A nurse has been accused of baring her breasts and performing sex acts on a patient during care visits to his home.
Julie Porthouse, who was working as a community psychiatric nurse, admitted she did ‘muddy the water with boundaries’ but claimed yesterday she was just trying to give the man emotional support and there was no sexual activity.
At a hearing before the Nursing and Midwifery Council, she told how she wept after being accused by colleagues of having an affair.
Two members of staff at Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust approached the nurse to raise concerns and ask where she had been. The hearing heard that Porthouse failed to mention the time she spent with the man, known only as Service User A.
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Porthouse said her colleague Merlina Spring told her ‘there’s gossip in the team that you’re having an affair’.
The nurse told the council she replied along the lines of ‘that’s quite slanderous. I’ve been sitting across from a paranoid schizophrenic, I haven’t been doing anything other than that’.
She added: ‘I felt extremely emotional. I started to cry.’
The next day, Miss Spring told Porthouse to cancel her next appointment with Service User A.
The nurse did so but was reluctant as she explained how he had just lost his father and got nervous when people went on leave.
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Porthouse described a meeting later that day with her manager, who asked if she had been having a sexual relationship with Service User A. She said she replied, ‘No, that’s awful’ and burst into tears.
Porthouse also denied showed off a tattoo on her lower back and leaving an earring behind in the man’s bedroom. She claimed that she kept close contact with the patient because she was ‘anxious’ to provide him with enough support.
Rebecca Richardson, for the NMC, asked if there were similarities between Service User A and a former patient who had committed suicide. The nurse agreed that his nationality and bereavement were similar.
She added she had been affected by a disciplinary hearing which decided she had not provided enough support to the first patient.
Porthouse said: ‘You think that you feel responsible for somebody ending their life.’
When asked if she saw Service User A as an opportunity to correct past mistakes, she said: ‘I did muddy the water with boundaries, I do agree.’
She insisted that she wanted to ‘empower’ the patient but their relationship ‘was never on a sexual level’. Miss Richardson alleged that visits to the man’s home had ‘progressed to the bedroom’.
She added: ‘This went further, you [performed sex acts on him]. You also exposed your breasts and that’s how he became aware you had a tattoo on your lower back.
‘That’s also how you left an earring in his bedroom.’
Porthouse admits excessive contact with the service user between May 2012 and September 2012 but denies all other charges. The hearing continues.
Daily Mail