Former criminal bar leader Jo Sidhu KC is not a monster, he is not a predator and no adverse inference should be drawn from his decision not to give evidence, his legal team have told a tribunal considering professional misconduct charges brought against him by the Bar Standards Board.
Sidhu initially faced 15 charges relating to allegations by three women who were either law students or undergoing mini pupillage at the time. He denies the charges. Yesterday, he succeeded in getting some of the charges thrown out, including a charge in relation to Person 1.
The Bar Tribunals & Adjudications Service heard closing submissions today, first from Fiona Horlick KC, for the BSB.
Horlick said Person 2 was ‘remarkably honest and frank’ in her written and oral evidence, which made her account ‘particularly compelling’.
Horlick told the tribunal that ‘here we are dealing with conduct of a very senior silk in relation to a mini pupillage’ and to have ‘induced reluctant consent’ on the first night of Person 2’s mini pupillage breached Core Duty 5 of the BSB Handbook. ‘What he did afterwards was so confusing to her,’ Horlick added. ‘I use the word “gaslighting”. A woman in her situation made to feel she had almost imagined it.’
The tribunal was reminded that Person 3’s evidence was not challenged.
Horlick said: ‘Her witness statement was an extremely frank recollection of what happened between the two of them. I do not want to use the word “relationship”. That’s the spin the respondent wants to put on it… Person 3 certainly came to understand that [Sidhu’s] conduct, she regarded it as predatory, she questioned whether she was being exploited, potentially being groomed, she came to believe she was being groomed… Just because someone reaches a certain age does not mean they cannot be groomed in certain circumstances.’
Horlick said it was ‘clearly obvious’ how vulnerable Person 3 was, ‘a fact that would have been known to Mr Sidhu because she told him’.
Alisdair Williamson KC, for Sidhu, began his closing submissions by telling the tribunal that Sidhu was not a monster and he was not a predator. The tribunal had accounts from two women ‘in a narrow space of time when they initially came into contact with him and continued to have some form of relationship’.
‘It’s a relationship,’ Williamson said. ‘A relationship nowadays in modern life does not exist solely in meeting face to face. It exists online. His relationship with Person 3 was a digital relationship. These two examples do not offset the many hundreds of people who came into contact with him who did not experience anything other than beneficial interaction with him.’
On Sidhu’s decision not to give evidence, ‘no doubt you will say there are no principles that would commit us to draw an adverse inference in this case, [and] we should not do so for medical reasons?,’ tribunal panel chair Her Honour Judge Janet Waddicor said. ‘Yes’, replied Williamson.
The tribunal will now deliberate and is expected to reach a decision next month.
Fiona Horlick KC and Harini Iyengar appeared for the Bar Standards Board. Alisdair Williamson KC and Colin Witcher appeared for Navjot Sidhu KC.
