RVN struck off register following child sex offences admission

An RVN has been struck off the register after being handed a suspended prison sentence earlier this year for making indecent images of children.

Although a disciplinary committee said the offences were “fundamentally incompatible” with the role, it granted the nurse anonymity after accepting concerns for their and their family’s safety.

Indecent images

The nurse, known only as A, was sentenced to eight months in prison, suspended for two years, in April this year, having previously admitted three counts of making indecent images.

The RCVS VN committee report said police had searched A’s home in May 2021, where equipment including laptops, mobile phones, hard drives and memory sticks were seized, in response to an intelligence report.

Category A

Although A refused to provide passwords for all of the items, almost 1,200 indecent images were found on a laptop and hard drive.

Of those, more than 150 were of the most serious Category A, with some featuring girls as young as four years old. The material was accessed over a period of nearly four years, between June 2017 and April 2021.

Private hearing

During a two-day disciplinary hearing in late October, the details of which have now been published, A admitted both the convictions and being unfit to practise as a result of them.

But A, who will be the subject of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order until 2032 following the court case, also sought a private hearing, arguing they feared for their safety and that of their parents, who were said to have taken a number of security precautions, if the proceedings were justified.

Social media threats

The panel was also told that media coverage of the court case had also led to threats against A being posted on social media.

The application was opposed by the college’s legal representatives, who argued the threats made to A were “not sufficient in themselves to justify a departure from the important principle of open justice”.

Appropriate response

But the committee said it had to weigh the importance of open justice against the threats being made against A and A’s parents.

It concluded that allowing anonymity was “as far as it was appropriate to go” in response to the application.

Removal order

Following the hearing, committee chair Paul Morris said: “Convictions of this kind are fundamentally incompatible with being a registered veterinary nurse.

“At this point in time, a removal order is the only sanction capable of satisfying the public interest in safeguarding the reputation of the profession of veterinary nursing and ensuring that public confidence in the profession is maintained.”