Racist NHS mental health nurse is stuck off for telling colleagues that Asian men groom young women and are behind rise in acid attacks
- NHS nurse Sarah Hewston said Asian men were responsible for grooming girls
- She added that Eastern Europeans use the UK welfare system to their advantage
- She was dismissed from the profession by the Nursing and Midwifery Council
An NHS nurse has been struck off for making a string of racist comments after she told colleagues that Asian males groom and carry out acid attacks.
Sarah Hewston said Asian men then ‘cry racist without taking any responsibility’, leaving a colleague – who was Asian himself – speechless and in shock, a professional conduct committee heard.
The panel was told Ms Hewston made various racist remarks at work including that Eastern Europeans use the UK welfare system to their advantage.
The hearing was told she said this after a Polish patient had expressed worries about their care and their dissatisfaction with the NHS.
The mental health nurse also shared seven racist posts on her Facebook page.
Although she claimed she had not read the texts due to her dyslexia, the panel found this implausible and she admitted some of the posts were inappropriate and that she found one making fun of burkas ‘humorous’.
She has now been dismissed from the profession by the Nursing and Midwifery Council Fitness to Practise Committee after it found her misconduct could not be addressed through training.
Ms Hewston qualified as a nurse in 2008 and was at the time of the incidents – between November 2016 and August 2018 – working at Dorothy Pattison Hospital in the Walsall Crisis Team, West Midlands.
Ms Hewston worked at Dorothy Pattison Hospital in the Walsall Crisis Team, West Midlands
The panel was told of various comments Ms Hewston had made to colleagues, such as ‘Polish people and foreigners coming to the UK with expectations but that they needed to be sent back and that there were too many of them’.
She also told three colleagues that ‘Asians and/or Muslims and/or Polish and/or foreigners are responsible for acid attacks and/or increase in acid attacks and that when they do wrong they play the racist card’, the committee was told.
The hearing, held in the West Midlands, heard from one of the colleagues who was left feeling ‘uncomfortable and vulnerable’ when she claimed Asian men groom.
In a statement, he said: ‘I was the only Asian male in the office at the time.
Nursing and Midwifery Council Fitness to Practise Committee struck her off the register
‘I could not wait to leave the office but I did not want to walk out* I felt angry, but I also felt insecure to say anything back.
‘I was speechless*I felt really uncomfortable about the whole situation*this conversation made me think about whether she felt the same about me she felt about Asian males in general.’
Not only this, but she told another colleague that burkas should be banned in England after showing them a joke about someone wearing the religious garment on Facebook.
But she told the panel the comment was ‘banter’ and ‘humourous’ as part of a bid to wind up her colleague.
The hearing was told she shared posts on Facebook regarding Ramadan and burkas, but Ms Hewston told the panel she shared the posts out of ‘respect for Ramadan’.
Another post which read ‘that’s not his daughter – that’s his wife’ she claimed to have shared to ‘highlight a safeguarding issue’.
But the panel dismissed her explanation as implausible.
After the posts she had shared on her Facebook profile were reported to her manager, she was investigated and sacked.
The panel concluded: ‘Your insight in relation to how your actions negatively affected your colleagues, the profession and the public confidence in the profession was far from sufficient.
‘The panel is of the view that there are no practical or workable conditions that could be formulated, given the nature of the charges in this case.
‘The misconduct identified in this case was not something that can be addressed through retraining.’
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