[contingencies]

Meh. You can take that stance. However, I don't think the OP is going to come across as manipulative if they have been wrongfully victimized by such a situation. My policy has always been and continues to be "open, honest, and to hell with the social implications." While it's not the snazziest social calibration one can aspire to, and it can burn bridges, long term it creates trust and more importantly removes the need to bother managing such petty issues mentally.

[watwut]

Practicaly, it does not matter whether he was wrongly victimised or not. It is irrelevant whether she wrongly accused him or whether he was collosally out of line. It matters whether he can talk about "formative stage of career" without sounding like a colossal weirdo. Most people can't.

He was looking for advice how to make his situation better. This is not it.

Also, there is big difference between saving mental resources by not thinking about impact of your words and spending effort looking for "a chance to talk to a nontrivial percentage of the staff and explain ...". The latter does not save mental energy. The latter is major project instead. Nor does it build trust. Characterising it as causual "saving energy from managing petty issues" is ridiculous.

[contingencies]

Your response is 90% opine.

By bringing it up he is giving the company a chance to be aware of its mistake. As long as he is respectful in how its done that's a very selfless thing.

FYI the open-and-to-hell-with-it strategy works well for me, I am very successful by most measures.