NHS worker who groped two male patients in their beds at north London hospital jailed

An NHS healthcare assistant who sexually assaulted two patients as they lay on hospital beds has been jailed for more than three years.

Elroy Reid, 41, groped both men as they recuperated from painful procedures at Whittington Hospital.

He preyed on his first victim just a day after he had been taken to hospital after a traffic accident. He was still in a neck brace and had breathing difficulties.

Blackfriars crown court heard Reid brushed his hand against the patient’s genitals after being asked to give him a bed bath. A few days later, during another bed bath, he massaged the patient’s inner thigh and made remarks about the size of his manhood. The patient complained to staff and Reid was questioned by police in mid-2015. He was released without charge and kept his job.

Then in late 2016, while pretending to be inspecting a patient’s emergency surgery scar, Reid put his hand into the man’s underwear and grabbed his genitals before asking: “Should I?”.

The patient insisted Reid should stop and told hospital staff who called in police. Reid lost his job and was charged with sexually assaulting both men.

At trial he denied sexual contact, insisting the men, professionals in their 40s, had been confused. A jury convicted him of three counts of sexual assault last month. Sentencing Reid to three years and three months in prison, Judge

Rajeev Shetty said: “Both men were embarrassed; they had to go through the ignominy of... re-living it in evidence.”

He told Reid: “Why you threw away a job you were doing well by... inexcusable behaviour is beyond me.” He said Reid appeared to have “gambled” that neither patient would complain.

Reid, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 2000 and has worked in healthcare since 2003, whispered “I love you” to his mother then wailed as he was led to the cells. Sam Parham, mitigating, said Reid has struggled to adjust to prison life and is battling suicidal thoughts. He said: “Mr Reid has done a lot of good; he has had an impact on people by taking proper care of them.”

Reid, from Edmonton, denied, but was convicted of, three charges of sexual assault. He was given an indefinite ban on working in a hospital or caring for vulnerable people.