Jailed in 2023
A former City lawyer has been stuck off the roll following a conviction for chid sex abuse.
Stuart Cottis qualified at Magic Circle firm Freshfields, before spending over eight years at Ashurst, followed by a stint as a senior associate at Eversheds Sutherland from May 2022 to June 2023.
In 2023, while out of work during the pandemic lockdown, Cottis was arrested. He later appeared at Southwark Crown Court, where he admitted to attempting sexual communication with a child and arranging or facilitating a child sex offence. He was sentenced in June 2023 to 36 months in prison and made subject to a sexual harm prevention order for 11 years.
However, just over a year after the first conviction, Cottis was then found guilty of further child sex abuse offences and was sentenced to an additional 10 months imprisonment. He admitted to intentionally touching a child aged between nine and 10 years old and intentionally communicating sexually with a person under 16, according the judgment published by Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT).
The regulator was alerted to Cottis’ misconduct after Ashurst’s compliance officer raised the alarm, followed by a similar report from in-house counsel at Eversheds Sutherland.
In sentencing Cottis, the Crown Court noted that during lockdown, there was a “marked deterioration” in his mental health, as he was “out of work, isolated and lonely, and drinking too much”. But the judge also noted that Cottis’ “behaviour was only curbed by [his] arrest”.
The SRA did not endorse the mitigation in the sentencing remarks. On reaching an agreed outcome, the SDT judgment found that “there could be no mitigation to minimise the harm” and that “the seriousness of the misconduct was self-evident and no sanction less than a strike off would be sufficient to protect the public and the reputation of the profession”.
Cottis was struck off the roll and ordered to pay £3,870 in costs.