Ex-job centre employee Brooke Holmes confesses to illegally accessing former co-worker's phone number after he ended their affair

Brooke Holmes, who now runs F45 Training at Shellharbour, repeated rang the man after he ended their 12-month relationship in 2014 and threatened to divulge their affair to her husband.

Holmes also phoned the man’s new girlfriend, telling her they were still sleeping together and that he was the father of her unborn child.

Court documents reveal Holmes was working for ORS Group at the time in a role that gave her access to the restricted Employee Services System (ESS), which contained personal information including addresses and contact details for job seekers.

The court heard Holmes and the man, who also worked for ORS Group, had an affair between mid-2013 and mid-2014. He left the company in February 2015, saying he was forced to repeatedly change his mobile phone number to avoid calls from Holmes.

He told police he only disclosed the new numbers to a few people and organisations, including his job service provider, MBC Employment Solutions. 

The numbers were stored on his ESS profile. Holmes illegally accessed this profile 35 times in early 2015 to obtain the man’s new numbers, prompting him to complain to the Department of Employment.

Court documents said the man had never been a client of ORS Group, meaning Holmes had no authorised reason to access his profile.

Holmes pleaded guilty to a single charge of accessing restricted data without authorisation and was due to be sentenced in Wollongong Local COurt on Thursday, however her lawyer, Graeme Morrison, asked for an adjournment to seek psychiatric reports.

He told the court Holmes was suffering from a mental illness at the time she committed the offence and would seek to have the charge dealt with outside the traditional legal frameworks.

The case returns to court on November 16.