Worker has made false sexual allegations

I work in an office. We work in an office which does graphic design for various companies.

Last year we designed promo for a box on condoms. Part of graphic design is we need to brainstorm ideas.

The senior graphic designers is a gay man. Before the brainstorming session a whole project brief was sent out and the meeting agenda. People were given the option if they didn’t want to be part of a project on condoms (ie. Religious reasons) they could work on another project. Nobody took this option and nobody raised any concerns or questioned the agenda. During the brainstorm the senior graphic question to the group “what advert made you want to purchase a condom?” And “how can we make this campaign appeal to the LGBT community” we went round th table for each to ask for answers- which is standard in our brainstorming sessions. the group contributed ideas like suggesting a design that gave of safety but also fun and reduces the stigma of condoms etc. there was 16 people in the meeting.

However after the meeting one member of staff put in a formal complaint that the senior designer had sexually harassed him in the meeting. He felt that because the designer had directly asked him what would make him buy a condom, this was sexual harassment. He said it made him feel uncomfortable.

We launched an investigation and as there were so many people in the room and the context, we decided that no further action would be taken. We made recommendations for more disclaimers and trigger warnings in meetings,

The worker then disagreed with this. We hired an external legal team and they did not uphold his allegation.

However, this worker has been going round the office saying that we didn’t support him with his sexual harassment claim - he hasn’t been naming the senior member of staff but everyone knows who it is. We recently had a 15 of new people start and he’s told everyone of them he had a previous sexual harassment claim which we didn’t uphold (which is factually true) and as we can’t discuss th specifics with the new people, several of them have resigned sighting were a company that doesn’t take sexual harassment seriously.

The worker who is spreading this shows no signs of resigning and chatting to him he says he’s only telling peoples facts. He let slip in a meeting with the company director (which unfortunately he was only in himself and not recorded) that if he was sacked he’d bring the allegations to the newspapers. He then has denied he said this, but we all know he did.

Please help - what can we do! We feel like this member of staff has us in a chokehold.