Alan Wheetman

Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision

Alan Wheetman, a barrister, faced five charges of professional misconduct. The tribunal found Charge 2 proved: in or around August 2022 at/after a Magistrates' Court, he engaged in unwanted, overfamiliar sexual misconduct towards Person A, a young female trainee police officer previously unknown to him, including commenting on her appearance, telling her he had found her Facebook profile, showing her semi-nude photographs from his Purpleport photography webpage, offering to photograph her without clothing using crude language, and sending her a link to the webpage. This breached Core Duty 5 (sexual misconduct, Group B). Charges 6 and 13 were dismissed (no case to answer), Charge 9 was dismissed, and the BSB offered no evidence on Charge 16. The conduct fell within the lower culpability/harm range (12-24 months suspension). No express finding of dishonesty was made. He was sanctioned with the BSB not issuing a practising certificate for 24 months (immediate effect), required EDI course on return, and ordered to pay £3,000 costs inclusive of VAT.

Duties found breached:

• Uphold public trust in the profession

Aggravating factors:

• Disparity in age and seniority between respondent and Person A
• Recklessness towards Person A, who was attending court for the first time in her career
• Respondent's responsibility for the situation that arose
• Some level of sexual motivation (references to her physical appearance and talk of nude modelling)
• Use of crude language

Mitigating factors:

• Self-referred to the BSB and cooperated with the BSB
• No previous disciplinary record
• Some insight and regret with the benefit of hindsight
• Suspended from chambers since August 2022; no longer in practice (no practising certificate since January 2023)
• Living on dwindling capital with no other work