Geoffrey White

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

Geoffrey White, a sole-practitioner criminal defence solicitor, was found to have made offensive and inappropriate comments towards Person A, a Probation Service Officer, on two occasions in 2021 at Crawley Magistrates Court when the court was not in session. On 28 May 2021 he showed her an image of a naked woman and said it looked like her; on 14 July 2021 he made a sexualised comment implying she/probation staff engaged in sexual activity. He admitted the allegations and the breaches of Principles 2 and 6 and Paragraph 1.5. The Tribunal assessed overall culpability as low, found no dishonesty, and imposed a Reprimand plus £12,000 costs.

Duties found breached:

• Good faith and courtesy to colleagues
• Non-discriminatory acceptance and cab-rank
• Uphold public trust in the profession

Aggravating factors:

• Misconduct was repeated on two occasions
• Respondent was a senior professional in a position of responsibility/authority
• Clear power imbalance between Respondent and Person A
• Misconduct included a bullying element and involved sexualised content/comments
• Respondent knew or ought reasonably to have known the conduct breached obligations to protect the public and the profession's reputation

Mitigating factors:

• Made a fulsome apology to Person A
• Demonstrated early insight
• Open and frank with the SRA; made unequivocal admissions with no attempt to minimise
• Brief incidents in an otherwise unblemished extensive career
• Positive character references
• Very low risk of repetition
• No previous disciplinary history