Former chair of the Criminal Bar Association Jo Sidhu KC was today cleared of the majority of misconduct charges against him relating to inappropriate behaviour with young women. However three allegations, from a person whom Sidhu invited to his hotel room during a mini-pupillage placement, were found proved.
Ruling this afternoon, the chair of the Bar Tribunals and Adjudication Service panel said: ’The invitation to stay the night in his hotel room and in his bed when she was undertaking mini pupillage or work- shadowing was an invitation of a sexual nature and which he knew or ought to have known was inappropriate and unwanted.’
The allegation, from ’Person 2’ was one of 15 charges considered at a tribunal hearing. Sidhu denied all charges, relating to allegations by three women who were either law students or undergoing mini pupillage at the time of the alleged incidents. Of those charges, five were struck out after the tribunal found there was no case to answer. All allegations in relation to Person 1 and Person 3 were dismissed.
Following a seven-day hearing in November, the tribunal’s findings were handed down this afternoon.
In an oral judgment, tribunal chair Her Honour Janet Waddicor said Sidhu, who did not give evidence or call any witnesses during his hearing but provided more than 140 pages of character references, did not deny sexual contact with Person 2 and he ‘knew or ought to have known it was inappropriate or unwanted’. She said: ‘It is the unanimous view [of the panel] that it was inappropriate, it was sexual contact and it was inappropriate in all the circumstances which included his position as a barrister.’
All charges relating to Person 3 were dismissed. The tribunal chair said they related to a personal, not a professional, relationship which was therefore not in the regulator’s remit.
She said: ‘In our judgment the evidence relating to charge 2 [in relation to Person 3] does not amount to a breach of the code of conduct. What it amounts to is the respondent perhaps embarking on a relationship which became entirely inappropriate, undesirable, and a relationship which, no doubt, would shock most members of the public; but, the question for us, is if the relationship was simply a personal one and does not come within the ambit of the regulator.
‘This was a personal relationship out of the reach of the regulator.’
Speaking of another charge relating to Person 3, the chair said: ‘We have had the unenviable task to look at [messages exchanged between Sidhu and Person 3]. The exchanges are reprehensible, they are disgusting, they are shocking. It is difficult to imagine more offensive invitations to engage in role-play than those here, but the question is when he behaved in this way, was he acting in breach of his professional duties. We are not satisfied this was anything other than a personal relationship, however inappropriate, however emotional damaging to Person 3, however unequal the relationship, it was, nevertheless, a personal relationship.’
She added that although the exchanges about role-play were ‘disgusting’, it was ‘role-play between consenting adults, however vulnerable Person 3 was, it was a consensual relationship’.
Following judgment, Fiona Horlick KC, for the Bar Standards Board, applied for an interim order that Sidhu be suspended from practice until sanction is decided by the panel. The five-person panel agreed to an interim order that the BSB is required not to issue a practising certificate to Sidhu.
Sidhu appeared remotely via video link. The hearing had been held in private during the first half of the day.
