Jo Sidhu KC committed sexual misconduct, says tribunal

Three counts of professional misconduct relating to inappropriate sexual behaviour towards a young female paralegal have been upheld against the prominent criminal barrister Jo Sidhu KC, a Bar Standards Board (BSB) disciplinary tribunal ruled yesterday.

Twelve other charges relating to a total of three complainants were not proved, even though the tribunal found that Sidhu’s texting of sexual fantasies to a law student he met as a teenager were “reprehensible, disgusting, shocking” and that it was difficult to envisage “more offensive invitations to engage in role play than those here”.

The panel concluded that “however disagreeable, shocking, opportunistic his behaviour” towards the student, “it was not a breach of his professional code of conduct”.

While admitting to or declining to challenge the behaviour in the complaints, Sidhu denied all the charges, saying the relationships with the women were not a regulatory matter. 

The seven-day hearing – at which the criminal silk and former chair of the Criminal Bar Association appeared by video link and chose not to give evidence or file a witness statement – heard testimony from all three women. All the charges found proved related to “Person 2”, a paralegal to whom Sidhu had offered a mini-pupillage.

When invited to shadow him on a trial outside London, the barrister asked Person 2 to come to his hotel at night to work on the trial.

The tribunal found:

• Sidhu invited the paralegal to sleep in his hotel bed despite – according to Person 2’s evidence – her protesting that she wanted to leave the room. The tribunal said this was an invitation that he knew or ought to have known was inappropriate and/or unwanted. As Sidhu was acting in a professional supervisory role, the panel unanimously found this charge proved, in that the invitation was “entirely of a sexual nature and entirely inappropriate in all the circumstances”.
• The second charge to be unanimously proved was an allegation that Sidhu’s conduct that night in changing out of his day clothes into pyjamas, laying pillows down the bed as a putative ‘barricade’ and insisting that Person 2 sleep in the bed with him was clearly sexual in nature, and he knew or ought to have known it was inappropriate.
• The tribunal also found unanimously that while acting in a position of trust, Sidhu initiated sexual contact with Person 2. While the charge that it was unwanted was not proven to the criminal standard, the charge that it was inappropriate in all the circumstances was proved, “including for the avoidance of doubt, someone in the position of a barrister”, said the tribunal.

In her personal impact statement Person 2 wrote that she relived the incident “over and over” and had questioned whether she was at fault. She said that she was embarrassed and upset, and blamed herself.

Sidhu had strenuously resisted the BSB’s disciplinary process, attempting and failing to get all charges struck out, then attempting and failing to secure a hearing in private so that no reporting of the charges or evidence could be published, and finally attempting and failing to secure a stay of the case to a later date.

Underlying his application to stay proceedings was a “desperate wish for the case to be discontinued… to disappear and go away”, observed the tribunal chair.

The panel imposed an interim suspension on Sidhu’s legal practice and will determine the sanction at a later date. Breaches of the BSB’s code of conduct can incur punishment ranging from a warning to a fine, suspension or being struck off.