Britain's sweariest judge may also be Britain’s toughest

Britain’s sweariest judge may also be Britain's toughest, The Independent can reveal.

Her Honour Judge Patricia Lynch QC, who has made headlines from Australia to New York – and possibly legal history – by telling racist offender John Hennigan he was “a bit of a c**t” has previously told a weeping defendant to “man up” and informed a flasher: “No-one wants to see your penis.”

Since becoming a barrister in 1979, the 64-year-old has helped put rapists, gangsters and Britain’s youngest female double murderer behind bars.

Since becoming a judge on the South Eastern Circuit in 2014, she has told one female sex offender she deserved to be laughed at, and been unafraid to lambast the CPS and express her frustration at sentencing guidelines set by her superiors.

She also seems to have struck a certain amount of fear into her legal colleagues.

One source, who knew Judge Lynch when she was a barrister, told The Independent: “You knew that if you crossed her, you would be in trouble. She takes no prisoners.”

“I suppose, to a degree she was the toughest,” the source added. “She certainly had a reputation. If you were being prosecuted by her, there was only one place you were going.”

During her time as a barrister, Judge Lynch, who became a QC in 1998, successfully prosecuted Terry Smith, a professional gangster who professed to have gone straight, appearing on TV chat shows and writing a memoir, The Art of Armed Robbery. Despite telling detectives who arrested him “This is outrageous”, Smith, from Canvey Island, Essex, was sent to prison for 12 years in 2010 after Judge Lynch told a jury he had masterminded a series of violent robberies.

Another career highlight included the conviction at the Old Bailey of Lorraine Thorpe, of Clapgate Lane, Ipswich, who in 2009, aged 15, became probably Britain’s youngest female double murderer when she and an accomplice killed her father Desmond and a woman called Rosalyn Hunt.

Judge Lynch has also proved up to the task of handling highly controversial cases. In 2014 at Cambridge Crown Court, she secured convictions of two Asian men who had groomed and sexually assaulted young, vulnerable white girls in the Peterborough area.

She started on the ladder to being made a judge by becoming a part-time Assistant Recorder in 1997 and a Recorder in 2000, trying less complex cases than those handled by a full judge.

And as she began hearing cases, she began subjecting defendants to lacerating turns of phrase similar in tone, if not vocabulary, to that she directed at Hennigan, 50, from Harlow, Essex, when she jailed him for insulting a black Caribbean mother.

In 2013 at Chelmsford Crown Court she told Stephen Tunstill, 58, of Chelmsford, Essex, who had wept after being arrested for child pornography offences: “It's all very well crying through your police interview. You've got to man up.”

Grudgingly, she made Tunstill the subject of a three-year community order, making it clear that professional duty obliged her to spare him jail.

“You deserve to go to jail,” she told him. “But I have a duty not to leave your problem untreated.”

After being made a judge in June 2014, she continued to make crystal clear her contempt for sex offenders with a series of withering put-downs.

In September 2014, Elaine McKay, 58, of Banister Close, Clacton, a married teaching assistant being sentenced for sending sexually explicit pictures of herself to a 15-year-old boy, pleaded sympathy on the basis that she was now a figure of fun who was laughed at in the street.

Judge Lynch’s response was to tell her “You are the subject of derision and you deserve it.”

Darren Reynolds, 45, of Heybridge, Essex, up for sentencing last year for flashing at an 11-year-old girl, was told: “No-one wants to look at your penis, let alone children.”

According to one local newspaper report, after jailing Reynolds for more than two years, Judge Lynch turned her fire on the CPS, lambasting the prosecution service for having suggested that the girl should give evidence in court to challenge Reynolds’ claim that he never spoke to her.

Nor has Judge Lynch been afraid to give the impression she was dissatisfied with the sentencing guidelines set by her superiors.

In August last year, sentencing 75-year-old Michael Taylor after he admitted grooming, kissing and groping two girls at the animal sanctuary he ran, she pointedly admitted that she wanted to jail him but was restricted by Sentencing Council guidelines to giving him a 36-month community order.

Speaking to the victims and their families at Chelmsford Crown Court, she said: “With a heavy heart, I propose to adopt the recommendations in the pre-sentence report.”

It is far from unheard of for judges to deal sharply with disrespectful offenders. In August 2010 Judge Douglas Marks Moore, a former Irish Guardsman, even went as far as grabbing a rapist round the throat and rugby tackling him after he tried to escape from his court.

But Judge Lynch may be the first in the UK to have sworn at a defendant and used the C-word towards them. After Hennigan, who also gave a Nazi salute from the dock, told her she was “a bit of a c**t”, she replied “You’re a bit of a c**t yourself.”

She was hailed a hero as her response was covered by news outlets from New York to Australia, but the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office is now investigating after complaints were reportedly made about what Judge Lynch had said to Hennigan.

The legal source confirmed to The Independent that he had heard Judge Lynch swearing before, but “it was the F-word. I never heard her drop the C-bomb”.

The source added that off-duty, “she definitely had a sense of humour, there’s no doubt about that”.

Stressing that Ms Lynch was “a lovely lady” who was “always fair”, the source said he had never been the target of her wrath himself.

“I was always very careful,” he said.