Nurse who viewed child abuse images banned

Lewis Adams
BBC News, East of England
PA Media A person's thumb hovering over a smart phone screen which has social media apps on it.PA Media

A mental health nurse who viewed child abuse images has been banned from his profession.

Anand Chinnathamby, of Ancaster Road, Ipswich, was deputy ward manager at a unit for vulnerable adults in Essex.

His home was raided by the National Crime Agency after he uploaded 10 indecent images of children to his Gmail account in April 2022.

A Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) panel found his fitness to practise was impaired and issued a striking off order.

Chinnathamby, who first registered as a nurse in 2006, was given an eight-month suspended prison sentence at Ipswich Crown Court in May 2024.

It came after he admitted three counts of making indecent images of children.

'Attitudinal problem'

Chinnathamby lost his job as a result of the offending and was banned from returning by the NMC panel.

Members found he showed "no remorse or insight into how his actions put patients at a risk of harm" since being sentenced.

He had a "deep-seated personality or attitudinal problem", they said in a report.

"Chinnathamby's actions in making indecent photographs of children are fundamentally incompatible with registration as a nurse," the panel concluded.

NCA officers were first notified about Chinnathamby after he was reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the US.

When his phone was seized, officers found file paths for more than 100 indecent images of children that had previously been saved.

Evidence was also recovered proving he had control of the offending account, and had named the email address linked to it after a ward he previously worked on, the NCA said.

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