An architect who accused her neighbour of gendered violence after he drove his car across her driveway as a ‘phallic symbol’ has been struck off.
The Architects Registration Board barred Dr Karin Elliott for a minimum of two years after she was found guilty of unacceptable professional conduct by sending inappropriate communications.
The tribunal found that in 2024 she used ‘inflammatory language, making a series of misleading and potentially damaging accusations’ against several of her neighbours in Norwich, ‘with scant regard to their accuracy’ against several of her
The board added that Dr Elliott’s actions were ‘misleading, lacking integrity and dishonest’.
One neighbour was accused of ‘racial harassment’ after Dr Elliot falsely accused him of wielding a chainsaw in her garden.
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In a planning form submitted to Norwich City Planning Portal in March 2024, she wrote: ‘I begged him to turn off his chainsaw and explained that I considered it to be racial harassment.’
The Irish-American architect’s partner, Francois Girardin, told the tribunal none of their neighbours said ‘anything directly racist’.
However, Mr Girardin – who is French – said he made an ‘inference’ of racism on the basis that ‘sometimes a Union Jack would appear’ and ‘a wall had been constructed after the US President had talked about building a big wall to keep out immigrants’, the tribunal heard.
Mr Girardin added that whenever an England team were playing sport, a neighbour would ‘leave their doors open, and – especially when England played France – their family would cheer for England’.
During cross-examination, Dr Elliott said her neighbour had repeatedly driven across her driveway and that, from ‘a psychoanalytic perspective’, the ‘phallic symbol’ of his car was a manifestation of gender violence.
The tribunal said that this claim ‘underscored how tenuously she constructed serious accusations against other people, and how casually she dispensed them’.
The architect had made a planning application for the installation of CCTV cameras on her property in December 2023 amid the ongoing neighbour rows.
She wrote a letter to local residents in February 2024 asking for support in this application, which contained allegations the tribunal found to be ‘dishonest’ and ‘misleading’.
In the letter to residents, she claimed one neighbour had ‘smashed down several of our historic walls, chopped down many of our historic trees, and built on our property, all without our consent’.
Discussing another neighbour, Dr Elliott wrote: ‘He calls us either a “piece of s***”, “disgusting” and/or exclaims “the stench” regularly.’
In another allegation, the architect wrote: ‘He threatened to hit one of us over the head with a hammer at one stage, after he was asked to desist.
‘He had been starting to build a wall on our property illegally on a Sunday, following Trump’s declaration that he would “build a big wall” to keep out immigrants.
‘It is very upsetting. We are Irish/American and French.’
Dr Elliott accused a third neighbour of singing Tragedy by the Bee Gees ‘from the enormous balcony they built overlooking our home’ after the death of her father.
She also said this neighbour had built an ‘ugly concrete foundation’ and used influence at the local council ‘to escape justice’.
Discussing the three neighbours, Dr Elliott wrote: ‘We hope that the CCTV might deter them all from further trespassing and further destroying our listed garden, and from any further gender violence and racial harassment.’
In cross-examination, the architect said: ‘I think I’d give this letter a serious editing if I did it again.’
Dr Elliott made further allegations in a planning appeal form to Norwich City Planning Portal in March 2024.
One neighbour told the tribunal that the architect’s ‘bizarre accusations of threatening behaviour and the racist accusations have been a source of acute embarrassment and personal discomfort’.
Another said the allegations were ‘very depressing and upsetting’ and said they do not spend time in their garden because Dr Elliott and her partner are ‘always looking at us’.
They said the architect is an ‘absolute disgrace to her profession’.
The tribunal found Ms Elliott’s conduct occurred after she had previously been found guilty of unacceptable professional conduct in 2021 for calling neighbours ‘racists and Nazis’.
She was also found to have made ‘offensive references to their physical characteristics and mental health’.