A nurse at Bethlem Royal Hospital described a 14-year-old patient as “the type of girl you think you can approach and rape”, a tribunal has found. 

Niyi Sunday Okegbola, who was a Deputy Site Nurse at the psychiatric hospital in Beckenham, has been banned from the profession after five whistleblowers made allegations of sexual misconduct against him. 

The allegations included that he sexually assaulted female colleagues and made various inappropriate comments. 

Mr Okegbola denied the allegations but the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) found 35 allegations against him proven and described his behaviour towards junior female nurses “deplorable”. 

One allegation the NMC found proven related to comments made by Mr Okegbola about a 14-year-old patient at Bethlem Royal Hospital, which is part of South London and Maudsley (SLAM) NHS Foundation Trust. 

Mr Okegbola is said to have described her as: “The type of girl you think you can approach and rape but would turn around and kill the man because of her strength.” 

The NMC also found that without consent he grabbed one of his colleagues’ breasts and one of his colleagues’ thighs. 

One of the colleagues said she felt “powerless and vulnerable” after the alleged incident and felt she could not report the incident to managers as Mr Okegbola was her senior. 

Mr Okegbola also made sexually inappropriate comments to junior female colleagues such as asking one if her husband ‘gives it to her from the front or back’ and telling her she should go out with him instead of her husband as he’s better in bed, the NMC found. 

“Your misconduct involved five separate colleagues, each of whom were caused significant distress over a prolonged period of time, meaning that the incidents were not isolated. You also took advantage of your power as each person that you abused was either junior to you or on a bank contract,” an NMC report said. 

“Your engagement in unwanted physical sexual misconduct to colleagues has resulted in emotional harm. Your colleagues should have been safe to do their jobs and look after their patients, without suffering from the type of behaviour that you engaged in repeatedly.” 

On September 19 the NMC imposed a striking-off order banning Mr Okegbola from working in the nursing profession. 

Mr Okegbola had already resigned from the trust in September 2023.