I am a professional & I had a terrible neighbour who spread false rumours about me in my workplace (from what I can gather she was jealous of me as she has not had success career wise whereas I had made it to management level). She contacted my employer (I was moritifed & cannot beleive she did this – she is someone I’ve barely ever spoken to) & made up lies, evidently in the hope I would be fired. To my horror it nearly worked, my immediate managers knew it was all lies but HR didn’t & they beleived her & tried to get rid of me. I resigned but the whole workplace of 200 people believed the rumours too & now everywhere I go I get looked at strangely & am always nervous my new employer will find out about the rumours & beleive them & the whole thing will start again. I have even contemplated moving to a new city. I also fear dating a guy again as also people in my neighbourhood believe these false things (the awful neighbour moved but 1 of her friends still lives here & gossips).
I saw a lawyer but in my country it is extremely expensive to sue someone & you still have to pay the lawyer even if they lose your case. Also so witnesses would come forward.

The things she made up have a social stigma to them, she was making out I was mentally ill, which is completely absurd. ie: she told my employer I pretended to go on holiday for 3 weeks but had locked myself in the house (in the hot summer with no windows open). I took my passport in to show my employer I was holidaying overseas at the time!

I don’t want the job back & was looking for another one when all this happened anyway. I tried to defend myself but no one would beleive me (I am single with no children & found people in that workplace didn’t like that so I think they wanted to beleive the rumours).

The awful thing is that people beleive I have a mental illness & I don’t & it’s hard to prove. My current employer will think I used to have one & it might occur again in their workplace.

Recently at work I was given unfair feedback that I am not helpful. Mind you my company is going through a re-organization and I was the only one with experience helping out 7 people so as you can imagine I was pulled and pushed every which way. These seven people went and told my managers that I have not been helpful (even though for 3 days I helped them and didn’t do any of my own work). So I confronted on of them (the one on my team that I supervise) It didn’t go as I planned. Someone else went and told management what happened. Managment never asked me what happened. I apologized, but now I have a bad reputation.

Feed back and how to be credible again (in an environment where I already feel I don’t have any allies or support)? Should I have confronted my team mate?