The Catholic nurse employed by Croydon University Hospital, was first asked to remove her necklace in 2014. The hospital claimed they issued the request based on the National Health Service’s policy that the wearing of necklaces represent a health and safety risk.
After several attempts to get her to stop wearing the symbol of her faith, the hospital demoted her and reassigned her to work as a receptionist. She resigned in 2020, after working as a nurse there for 18 years, Evening Standard reports.
Onuoha then filed charges saying she had been unfairly dismissed, and that the hospital had violated her free expression of her religion under Article 9 of the European convention on human rights.
The Employment Tribunal in its ruling last week said the 61-year-old was harassed and vict!mised by the hospital when she was told to stop wearing the cross due to an infection risk.
It added this had created a “hum!liating, host!le and threatening environment” for the nurse, breaching her human rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
According to the Guardian, narrating her ordeal, Onuoha, said, “My cross has been with me for 40 years. It is part of me, and my faith, and it has never caused anyone any h#rm. At this hospital there are members of staff who go to a mosque four times a day and no one says anything to them. Hindus wear red bracelets on their wrists and female Muslims wear hijabs in theatre.
Yet my small cross around my neck was deemed so dangerous that I was no longer allowed to do my job. I am a strong woman but I have been treated like a cr!minal.”
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