TAYLOR: ‘BULLYING’ NURSE WAS IN CHARGE OF YORKSHIRE RIPPER

A Broadmoor nurse who bullied inmates was promoted and left in charge of Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe’s ward, a hearing was told.

Teddy Taylor, 48, shouted at patients, humiliated them by loudly criticising their hygiene in front of others, the Nursing and Midwifery Council heard.

But he won a manager’s job and regularly left alone to look after 20 high-security inmates, the Nursing and Midwifery Council heard.

Broadmoor Hospital, in Crowthorne, Berkshire, is a psychiatric unit whose 240 beds are mostly occupied by criminals convicted of the most serious offences.

The nurse worked on Dorchester Ward – a unit for elderly and ‘vulnerable’ inmates – at the time of the incidents, between July 2003 and April 2006.

Sutcliffe, convicted of 13 murders in 1981, was then a long-term resident on the ward, and was almost blinded by another inmate during an attack in its canteen in 2007.

Taylor had denied claims he acted aggressively towards patients and other staff members but was found guilty of 11 charges at a hearing earlier this year.

Representing himself, he today said his fitness to practise had not been impaired by his actions.

He said: ‘If I was that bad between 2003 and 2006, why was I promoted from a D grade to an E grade and left in charge of the ward and other wards within the hospital?

‘Why did they leave me to look after vulnerable patients and therefore put themselves at risk?’

Since Broadmoor, he added, he has worked for a number of agencies and each had provided him with references for the panel.

He said: ‘If an individual exhibits certain personality traits, it’s difficult to mask. But I’ve been in my current job for more than two years and I’ve always maintained professionalism.

At the previous hearing, Taylor had insisted he was on the wrong end of abuse from colleagues who made bizarre claims about his upbringing Sierra Leone.

‘Almost all the letters said that I was born with eight limbs and was fed with chicken blood,’ said the nurse, who is representing himself at the hearing.

‘I do know where they get these sorts of ideas, it is shocking.’

The nurse, now living in Nottingham, began working at Broadmoor in 2002 after graduating from London South Bank University.

Anu Thompson, for the NMC, claims Taylor was ‘unprofessional’ and ‘aggressive’ towards junior care assistants and patients.

The identities of the four inmates he bullied have been withheld on the grounds of medical confidentiality.

The panel found he ‘screamed’ at one man, referred to as Patient B, to get out of bed and yelled at an inmate who asked to use the ward’s laundry room.

He often arrived late or left early at staff meetings and loudly told another inmate, Patient E, that he ‘stunk’ within earshot of others.

If Taylor’s fitness to practise is found to be impaired, he could face being struck off or suspended.