Three UK judges sacked, one quit for watching porn in office

LONDON: Three senior judges have been sacked and another has resigned after being caught watching porn on their court computers, Daily Mail reported.
District judge Timothy Bowles, immigration judge Warren Grant, recorder Peter Bullock have all lost their jobs, the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office has revealed.A fourth judge, recorder Andrew Maw, was also found to have watched porn on work equipment but resigned before the investigation was completed.
Today Mr Grant, an immigration specialist now working for a London law firm, said he had ‘severe undiagnosed depression’ at the time.None of the men had watched child porn, or any other illegal material, but the Lord Chancellor has said that the act was ‘inexcusable’. A Judicial Conduct Investigations Office spokesman said: “The Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice were satisfied that the material did not include images of children or any other illegal content, but concluded that this was an inexcusable misuse of their judicial IT accounts and wholly unacceptable conduct for a judicial office-holder.
“The Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice would likewise have removed Recorder Maw had he not resigned before the conclusion of the disciplinary process.“The judges were not linked in any way.”
The JCIO said Judge Maw worked at Lincoln County Court, District Judge Bowles at Romford County Court, Judge Bullock on the North Eastern Circuit and Judge Grant at the Immigration and Asylum Chamber, First Tier Immigration Tribunal, based at Taylor House, London.
The JCIO said it would not reveal further details of its investigations into the judges’ conduct, nor how the allegations against the men came to light, stating this was also confidential.One of the ex-judges said he had been suffering from ‘severe and undiagnosed depression’ at the time of the allegation.
Warren Grant, who now works as an immigration law specialist at a firm of North London solicitors, issued a statement asking for privacy.He said: “I am aware of the statement issued today by the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office.” Judge Bullock was criticised when in 2004 he said the Home Office must pay £12,000 compensation to a rapist after a prison attack when the maximum offered to rape victims was £11,000.
He also made national news when he was involved when Paul Gascoigne’s best friend Jimmy ‘Five Bellies’ Gardner was declared bankrupt and once evicted a tenant after she had sex too loudly and upset neighbours.
Judge Maw’s retirement, aged 65, was announced in September on the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary website.A university lecturer also said that he was surprised that judges, or indeed any person in the public sector, would use their work computer for this purpose.“It’s a schoolboy error, really. Nobody can be foolish enough to think that their work computers are not the property of their employer and as such subject to examination.