A male barrister who was disbarred for sexually assaulting a woman in a nightclub has won a bid to return to the profession, with the High Court ruling that he should be suspended for two years.
Kevin Farquharson was given a six-month suspended sentence at Cardiff Magistrates’ Court last March after he pleaded guilty to one count of sexual assault for repeatedly groping a younger barrister while he was on a ‘drunken bender’ in Bristol in September 2019.
He then texted her the day after the assault saying he was ‘in real trouble’ with his then-partner and asking her to lie on his behalf, as well as asking another barrister to do the same.
Farquharson, who was called to the bar in 2011, was struck off in October by the Bar Tribunals and Adjudication Service, which found that the sexual assault was ‘prolonged and serious’ with ‘distressing consequences for [the victim]’.
The tribunal also found that Farquharson had tried to ‘use fellow barristers to misrepresent the facts to his partner which could reasonably be seen by the public to undermine his honesty and integrity’.
He appealed against his disbarment to the High Court and Mrs Justice Heather Williams last week ruled that there were ‘clear mitigating factors sufficient to depart from a starting point of disbarment’.
The judge also held that the tribunal erred by not referring to Farquharson’s Article 8 rights in relation to the text messages, though she said any interference was ‘justified in the circumstances’.
She raised concerns that the Bar Standards Board ‘has yet to fully grapple with the implications’ of the High Court’s ruling in the case of former Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer partner Ryan Beckwith and ‘the importance of obligations to act with integrity and without damaging the public’s trust and confidence in the profession being drawn from, informed by and/or tethered to the contents of the BSB handbook or to standards which are necessarily implicit from its contents’.
However, the judge added: ‘It is perfectly plain that the regulator’s reach may extend into a barrister’s behaviour in their private life and that there is no barrier or bright line drawn between professional and private conduct.’
Farquharson’s barrister Marc Beaumont said after the ruling: ‘A suspension is itself a very severe punishment for a barrister. Disbarment is akin to capital punishment and must be deployed as a sanction of very last resort.’
In relation to Article 8, he added: ‘The view might be taken that, to be safe from prosecution, no barrister should ever tell a lie in private life. This creates real uncertainty: we are now in a profession where private conduct may be policed by the BSB on the apparent basis under Article 8(2) that this is what the public and the bar require and expect. The implications require very careful consideration.’
