A gym was within its rights to refuse a membership to a former patron who nearly sparked off a “public brawl” by making unfounded allegations that his wife had been inappropriately touched by a fitness coach, a tribunal has ruled.
Gym operator Bettystown Leisure Ltd, trading as Integral Fitness and Leisure, has been cleared of a complaint of discrimination and victimisation under the Equal Status Act 2000 made by former member Nedas Juknevicius at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC).
The gym’s owner, Brian Browning, said Mr Juknevicius came to the gym in March 2023 making “off the Richter scale” claims accusing a senior coach, Guy Bates, of inappropriately touching the complainant’s wife at a fitness class the evening before.
The allegation was entirely rejected on foot of an investigation by the gym’s management with advice from a human resources consultancy, which found there was “nothing in it”, the tribunal was told.
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The tribunal was told Mr Bates attempted to show Mr Juknevicius the same CCTV footage of the class that had been reviewed by the investigator, but things became “heated”.
“[He] called me a f***ing pervert on many occasions,” said Mr Bates, when he gave evidence to the tribunal in April. “As a father, as someone well established in the community from years of participating in sports, I’ve never experienced anything like that and my initial reaction was shock.
“After he said it again, my reaction was: ‘If you call me that again I’ll-’ – excuse my language – ‘f***ing kill you’. Obviously it’s not the greatest response in the world, but it’s the first time I’ve ever experienced anything like that,” the witness added.
“I don’t recall using the word ‘pervert’, but if I did, I apologise,” Mr Jukvenicius said, adding: “My intention wasn’t to offend [Mr Bates]; my only intention was to have him admit his behaviour was inappropriate and to apologise to my wife.”
He said when he referred to making a complaint Mr Bates then “got angry”.
Mr Browning said he commissioned an independent investigation which later found there had been “nothing of a sexual nature involved” in Mr Bates’ coaching of Mr Juknevicius’s wife the evening before the row and the coach had “nothing to answer”. He said he thought the complainant had accepted there was “nothing to see here”.
The investigation found that Mr Juknevicius’s wife had been in an exercise class “full of women” led by Mr Bates and was performing an exercise which required her to lie on her back with her legs straight up in the air, but was having difficulty performing the action, Mr Browning said.
“[Mr Bates] straightened her legs and literally tapped on the bottom of her shoes as if to say – and there’s video evidence of this – ‘now you have it’. “He did this on one or two other occasions during the class to other female members,” he said. The investigator concluded there was “nothing to answer here”, he added.
The company’s position was that when Mr Juknevicius sought to renew his membership in September 2023 he was “pushy” and “intimidatory” towards a receptionist, Lorna Waters, who also gave evidence. These allegations were disputed by the complainant.
Mr Browning said the attitude of the management towards the complainant by that stage was: “You’re not welcome here. None of the staff want to see you.”
In his decision on the matter, Mr McNamee wrote that it was “very hard to see any firm grounds for a discrimination case”. He noted the evidence was contested by both parties but it was clear that a very derogatory label – “a f***ing pervert” – was publicly attached to the instructor by the complainant.
The adjudicator noted that the complaint was investigated and no inappropriate behaviours were found to have occurred between instructor and the complainant’s wife.
“Quite clearly it was a borderline serious public brawl by two very heated persons,” he wrote. The adjudicator added that the “initial touch paper” was the remark by Mr Juknevicius, but both men had said things that were “unacceptable”.
He added: “A public brawl, or the next best thing to it, between two individuals is not in itself discriminatory,” he wrote, adding that victimisation could therefore not follow.
“The gym was within its rights to decline a membership renewal based on the incidents of 28th March, a decision reinforced, in their view, by the incidents of the 25th September,” Mr McNamee added.
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