Former influencer and midwife Clemmie Hooper has been told her actions amount to misconduct at a Nursing and Midwifery Council fitness to practice hearing into misconduct today (Monday). She was today (Tuesday) handed a one-year caution order – the NMC website says, ‘a caution order is the least serious of our sanctions in that it is the least restrictive.’
Mrs Hooper admitted three of four charges levelled against her at the hearing last week. Mrs Hooper admitted that as a registered midwife, between November 2018 and March 2019, under the pseudonym Alice in Wanderlust, she posted ‘one or more inappropriate comments on Tattle.Life’. She secondly admitted that those actions were intended to ‘undermine and humiliate’ the subject of one of her comments.
Mrs Hooper was also charged that her actions in posting one of the admitted inappropriate comments on Tattle.Life were racially offensive and/or discriminatory. The former mumfluencer accepted that charge but on the basis that she was ‘not aware at the time’ that the term used was racially offensive or discriminatory and it was only as a result of subsequent training and learning that she now ‘understands it could be regarded as that’
The fourth charge was that Mrs Hooper knew and intended her comments to be racially offensive and discriminatory – Mrs Hooper did not admit this and on Friday the panel cleared her of that charge.
Mrs Hooper’s legal counsel had called for all of the proceedings to be heard in private, something the Nursing and Midwifery Council panel rejected. On Thursday she gave evidence to the panel – though part was held in private.
Talking about the support she had received from colleagues who have written statements in support of her for the hearing, and asked what it means to her, Mrs Hooper – who has been working as a midwife since rejoining the workforce during the pandemic – told the panel this morning: ‘There have been dark times where I’ve not felt like I can get through this and you question everything. So when I read testimonials from colleagues who’ve come forward and said they’d like to submit these, it’s been helpful and a reminder of why I’m still here and want to be a midwife.’
Earlier in the week, the NMC set out the case stating Mrs Hooper had joined the midwifery register in 2006 and in 2019 when Mrs Hooper’s actions were revealed she was a prominent influencer with more than 700k followers, had a podcast and was a published author.
There was national coverage of the scandal in 2019 when Mrs Hooper, who went by the name Mother of Daughters on Instagram, admitted to posting negative comments about other influencers on Tattle.Life under a pseudonym, Alice in Wanderlust. The posts included comments about her husband Simon, who still operates on Instagram as Father of Daughters and as part of their home renovation account The House Of Hooper. When she admitted what had happened on her Instagram account at the end of 2019, Clemmie claimed she started using the name Alice in Wanderlust because she thought she could ‘change their opinions from the inside to defend my family and I’.
When some started to suspect it was her because of a similarity in geotags, she said on her Instagram stories at the time: ‘I made the mistake of commenting about others. I regret it all and am deeply sorry.’
As part of her trolling, Clemmie made comments about Candice Brathwaite (who she had hosted on her podcast previously) saying she was ‘aggressive’ and used her race ‘like a weapon’.
Some – including Kelechi Okafor – asked whether Hooper’s future as a practicing midwife should be called into question. Kelechi was temporarily banned from Instagram after the algorithm claimed she was taking part in ‘bullying and harassing’.
The hearing heard that following the fallout from the case, the NMC had a ‘significant amount of referrals’ and a self-referral on November 21, 2019.
Counsel for the NMC said Mrs Hooper use the pseudonym from late 2018 until March 2019. In October of 2019, she was contacted by another influencer who asked if she was Alice in Wanderlust. She admitted she was and on November 7 publicly admitted to it, making an apology in her Instagram stories before deleting all her accounts. They remain deactivated today.
The trust she was working at received a number of complaints, claiming the posts were incompatible with her being a midwife, and she was removed from duties. In March 2020, she returned to work at another hospital.
Speaking about her return to working on the ward, she told the panel how she had been working in an administrative role from home from January 2020, while a trust investigation took place.
‘I was still in touch with colleagues… I was hearing how poorly staffed where I had worked was,' she said. ‘I was sat at home doing administrative work and I just felt completely helpless knowing my colleagues couldn’t give the care they wanted to give because of a staffing issue. So I emailed the head of midwifery at the time and said I was prepared to do anything to help. I felt my administrative role was a bit of a waste in terms of skillset and would they be prepared to have me back…I said I had childcare, my husband worked form home and so I was available for any shift pattern they were willing to allow, whether it be nights or weekends. I live quite far from the trust and I was willing to commute and stay at an on call room at the hospital or with relatives because I just couldn’t face knowing that things could be so bad and yet I was at home, an experienced midwife, willing to give whatever care was needed.’
The panel also heard how Mrs Hooper had become one of the most popular ‘mumfluencers’ in the UK with a book deal, podcast, blog and two popular Instagram accounts. Evidence presented to the panel included the charitable work Mrs Hooper took part in for Water Aid and Mothers to Mothers.
NMC Counsel cross-examined Mrs Hooper about the posts that are the subject of the hearing, and the charge of whether she knew or intended them to be racially motivated. Asked if she agreed that the ‘angry black woman’ is a racial stereotype, she said, ‘I do agree with that now, yes. I ignorantly didn’t know that calling a black woman aggressive was a micro-agression or a racist trope, as you’ve said.’
Explaining why she moved away from the ‘defensive’ stance of using her pseudonym to defend her family to an ‘offensive’ one in attacking others on the site, Mrs Hooper said: ‘In some instances where the conversation was hotting up about my husband and I, where I’d previously tried to defend, I’d go and read another thread about another influencer and comment on there. My thought process was if I’m commenting on lots of influencers then people might not be so quick to think “Is this MOD posting as a pseudonym of Alice in Wanderlust?” so I used language and spelling errors to try and disguise myself on other people’s threads.
‘I was becoming a troll ultimately to try and deflect and attract away. When you’re reading obsessively, comments negative comments about yourself and other people, you start to imitate and when I read back at the comments I wrote, I can see how I was almost mirroring or imitating how the other trolls… I would use the same language as them to try and disguise who I was. I was becoming somebody else in that time.’
The NMC offered no live witnesses to support their case, but two witnesses were called for Mrs Hooper last week, both of whom have worked closely with her.
Debbie Cato, who has worked with Mrs Hooper since June 2021 said: ‘Clemmie is an amazing midwife - since the day she started at the birth centre there’s never been any problems with her at all… Her ethics to work, her enthusiasm have always been there from the start and I’ve never had any complaints about Clemmie at all from anyone.’
Asked about the charges of racism and her experience with Mrs Hooper, Ms Cato said in her experience she supported women of all races both on the ward and on staff adding: ‘I’ve never seen her speak to or deal differently with anyone.’
Shereen Cameron, who has worked with Mrs Hooper twice said in support of her: ‘In my experience she’s always been a very honest person, quite open and transparent. Clemmie was always someone who I felt handled things professionally and with integrity.’ Speaking about working with her after the fallout in 2019, she added: ‘She was quite open and reflective and very aware of her own personal causation of what had happened. She was very open about how it had impacted the women she’d cared for, the other women who’d been involved and her family.’
Asked about her reflections when she heard what had happened on Tattle.Life, Ms Cameron said: ‘In my experience it was completely out of character I was quite shocked, it was not the Clemmie I knew.’
In closing, counsel for the NMC said Mrs Hooper ‘strayed from that goal’ of standing up for herself and her family. ‘The comment is undoubtedly racist,’ they said. ‘And the comment at [exhibit] TT is a racist trope. It’s my submission it’s a reasonable inference for you to draw that… it was intended to be racially inferred.’
In her defence, Mrs Hooper’s representative countered: ‘Beyond the admitted use of the words, the counsel has in fact produced no evidence at all that Mrs Hooper either understood at the time the racist aspect of those words used or much less that she intended them to be racist or discriminatory. She strongly denies she was aware of such a perception at the time 23 Feb 2019, more than four years ago.’
Today, Tuesday, the NMC panel concluded the proceedings giving Mrs Hooper a one-year caution order. In deciding what sanction to hand out to Mrs Hooper, the panel’s chair said they considered the positive references staff members had given, her ‘high level of remediation’, her positive contribution to midwifery, her removal from social media, her early admission, her public apology and ‘extensive attempts’ to address her misconduct with training in diversity and inclusion. They said Mrs Hooper had also used her experience for the benefit of the profession, giving talks on the dangers of social media to co-workers.
The panel said that a caution order ‘may be appropriate where the case is at the lower end’ of misconduct and wishes to make sure something similar doesn’t happen again. They added that while ‘racial comments are not at the lower end’ they were satisfied that Mrs Hooper had been ‘unaware that describing a black woman as aggressive’ was offensive or a micro aggression. The panel also added they were of the view there was ‘negligible risk’ of the offences happening again.
When considering whether more restrictive sanctions were appropriate, the panel claimed they felt a suspension was ‘disproportionate’ adding there was a ‘clear public interest in allowing a good midwife to continue an otherwise exemplary’ career.
For the next year, the register will show a record of the proceedings and the caution order – at the end of the year, the note will be removed.