his family members could be harmed as the directors had connections with the Mafia. Later in December, Jeurnick resigned, claiming that he had not been paid his wages since March 2018. On April 25, 2019, Scatena also resigned, saying he’d been "bullied for months on end."

Image: Unsplash/Representative