‘Psychic’ IT worker sacked after telling colleague he’d seen her in his dreams & claimed powers were ‘protected belief’

NewsUK News A “PSYCHIC” IT worker who was sacked after telling a female employee they had already met “in his dreams” has lost a battle for compensation. Elrich Daudet claimed his new colleague had appeared to him months beforehand, as a muse for his poetry and songwriting. An IT worker has lost a court battle after telling a new female colleague he had met her already ‘in his dreams’ Credit: Champion News Service Elrich Daudet messaged his colleague telling her she was his muse and smelt like the Garden of Eden Credit: Champion News Service The woman sent an email to another colleague, saying the senior computer analyst – who claimed he was born with prophetic powers – was “doing her head in”. He was fired for gross misconduct, after sending her love poems and likening her scent to “flowers in the Garden of Eden”, making her feel “panicky” and “uncomfortable”. Sign up for The Sun newsletter Thank you! He insisted that he had known that the two of them would cross paths and that she had been “haunting” his dreams. Daudet claimed damages for unfair dismissal, harassment and discrimination on the basis of being a black man and his “protected beliefs”. However, the UK’s top employment judge Lord Fairley rejected his appeal, saying: “She thought he was coming on to her and that made her feel uncomfortable.” “It doesn’t matter whether he touches her or if it’s in an email.” He added that there was no legal error in concluding that Daudet’s belief in the power of dreams was not a “protected belief” under equality law. The messages he sent were also not a “manifestation” of beliefs, he argued, given there was no need to disclose them and doing so amounted to “harassment”. Most read in The Sun The Employment Appeal Tribunal heard that Daudet had been providing IT equipment and services to public authorities since 2008. After the woman reported his messages, Daudet faced an internal disciplinary enquiry which led to his eventual sacking for “gross misconduct” in December 2022. His lawyers argued that the belief that dreams can predict the future should in fact be protected under equality laws. But the claim was ultimately denied, with Lord Fairley arguing that there was “ample evidence” of “distress or alarm” caused to the woman by Daudet’s correspondence. “She thought he was coming on to her and that made her feel uncomfortable,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether he touches her or if it’s in an email.”