WhatsApp: Messages sent over 20 months
The barrister head of Gloucestershire Police’s legal department has been disbarred after making inappropriate sexual comments to junior female colleagues.
Michael Griffiths told one woman about his sexual relationship with his wife and also sent her inappropriate WhatsApp messages.
The full decision of the Bar Disciplinary Tribunal has not yet been published but a summary put out by the Bar Tribunal and Adjudication Service recounted that the first incident occurred in June 2023, whilst on a work-related trip to a conference at a chambers in London with junior female colleagues, Persons A and B.
On the train journey, Mr Griffiths – who was called in 1993 – said in relation to a young woman wearing a short skirt standing in the aisle that she would make “a nice addition to the office”.
Then, when Person A suggested to Mr Griffiths that he book an overnight stay in a hotel room in London on the business card, he replied: “I can take you there if you like, but I don’t think they do 20-minute sessions.”
Person A responded, “You’d never afford to take me in there anyway”, to which he replied: “Oh trust me, if I was taking you in there, I could afford it.”
Further, on various dates between November 2021 and June 2023, he exchanged WhatsApp messages with Person A, in which Mr Griffiths told her that he was missing her. One ended: “i know you is unique xxx we love you x.”
Late one night in January 2023, Mr Griffiths twice messaged Person A to ask if she liked him. A week later, he wrote: “sos I asked u if u like me not appropriate me was drunk truly sorry x.”
In December 2022, he “shared intimate details about his sexual relationship with his wife with Person A”.
BTAS said the volume of messages was “excessive with some of the content inappropriate in nature as between a senior barrister and a junior colleague”.
His conduct was found to amount to “inappropriate and/or unwanted direct contact with Person A and Person B when Mr Griffiths was in a position of seniority and which had the purpose or effect of violating Person A and Person B’s dignity, was humiliating and/or created an offensive environment for Person A and Person B and was an abuse of his senior professional position”.
The tribunal disbarred Mr Griffiths and ordered the Bar Standards Board (BSB) not to issue him with a practising certificate pending any appeal.
It also ordered him to pay costs of £2,880.
A BSB spokesperson said: “We are committed to ensuring that such behaviour is not tolerated at the Bar and take all reports of such conduct seriously.
“Mr Griffiths actions were a clear example of this type of conduct and incompatible with membership of the Bar, and this is reflected in the decision of the tribunal to disbar him.”
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