Scientist downed bottle of wine ‘by accident’ before calling neighbour a ‘Spanish slag’

A scientist who called her neighbour a ‘Spanish slag’ has been struck off after claiming she downed an entire bottle of cheap rosé by accident.

Kelly Madden claimed she launched into the drunken tirade as part of a dare, a disciplinary hearing was told.

The biomedical scientist was charged by the police for the racist slur before being suspended by the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service.

She has since been struck off after a panel concluded it was the only way to ‘protect the public’

Her neighbour, a young Portugese woman, reported the hate crime following an argument the pair had in July 2020 in Norwich.

Madden set off fire alarms in her building by mistake while preparing soup on a hot day, prompting her neighbour to become ‘extremely agitated’.

She said: ‘The fire alarm activated the other fire alarms and my neighbour became extremely agitated and was shouting in the hall and on the landing.

‘I told her there wasn’t a fire and apologised, which I always do when the alarm activates accidentally.

‘She was hysterical and I was drunk on a bottle of wine so we had an argument at the top of the landing outside my door and I called her “a Spanish slag” and told her to go away if she didn’t like it.

‘I also stuck my fingers up at her because I just wanted her to stop screaming outside my door. She then called the local police and accused me of hate crime.’

While she accepted she should not have shouted at her neighbour, Madden added: ‘Ultimately I’m not her mother and I didn’t realise it was illegal to call someone a “Spanish whore”.’

Madden was suspended for nine months in March 2022 by a panel which described her behaviour as ‘outrageous’.

Her suspension was then extended further by three review panels before a final hearing.

She previously blamed her neighbour for initiating the argument and claimed she had ‘drunk an entire bottle of cheap rosé by accident while I was cooking soup and baking bread’.

Addressing this misconduct hearing in person, Madden told them she had completed 13 courses, one of which was anger management, diversity and safeguarding.

Having reflected on the incident, she claimed she was experiencing a ‘perfect storm’ of challenging circumstances at the time – namely, the Covid 19 pandemic, living in a shared house and health conditions, but admitted she had ‘completely mishandled’ things.

Referencing the racist slur, she said she had, at the time, not realised it was a racist term and that somebody at her workplace had dared her to use it towards her neighbour.

Mdden who said she feels ‘deeply ashamed of her conduct’, insisted: “I know that I’m not a racist.”

But the most recent panel concluded: ‘There has been no evidence of real change since the final hearing in March 2022, or any evidence that the concerns underpinning her impaired fitness to practise have been overcome.

‘It was not clear from her evidence that there has been any material change of position, or a proper appreciation and understanding of the gravity of her actions.

‘Although she has expressed her remorse for, and accepted, her wrongdoing, the panel was concerned about the reason given as to why she had made the racial slur – that it was a “dare” from colleagues at work.’

They ruled that members of the public would be ‘concerned’ if professionals such as Madden ‘were able to practise without restriction’.

It added that her efforts to carry out suggestions from other hearings had been ‘woeful’ and that the progress made by her since the last hearing was ‘negligible’.

The panel ruled that this lack of engagement and remediation over a two year period was ‘fundamentally incompatible with being a registered professional’.

It therefore concluded that the ‘only sanction that would adequately protect the public and serve the public interest’ was one of a striking off order.

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