Hospital worker’s library of paedophilia

A former hospital worker who watched 164 hours of horrific child abuse videos and shared images with other paedophiles online has been kicked out of the profession.

Kevin Hatt, 55, was jailed for three years after he admitted watching ‘live child abuse on the internet’ during a decade-long ‘addiction.’

Hatt owned up to keeping almost 128,000 of the horrific files, depicting children aged from eight months to 10 years old.

He told the Health and Care Professions Council: ‘Do not send me any more post’ when they attempted to contact him about the hearing determining his professional fate.

A tribunal held in his absence found that he was ‘either unable or unwilling to demonstrate real insight’ and struck him off.

Hatt worked for South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust at the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton as an operating department practitioner.

Hatt, from Stockton, admitted three counts of making indecent images of children, one count of possessing a prohibited image of a child and three counts of distributing indecent images of children.

He was handed a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) and jailed for three years on January 14 this year at Teesside Crown Court.

In its findings the panel said: ‘Upon further enquiry, the Panel was provided with an email from the Registrant to the HCPC dated 30 July 2019 in which the Registrant set out his significant concerns about the HCPC sending a letter to his home address via “normal post”, rather than recorded delivery and asked that the HCPC “do not send me any more post.”

‘In determining how to serve the Notice of hearing in this case, the HCPC undertook a formal risk assessment on 25 August 2020 and decided to send the Notice only to the Registrant’s prison address, marked with his individual Prisoner Number.

‘The Panel considered all of the documentation before it in the HCPC’s hearing bundle, including the judge’s sentencing remarks. From the remarks of the sentencing judge, who described this as “a desperately serious case,” it is clear that in addition to the significant number of indecent images (nearly 128,000), there were some 164 hours of video length involving images of Category A child abuse, involving children aged between 8 months to ten years…

‘The judge described ten specifically aggravating features, including the age and vulnerability of the children; the systemic searching for images portraying young children; the large number of different victims and that some images depicted children who had been drugged or intoxicated.

‘It is also apparent from the remarks of the sentencing judge that the Registrant had been accessing the material over a period of around ten years. The sentencing judge stated that, “it is clear that [the Registrant’s] motivation throughout has been sexual.

‘In the Panel’s view, the Registrant committed serious criminal offences involving the sexual exploitation of children.

‘The Panel took into account the lack of any sufficient evidence of insight and the lack of evidence of any remediation, as well as the ongoing risk of repetition of the criminal conduct. The Registrant is either unable or unwilling to demonstrate real insight or remediation.

‘The Panel took into account the high number of Category A images of the rape of children and concluded that this was such a serious departure from the standards of behaviour expected from an Operating Department Practitioner that only a striking off order would be sufficient to maintain and declare proper standards of conduct and behaviour, to maintain the reputation of the profession, and to maintain public confidence in the profession and the regulatory process.

‘The seriousness of the Registrant’s convictions demands the ultimate sanction of a striking off order.’
ends