A Liverpool hospital worker who sold stories to a tabloid newspaper about notorious patients has been jailed.
Robert Neave, 62, had worked at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital in Berkshire since 1980 and was well aware of his duty of confidentiality.
But in September 2007, the healthcare nursing assistant contacted The Sun and offered information about Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, as well as Rachel Nickell’s killer Robert Napper.
Over the next two-and-a-quarter years, Neave, of Markfield Crescent, Woolton, passed on 14 tips to the newspaper and was paid a total of £7,125.
In November 2013, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office, and he appeared before the Old Bailey on Thursday to be sentenced.
Jailing him, Judge Richard Marks QC said: “On any view of the matter, not least given you at the time had not one but two paymasters, this represented a gross breach of trust.
“For reasons which were explained in the trial of a number of your co-accused journalists, I am satisfied that articles of the sort generated as a consequence of the information you provided are significantly detrimental to the patients’ well-being.
“They caused mistrust and suspicion as well as potentially impacting on security. Your duty of confidentiality was something you were well aware of. Accordingly it is difficult to see there can be any excuse at all for what you did. It does appear you must have been motivated by money.”
The Common Serjeant of London took into account Neave’s guilty plea and the long delay in sentencing as well as the fact that Neave is the sole carer for his elderly father.
But he added: “I regret to say that in my judgment the scope and scale of your offending was such that an immediate custodial sentence is inevitable, however I have reduced it significantly.”
Source: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/