A solicitor who groped women in his local pub has been fined £25,000 – but will keep his job.
Thomas Cadman previously pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting two women on three occasions at The Red Lion in Castle Eaton near Swindon.
At Swindon Magistrates Court last March, the then 42-year-old was handed a rare nine-month community order and fined a total of £900.
Despite committing three sexual crimes, he was spared having to register as a sex offender by the bench imposing a community disposal of less than 12 months.
This came after legal advisor Jenna Morgan had told the magistrates that they must not make a lesser sentence just so Cadman was not placed on the register.
In August, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal considered whether or not he should be able to continue practicing law. It heard details of the case and about Cadman’s health – including that he had developed a problem with alcohol during the Covid lockdown.
Cadman – who as at the pub with his wife – said that he remembered very little about events that evening, and his wife did not recall anything untoward happening.
The disciplinary panel decided not to strike him off after considering the circumstances – including his “unblemished record” and the fact he had apologises to his victims when he found out what had occurred.
It said: “Whilst noting that the criminal offences were intrinsically very serious, [we] decided that given all the circumstances it had heard that to strike Mr Cadman from the Roll would be disproportionately severe.
“Whilst there had been three separate incidents in the course of an hour the Tribunal did not find this to have been a pattern or a course of ingrained misconduct and found it to have been a one-off event brought about by the combination of very unfortunate circumstances, both for Mr Cadman and the victims.”
The former Deputy Director General for the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, of Blackford Lane, Castle Easton, was fined £25,000 and told to pay £3,600 costs.
