Nurse kept ‘bestiality’ pictures on his laptop
ANURSE who worked at Ormskirk Hospital has been struck off after indecent images of children and animals were found on his laptop.
Anthony Glen Benson, of Ellwood Close, Hale, Widnes, was caught when a PC World worker found a “bestiality” file on his laptop.
Last week he was struck off by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), seven months after pleading guilty to four charges in court.
Benson, 63, was working as an agency theatre scrub nurse at Ormskirk Hospital around the time the images were found.
He took his laptop to PC World in August 2016 to have the memory downloaded on to a new device, an NMC panel heard.
Once the download was completed, a concerned member of staff noticed a file named “Bestiality”, alerted his manager and opened the file.
It contained “a number of images of extreme pornography involving sexual intercourse between adult women and various animals”.
Police raided Benson’s home on December 6, 2016 and seized two laptops and an iPad.
A total of 18 bestiality images were found on one of the laptops. There were also two indecent images of children which had been sent to him by a contact on social media chat.
Benson later admitted two counts of having extreme pornographic images involving adult women and various animals and two of having indecent photographs of a child.
He was given a three-year community rehabilitation order at Liverpool Crown Court on July 12 last year.
In a written statement to the NMC hearing, Benson had “shown remorse” and indicated he had no intention of returning to a nursing career. But the NMC panel, sitting on January 26, concluded the “the appropriate and proportionate sanction is that of a striking-off order”.
It said that it was mindful of the seriousness and nature of his crimes and the issue of “potential repetition”.
Benson’s behaviour was described as “a significant departure from the standards expected of a registered nurse”.
The panel noted that ‘‘the serious breach of the fundamental tenets of the profession evidenced by Mr Benson’s actions is fundamentally incompatible with his remaining on the register.’’