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All five misconduct charges brought by the Bar Standards Board against a prominent feminist barrister have been dismissed on the basis that she has no case to answer.
The Bar’s professional regulator spent two years pursuing Charlotte Proudman over 14 tweets she posted commenting in critical terms on a judge’s ruling in a case involving domestic abuse of her female client.
A disciplinary panel found that the BSB hadn’t recognised the protections to free speech Proudman should have enjoyed under Article 10 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.
After the panel’s decision, Proudman said she believed the BSB’s prosecution was a “personal and targeted” attack because of her longstanding public challenge to what she regards as misogyny in the justice system.
Describing herself as relieved after “two and a half years of hell,” Proudman called the case against her “a clear instance of sex discrimination”. She said: “While the BSB argued that I do not have the right to criticise a domestic abuse judgment, male barristers are free to call a senior judge an ‘idiot’, ‘stupid’, and even assert that he should be ‘sacked.’”
Even more disturbing, she said, “is the gendered violence from male barristers who have been allowed by my regulator to publicly call me a ‘cunt’, an ‘insufferable wanker’, threaten me with being ‘taken down’, mock my appearance and my name, dismiss my PhD, claim that I can’t wait to get married and tell me I belong in a ‘padded room’. One of these barristers is now a full-time criminal judge who hears rape and domestic abuse cases.’
In the tweet thread for which she was prosecuted, Proudman said her client had been coerced into signing a post-nuptial agreement by her husband, a part-time judge. “I lost the case,” Proudman posted. “I do not accept the Judge’s reasoning. I will never accept the minimization of domestic abuse.
“Demeaning the significance of domestic abuse has the [effect] of silencing victims and rendering perpetrators invisible. This judgment has echoes of the “boys club” which still exists among men in powerful positions.”
Proudman went on to accuse the judge of undermining her client’s mental health and casting her as a “failed, unstable wife” even though her husband stood accused of resorting to aggression and throwing things when under the influence of alcohol.
Mark McDonald, who represented Proudman, said the BSB should never have brought the case since it was clear she had been legally entitled to send the tweets. “Dr Proudman has spent her professional life fighting against gender-based discrimination and challenging unfairness within our justice system. This should be a wake-up call to the BSB and I hope in the future that instead of attempting to prosecute her, they recognise and thank her for the great work she has done for equality in the past 15 years."
Being investigated and charged by her professional body has been a punishing experience, Proudman told Tortoise after the decision. Receiving emails about the case from the BSB had made her feel like she was having a panic attack. “For the first time I started to understand how my clients feel when they're getting emails from their perpetrators,” she said.
Days before the tribunal started, the BSB sent Proudman a costs schedule of over £38,000 it had incurred on its own legal representation, which she would have had to pay had she lost the case.
Proudman will now be seeking her own legal costs against the regulator. She intends to sue it for sex discrimination and infringement of her human right to freedom of speech.
The Bar Standards Board declined to comment.
