A mental health nurse has been struck off after being found guilty of groping a female colleague - and then blaming her for wearing “skimpy clothing”.

Laurence Arnold, 50, was accused of grabbing his victim and forcing up her t-shirt and bra as she crouched by a cupboard.

A Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) panel was told how he laughed in her ear as he fondled her from behind for around 30 seconds.

After the attack Arnold told his shocked victim “your breasts are firm for your age”, the panel heard.

In a written defence, Arnold claimed the pair had stumbled backwards accidentally and that he had innocently grabbed her “without thinking”.

He denied a “deliberate and escalating” number of instances of groping at the Cedar House mental health facility near Canterbury.

"This was deliberate; it wasn't as if he brushed past me or anything; he put his arms out, grabbed and squeezed my breasts when he did it" - victim

Arnold, of Wanstum Close, Herne Bay, claimed his victim had been “flirtatious and provocative in her dealings with men”.

But the panel accepted her version and found three charges proved.

The first related to an estimated five or six incidents when Arnold was accused of fondling his victim.

She told the panel: “This was deliberate; it wasn’t as if he brushed past me or anything; he put his arms out, grabbed and squeezed my breasts (over the top of my clothes) when he did it.

“I cannot see how this could be done accidentally.”

She said Arnold appeared to laugh off his behaviour.

Each time it happened the situation would be awkward for a few days but she and Arnold would fall back into their usual banter and things would return “to normal”, she said.

In his defence, Arnold said that his victim’s dealings with male staff were overtly sexual.

As a result she believed that her male colleagues’ behaviour towards her was also sexual or sexually motivated when it was not, he said.

The second charge related to an incident when both Arnold and his victim were alone, chatting in a communal area.

As she bent down to get items from her bag in a cupboard, Arnold lent over her and lifted her t-shirt and bra, fondling her breasts for around 30 seconds, the victim claimed.

She told the panel that she was unable to move and he was laughing in her ear, despite her “shouting at him to get off”.

He suddenly stopped and she moved to a kitchen area in a state of shock, the panel heard.

Arnold followed and said to her “your breasts are firm for your age”, she claimed.

"There was a culture of banter between staff members and this banter could sometimes border on sexual innuendo" - NMC panel

He conceded in his written statements that he had tickled her waist from behind – “an innocent enough act between colleagues on fairly good terms”.

But Arnold claimed that because he caught her by surprise she stumbled backwards and that he grabbed her “without thinking” to stop them both falling.

The panel found Arnold guilty of both charges, as well as a third charge that he had been sexually motivated.

In its findings, the panel said it accepted that “there was a culture of banter between staff members and this banter could sometimes border on sexual innuendo”.

However, members concluded that Arnold’s “deliberate and repeated acts of grabbing and squeezing Colleague A’s breasts on several occasions, taken together with his descriptions of Colleague A in a sexualised context, namely that she was ‘flirtatious and provocative in her dealings with men’ and ‘her skimpy clothes’ suggested the existence of some sexual motivation on his part”.

The NMC is a statutory body created by central government to regulate the nursing industry.

Under the rules of its hearings, facts are proved if the panel is satisfied that the incident was more likely to have happened than not to have happened.

At a hearing in London last Friday, the panel declared that Mr Arnold's "fitness to practise is impaired by reason of your misconduct".

On Monday he was struck of the nurses’ register.

In July 2013 Arnold was cleared by a Crown Court jury of sexually assaulting a patient.