Paul Grayson: Sheffield nurse who filmed up patients' gowns and set up hidden camera in toilets is struck off

Paul Grayson worked at Sheffield's Royal Hallamshire Hospital, where he filmed up the gowns of four female patients, sexually assaulting three of those patients in order to record the images, and also set up a secret camera to film nurses using the toilet. He admitted 14 charges of voyeurism, three sexual assaults, one charge of upskirting, one of taking indecent images of a child, one of installing recording equipment for the purposes of sexual gratification and three of possessing indecent images of children. In May, Grayson, then aged 51, was sentenced at Sheffield Crown Court to 12 years in jail, with an extended licence period of four years.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC) Fitness to Practise Committee said his actions were a ‘very serious breach of the trust and confidence’ placed in him as a nurse and that the patients, families and colleagues affected by his actions had ‘suffered extensively’.

"The panel considered in one case, a patient has been reluctant to obtain treatment and delayed doing so because of their experience,” it stated. “The panel determined that Mr Grayson’s conviction for sexual offences could also prevent future patients accessing care due to fear of being a victim of abuse.”

The committee, which met on November 30 to consider Grayson’s case, issued to issue him with a striking-off order and an 18-month interim suspension order to prevent him practising while an appeal is considered, should he challenge the decision.

Sentencing him in May, Judge Jeremy Richardson said Grayson had ‘brought shame on an honourable professional by your egregious criminal conduct’. He also described the disgraced nurse as a ‘danger to the public’. One of Grayson’s victims faced him directly in court and said his ‘sick and disgusting perversions’ and ‘evil actions’ over four years were crimes that ‘have torn me into pieces’.

The NMC said Grayson had been employed as a staff nurse at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals trust, and was based within the operating department at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital from 1999 until December 2020. He was arrested at the hospital on December 2 and subsequently charged, and on December 4 that year the case was referred by the trust to the NMC.