'Peter Gauci, a former University of Queensland tutor, has won a two-year battle to appeal against a federal magistrate's decision that he was not the victim of sexual harassment by a student. [I know it's early, but wake up and concentrate.]

Mr Gauci was working as a first year tutorial co-ordinator in the university's psychology department when he met Cristelle Kennedy, a social work student, in 2002. As part of his job, he sometimes met Ms Kennedy to review her exam papers, or process her requests for extensions to assignments.

After one such meeting, she told him he had "really nice eyes". Unnerved by this comment, Mr Gauci immediately reported it to his supervisor, who advised him to keep a record. [Reported it to his supervisor? The last time a student told me I had nice eyes, I took it straight to the Compliance Line.]

He subsequently twice accepted Ms Kennedy's invitation to have coffee, and went for lunch with her once. After this lunch in 2003, she followed him back to the psychology building and asked him if he wanted to get a tattoo with her. [Yeah, the old want to get a tattoo with me routine...] Mr Gauci declined, but agreed to see a movie. "I was frankly too stunned to say anything other than OK," he told the Federal Magistrates Court in Brisbane. [Unnerved. Stunned. This is a Sensitive Man.]

But on the afternoon of the day they were supposed to go to the movies, Mr Gauci cancelled via email. "I don't feel good about seeing a movie with you," he wrote. "For me it's unusual for a student to throw this at me [asking him to be friends] and the whole situation is just uncomfortable … You're probably a nice person, but we can't be friends. Please don't persist with this."

Ms Kennedy wrote back saying it was Mr Gauci's own insecurities that made him feel uncomfortable. "I'm not asking a lot of you. If I wanted to 'jump you' I would have done it a lot sooner than this … As for persisting, well I'm not one to go down without a fight. If I wanted to make your life hell I could." [Notice how she puts jump you in quotation marks... UD would love to read a study of why, how, and when people choose to put quotation marks around things...]

Mr Gauci copied his supervisor, Judy Bowey, in on his response. "I've asked you not to pursue this. It's a simple fact of life that people have different personalities and they're not all suited to be friends with each other," he said. "I'm sorry that it's come to this - but I have to inform you that professionally, you have no reason to see me in the workplace … you've no reason to make any contact with me and if you do again I will consider it harassment." [I thought Australia was a rugged pioneer type country... Look at this guy...]

Although Mr Gauci said he was gay, and provided evidence that Ms Kennedy had been the aggressor, Dr Bowey told him he had not been harassed.

Instead she "felt he had been insensitive in effectively jilting Ms Kennedy by email", and suggested he write a letter of apology. Mr Gauci complied on May 9, 2003. [This started weird, and it's getting weirder.]

Ten days later Ms Kennedy made a sexual harassment complaint against Mr Gauci to the university. Within days, Mr Gauci lodged a complaint against her. [Haha! Two can play at this game!] He also lodged a complaint with the Anti-Discrimination Board of Queensland. [Top that!]

On July 16, 2003, Ms Kennedy withdrew her complaint. Mr Gauci persisted with his, and when he was not satisfied with the university's handling of the matter he sued the university and Ms Kennedy for breaches of the Sexual Discrimination Act.

In October 2005, Justice Jarrett in the Federal Magistrates Court found there were "no facts that would or could amount to sexual harassment by [Ms Kennedy] of [Mr Gauci]".'