A former Aberdeen social worker has been reprimanded after she “failed to inform” her employer she had been convicted of leaking a sex tape and for carrying out an assault.
Abigail Darbyshire has been issued with a two-year warning by the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) after the body said she had a duty to tell bosses at Aberdeen City Council that she had been charged in connection with three crimes.
These took place over an eight month period from December 2020 to July 2021.
They ruled in a submission published this week that she “must engage in formal supervision” with bosses every two weeks.
However it’s understood Abigail has not worked as a social worker since 2021 and has no intention of returning to the profession.
On July 16, 2021, the SSSC said that Darbyshire had assaulted a person referred to as only ‘AA’, according to their report.
She seized her by the hair and punched her repeatedly on the head and body.
On the same day, she shouted, swore and threw a garden chair at a window.
For that, she was charged with behaving in a threatening or abusive manner which was likely to cause a reasonable person to suffer fear, in violation of section 38.
She was convicted for both incidents at Aberdeen Sheriff Court on October 26 2021.
The third conviction was an admonishment, also from Aberdeen Sheriff Court, for sharing a sex tape of her cheating ex-partner.
Then-pregnant Darbyshire leaked sex tape of cheating ex-partner
Abigail was 20 weeks pregnant when she found the sex tape her long-term partner had made with her best friend in December 2020.
After confronting her boyfriend about the video, she sent it to her best friend’s partner, plus a group chat with two other people.
She pled guilty to the charge of disclosing an intimate film and was admonished by the judge on April 1 2022.
Speaking in court, Sheriff Leslie Johnston said: “I can see you regret acting in the way you did.
“You probably didn’t realise you were committing a criminal offence when you acted in that way.”
The admonition meant the conviction went on Darbyshire’s record but she did not face any further punishment.
Convictions ‘demonstrate a propensity for losing control’
In their decision, SSSC wrote: “Social service workers must not abuse or harm people.
“The behaviour which led to the convictions is inconsistent with the values expected of a social services worker.”
When approached by The Press and Journal, Abigail said she was surprised to have not been informed about the SSSC hearing, updated on the outcome or advised that this information would be put in the public domain.
She said that she wants to put the incidents of the past few years behind her and move on with her life.
A spokesperson for the SSSC said in a statement: ‘We cannot comment on the details of individual cases.
‘It is part of our normal processes to inform the worker of the outcome of our fitness to practise investigation and any sanction imposed if their fitness to practise is found to be impaired.
‘We provide information to workers whose fitness to practise we’re investigating which tells them we publish Notices of Decision on our website and that the media regularly report on them. We also provide details of our wellbeing line, which offers independent, free and confidential support and advice to workers.’
